---
title: Kadesh and Behistun:kings carving their own record
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/kadesh-behistun-royal-inscriptions/
description: Ramesses II carved an indecisive battle into five temples as his personal victory, the Hittite kings kept a record that reads differently, and Darius I…
section: Case studies
---

![Illustration: a pre-1914 imperial intelligence-dossier collage of colonial telegraph logs, sepia field photography and empire maps.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-pre1914.jpg)

[Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/)

# Kadesh and Behistun:kings carving their own record

At a glance

Ramesses II carved an indecisive battle into five temples as his personal victory, the Hittite kings kept a record that reads differently…

- **When:** c. 1274 BC-c. 420 BC
- **Actor:** Ramesses II of Egypt…
- **Target:** Temple visitors, priests and officials in Egypt…
- **Source:** Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- **Confidence:** **documented** Primary documents, court records, official disclosures
- **Techniques:** [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/) [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/) [Semantic hijacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/semantic-hijack/)

Full details

- **Actor:** Ramesses II of Egypt (Kadesh texts and reliefs); the Hittite kings Muwatalli II and Hattusili III (treaty tablets, the Apology); Darius I of Persia (Behistun inscription and its copies); Sennacherib of Assyria (Lachish reliefs, briefly)
- **Target:** Temple visitors, priests and officials in Egypt; the Hittite court and gods; subjects and officials across the Persian empire; later kings

On this page

- [What happened](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/kadesh-behistun-royal-inscriptions/#what-happened)
- [How it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/kadesh-behistun-royal-inscriptions/#how-it-works)
- [Then and now](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/kadesh-behistun-royal-inscriptions/#then-and-now)
- [Positions on the record](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/kadesh-behistun-royal-inscriptions/#positions-on-the-record)
- [Same-method test](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/kadesh-behistun-royal-inscriptions/#same-method-test)
- [How to spot it](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/kadesh-behistun-royal-inscriptions/#how-to-spot-it)
- [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/kadesh-behistun-royal-inscriptions/#images)
- [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/kadesh-behistun-royal-inscriptions/#sources)

On this page

**Content note:** this page shows ancient reliefs of battle dead, bound captives, deportees and a king standing on a defeated rival.

**In one line:** Ramesses II carved an indecisive battle into five temples as his personal victory, the Hittite kings kept a record that reads differently, and Darius I cut his account of how he took the Persian throne into a cliff in three languages and sent copies across the empire; in each case the king who carved the record is also its main witness.

**Content note:** Relief showing battle dead. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) ![Drawing of the Kadesh battle relief on the Ramesseum wall: Ramesses II, far larger than anyone else, draws his bow from a charging chariot while Hittite chariots fall into the river around the walled city](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/ramesseum-kadesh-battle-relief-1270bc.jpg)

*The Kadesh battle relief on the walls of the Ramesseum, Thebes (c. 1270 BC), as drawn in a plate published by James Henry Breasted. Public domain.*

## What happened

- **c. 1274 BC (Ramesses II's fifth regnal year, conventional chronology).** Ramesses marches into Syria with four divisions named for the gods Amun, Re, Ptah and Seth. Near Kadesh on the Orontes he is told by two Shasu men that the Hittite army is far to the north. The Egyptian account itself says they had been sent by the Hittite king, Muwatalli II. Two captured Hittite scouts, beaten, then reveal that the Hittite army is hidden behind the city. Hittite chariots cut through the Re division on the march and break into the camp of the Amun division.
- **The Egyptian account of the fight.** Ramesses' texts say that his troops fled, that he called on Amun and that the god answered him. They say that he then charged the enemy chariots again and again almost alone until a relief force (the *Ne'arin*) arrived. Fighting resumed the next day. The Egyptian texts say that Muwatalli then sent a letter asking for peace. Ramesses returned to Egypt. Kadesh was not taken.
- **After the battle.** Kadesh stayed in the Hittite sphere. The kingdom of Amurru, which had gone over to Egypt shortly before, was brought back under Hittite control: later Hittite treaty texts say that its king Benteshina was removed and taken to Hatti. Hittite texts, among them Hattusili III's Apology, refer to the Egyptian campaign and to Hittite forces in the land of Aba (Upi, around Damascus), well south of Kadesh.
- **c. 1274 BC onward: the monuments.** Ramesses publishes the campaign on a scale no earlier Egyptian battle received. Two texts, known to Egyptologists as the "Poem" (a long literary narrative) and the "Bulletin" (a shorter report), plus captioned reliefs, appear in fuller or shorter versions at Abydos, Karnak, Luxor, the Ramesseum and Abu Simbel. The Poem also survives on papyrus (Papyrus Sallier III and the Raifé papyrus).

![Relief at Abu Simbel: Ramesses II in his chariot draws a bow, his name in cartouches above him](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/abu-simbel-kadesh-relief-1260bc.jpg)

*Ramesses II at Kadesh, detail of the relief in the Great Temple at Abu Simbel (c. 1260s BC). Photo by Warren LeMay, 2019, CC0.*

- **c. 1259 BC (Ramesses' year 21).** Egypt and Hatti, now ruled by Hattusili III, make a formal peace treaty. It survives in two versions: an Egyptian one carved at Karnak and the Ramesseum, and a Hittite one in Akkadian on clay tablets from the Hittite capital Hattusa (Boğazköy). As usually read, each version presents the other king as the one who asked for peace.
- **c. 1245 BC (year 34).** Ramesses marries a daughter of Hattusili. His "Marriage Stela" at Abu Simbel and elsewhere presents the match as Hittite submission. The surviving letters between the two courts show the dowry and the princess's journey being negotiated between equals.
- **Hattusili III's Apology (13th century BC).** Hattusili had taken the Hittite throne from his nephew Urhi-Teshub (Mursili III), Muwatalli's son. His long first-person text credits his rise to the protection of the goddess Shaushka (Ishtar) of Samuha, lists the wrongs he says his nephew did him, and presents the seizure as a just lawsuit decided by the gods. Urhi-Teshub later turns up in Egypt, and Hattusili's letters ask for him to be handed over.

![Relief at Abu Simbel: the walled city of Kadesh enclosed by the loops of the Orontes, with defenders and a standard on the walls](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/kadesh-city-orontes-abu-simbel-1260bc.jpg)

*The city of Kadesh inside the channels of the Orontes, from the Kadesh relief at Abu Simbel (c. 1260s BC); photograph published by James Henry Breasted. Public domain.*

- **522 BC.** In Persia, Cambyses, son of Cyrus, dies while returning from Egypt. A king ruling as Bardiya (Greek Smerdis), Cyrus's younger son, holds the throne for some months; Babylonian contract tablets are dated by his reign. On **29 September 522 BC** (10 Bagayadi by the text's calendar), Darius, from a collateral branch of the Achaemenid family, and six other Persian nobles kill him at a fortress in Media. A wave of revolts follows across the empire.
- **c. 520-519 BC: the Behistun inscription.** High on the cliff at Bisotun, above the road from Babylon to Ecbatana, Darius has a relief carved with long texts in Elamite, Babylonian (Akkadian) and Old Persian. The text states that Cambyses had secretly killed his brother Bardiya and that the man on the throne was a Magian named **Gaumata** who lied that he was Bardiya. It then says that "the Lie" (Old Persian *drauga*) spread through the provinces, and that by the favour of Ahuramazda Darius fought nineteen battles and captured nine kings in one year. Each rebel "lied", claiming to be a king or a royal heir.

**Content note:** Relief of a king standing on a defeated rival before a line of bound captives. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) ![The Behistun relief: Darius, with two attendants behind him, stands with his foot on a prostrate figure, facing a line of bound captives roped at the neck; above them a winged figure in a disc](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/behistun-relief-darius-rebels-520bc.jpg)

*The Behistun relief, Bisotun, Iran (c. 520-519 BC): Darius, Gaumata under his foot, and the rebel kings roped together, beneath the winged symbol usually identified with Ahuramazda. Photograph released into the public domain by its author (Commons).*

- **The relief is revised.** After a campaign against the Saka in 519 BC, a ninth captive, the Saka leader Skunkha in a tall pointed cap, is squeezed in at the end of the line. Carving him destroyed part of an Elamite column, and the Elamite text was cut again elsewhere on the rock.
- **Copies.** The Old Persian text says that Darius sent the inscription everywhere among the provinces. Two finds bear this out: fragments of a Babylonian-language stele from Babylon, and an Aramaic version on papyrus from the garrison island of Elephantine in Egypt, copied in the late fifth century BC under Darius II. Nicholas Sims-Williams showed that the Aramaic copy ends with a passage from Darius's tomb inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam.
- **5th century BC: Herodotus.** Herodotus (*Histories* 3.61-88) tells a similar story: a Magian impostor, seven conspirators, a coup. He was writing decades later, and scholars debate how far his version derives from the official one.

![Detail of the Behistun relief: Darius raises his hand, his foot on the chest of a figure lying on its back with arms raised](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/behistun-darius-gaumata-520bc.jpg)

*Darius and the figure the text names as Gaumata, Behistun relief detail. Photo by Patrick C. (dynamomosquito), CC BY-SA 2.0.*

- **1835-1847.** Henry Rawlinson copies the inscription from ropes and ladders. The Old Persian text becomes a key to deciphering cuneiform. Darius's own record is thus one of the foundations of modern knowledge of the period it describes.

## How it works

- [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/): the Kadesh texts give the ambush, the king's charge and the Hittite letter in detail, but not that Kadesh was not taken, that Amurru was lost, or that Hittite forces went on to Upi. The treaty and the Marriage Stela are each presented in Egypt as Hittite requests. At Behistun, the only full account of 522 BC is Darius's, published by Darius, and it describes the dead king only as an impostor.
- [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/): both kings borrow divine authority. Ramesses' Poem has Amun answer his prayer mid-battle, and the reliefs sit on temple walls whose whole purpose is the gods' order. At Behistun the winged figure hovers above the king, and the text returns again and again to "by the favour of Ahuramazda". Hattusili credits Shaushka in the same way. The monuments themselves, giant, permanent and sacred, lend weight to the story.
- [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/): Egyptian captions routinely give the Hittite king an epithet translated as "wretched" or "vile" (the wretched one, or vile chief, of Hatti) and show him turned away and afraid in his chariot. At Behistun each captive is labelled with his claim and the words "he lied".
- [Semantic hijacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/semantic-hijack/): in Achaemenid thought *drauga*, the Lie, is a cosmic evil opposed to truth (*arta*). The inscription stretches the word to cover every political rival, so that any claim to rule other than Darius's is by definition the Lie, and resistance is a religious as well as a political offence.
- [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/): the near-disaster at Kadesh is blamed on others. The Bulletin has Ramesses rebuke his officials and local rulers for failing to report the Hittite army, and the Poem has him reproach his fleeing troops. The king appears only as the one who saved the day.

## Then and now

![Sailors on the deck of USS Abraham Lincoln under a "Mission Accomplished" banner](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/mission-accomplished-banner-2003.jpg)

*['Mission Accomplished' banner on USS Abraham Lincoln](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/mission-accomplished-banner-2003/), U.S. Navy photo, 2003. Public domain.*

In 2003 a U.S. President announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq in front of a carrier crew and a "Mission Accomplished" banner, and the war went on for years. The similarity with Kadesh is the staging of a victory by the head of state's own apparatus while the outcome on the ground was still open. The differences are large. The 2003 event came with a free press, an opposition and later official statements that the banner sent the wrong message, and Ramesses faced none of these. His version stood alone on stone for over three thousand years. Rulers who fuse their own image with the state, such as the [Barre Cult of Personality Mural](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/siad-barre-mural-1976/) in Mogadishu, continue the monumental side of the method.

![Stereograph of the colossal seated statues of Ramesses II at the entrance of the Great Temple at Abu Simbel, with a man standing at their feet for scale](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/abu-simbel-colossi-ramesses-1904.jpg)

*The colossi of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel, stereograph by Underwood & Underwood, 1904 (Library of Congress). Public domain; no known restrictions.*

## Positions on the record

- **Ramesses II's stated position:** the texts present Kadesh as a victory won by the king, with Amun's help, after his army failed him, and say that the Hittite king asked for peace.
- **The Hittite side:** no Hittite narrative of the battle survives. The brief Hittite references to the campaign, written under Hattusili III, are read by Bryce and others as treating it as a Hittite success; they record Hittite control of Amurru and forces at Upi afterwards. In the treaty tablets, as usually read, Egypt is the party that sought peace. The Hittite record is thinner because the Hittite archive consists mainly of clay tablets, not temple walls; the imbalance of sources is not itself evidence for either version.
- **Hattusili III's stated position:** that the gods, above all Shaushka, chose and protected him and that his nephew's hostility forced his hand.
- **Darius I's stated position:** that Gaumata was an impostor, that Darius restored the rightful kingship of his family, and that the rebels were liars.
- **What historians say about Kadesh:** most modern accounts (for example Kitchen, Spalinger, Bryce) read the battle as a tactical draw that left the strategic position with the Hittites, and read the Egyptian record as a royal account of the king's personal valour. Opinions differ over how narrowly Ramesses escaped and how much the relief force changed the outcome.
- **What historians say about Behistun:** this is contested. One view (argued by, among others, A. T. Olmstead, M. A. Dandamaev and J. M. Balcer) is that the man killed in 522 BC was the real Bardiya and that Gaumata is a cover story for a usurpation. Its supporters point to Darius's collateral descent, the scale of the revolts, the absence of any independent contemporary witness, and Darius's marriages to Cyrus's daughters and to Bardiya's daughter. The other view holds that Darius's account may be substantially true, or that it cannot be disproved. On that reading a secret fratricide and an impostor are not impossible, Herodotus reports a similar story, and no text contradicts it. Pierre Briant, among others, treats the question as one the evidence cannot settle.
- **This archive's reading:** documented: the texts, reliefs and copies described above, the non-capture of Kadesh, later Hittite control of Amurru, the revision of the Behistun relief, and the empire-wide copying. **Not shown:** whether Ramesses personally believed his account, and whether Gaumata was an impostor or Bardiya himself. The method can be described either way: the only full record of 522 BC was written by the man who gained most from it and was circulated on his orders.

## Same-method test

If a Hittite king had carved a stalemate into his temples as a solo triumph, blamed his officers for the ambush and given the Egyptian king a standing insult, this page would score it the same way. The same holds if Gaumata had won and carved a cliff calling Darius a liar and a pretender. The Hittite record is scored the same way: Hattusili's Apology uses divine sponsorship and a list of the rival's wrongs to justify seizing the throne, the same moves this page tags at Behistun. The Assyrian king Sennacherib's Lachish reliefs (c. 700 BC) filled a room of his palace at Nineveh with the siege and fall of Lachish in 701 BC. His annals say that he shut Hezekiah up in Jerusalem "like a bird in a cage", and Jerusalem was not taken. The method is the same whichever empire uses it: carve the city you took.

**Content note:** Relief of deportees driven from a conquered city. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) ![Assyrian relief from Nineveh: rows of deportees with bundles walk out of Lachish, with horses below](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/lachish-relief-sennacherib-700bc.jpg)

*Deportees leaving Lachish, from Sennacherib's Lachish reliefs, Nineveh (c. 700 BC), British Museum. Photo by Mike Peel, 2010, CC BY-SA 4.0.*

## How to spot it

- Ask who carved the record, and whether any other party's record survives. If only one survives, say so before treating it as the event.
- Check the outcome against the story. A battle "won" that ends with the other side holding the city and its allies needs a second source.
- Watch for the lone-hero frame: when every failure belongs to subordinates and every success to the ruler, the account is built around the ruler.
- Watch for a single moral label (liar, vile, the Lie) applied to every opponent. It replaces the question of what each rival actually claimed.
- Read both copies of a treaty. When each side's version says the other asked first, both versions are addressed to a home audience.
- Note revision and distribution: a text that is recarved to add new victims and copied to distant garrisons is being managed as a message, not just kept as a record.

![Steel engraving of the Bisotun cliff: the Behistun relief and panels of text set into the rock face](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/bisotun-rock-engraving-1860.jpg)

*The Behistun rock, steel engraving, 1860. Public domain.*

## Images

| Image | Source | Licence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Ramesseum Kadesh battle relief, drawing (lead) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_scene_from_the_Great_Kadesh_reliefs_of_Ramses_II_on_the_Walls_of_the_Ramesseum.jpg), plate published by James Henry Breasted | Public domain (PD-old; PD-US) |
| Ramesses II at Kadesh, Abu Simbel relief | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rams%C3%A9s_II_en_Qadesh,_relieve_de_Abu_Simbel.jpg), Warren LeMay, 2019 | CC0 |
| City of Kadesh and the Orontes, Abu Simbel relief | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Relief_Kadesh_Breasted.jpg), photograph published by James Henry Breasted | Public domain (PD-old) |
| Behistun relief, Darius and the rebel kings | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Behistun_inscription_reliefs.jpg), derived from "Bisotun Iran Relief Achamenid Period.JPG" | Public domain (released by the photographer) |
| Darius and Gaumata, Behistun detail | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Behistun_relief_Darius_and_Gaumata.jpg), Patrick C. (dynamomosquito) | CC BY-SA 2.0 |
| *Mission Accomplished* banner (2003) | FRAME gallery | Public domain (U.S. government work) |
| Abu Simbel colossi, stereograph (1904) | [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2002697273/), Underwood & Underwood | Public domain; no known restrictions on publication |
| Lachish relief, deportees | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lachish_Relief,_British_Museum.jpg), Mike Peel, 2010 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
| Behistun rock, steel engraving (1860) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rock_Inscription_at_Bisotun,_Persia,_a_steel_engraving,_1860.jpg) | Public domain |

### Image gaps

- **The Egyptian-Hittite treaty tablet (Istanbul Archaeological Museums) and the Karnak treaty text.** Openly licensed photographs likely exist on Commons but were not retrieved for this page. **This gap can be filled.**
- **The Aramaic Behistun papyrus from Elephantine.** No openly licensed image was found; museum photographs of it are not openly licensed. Not filled.
- **Hattusili III's Apology tablets.** No openly licensed image was found. Not filled.
- **Plates from Lepsius's *Denkmäler* or Champollion's *Monuments* showing the Kadesh reliefs.** Public domain, but not located as single files during this build. **This gap can be filled.**

## Sources

- Kadesh texts: Miriam Lichtheim, *Ancient Egyptian Literature*, vol. 2: *The New Kingdom* (University of California Press, 1976), translation of the Poem and Bulletin; K. A. Kitchen, *Ramesside Inscriptions, Translated and Annotated*, vol. 2 (Blackwell, 1996).
- James Henry Breasted, *The Battle of Kadesh: A Study in the Earliest Known Military Strategy* (University of Chicago Press, 1903); Breasted, *Ancient Records of Egypt*, vol. 3 (University of Chicago Press, 1906).
- K. A. Kitchen, *Pharaoh Triumphant: The Life and Times of Ramesses II* (Aris & Phillips, 1982).
- Anthony J. Spalinger, *War in Ancient Egypt: The New Kingdom* (Blackwell, 2005).
- Trevor Bryce, *The Kingdom of the Hittites*, new ed. (Oxford University Press, 2005); Bryce, *Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East* (Routledge, 2003).
- Treaty and Hittite texts: Gary Beckman, *Hittite Diplomatic Texts*, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1999); Harry A. Hoffner Jr., "Apology of Hattusili III", in W. W. Hallo (ed.), *The Context of Scripture*, vol. 1 (Brill, 1997).
- Behistun: Roland G. Kent, *Old Persian: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon*, 2nd ed. (American Oriental Society, 1953); Rüdiger Schmitt, *The Bisitun Inscriptions of Darius the Great: Old Persian Text* (Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum, 1991); Jonas C. Greenfield and Bezalel Porten, *The Bisitun Inscription of Darius the Great: Aramaic Version* (Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum, 1982).
- Nicholas Sims-Williams, "The final paragraph of the tomb-inscription of Darius I (DNb, 50-60): the Old Persian text in the light of an Aramaic version", *Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies* 44 (1981).
- Amélie Kuhrt, *The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period* (Routledge, 2007).
- Pierre Briant, *From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire* (Eisenbrauns, 2002; French ed. 1996).
- A. T. Olmstead, *History of the Persian Empire* (University of Chicago Press, 1948); M. A. Dandamaev, *A Political History of the Achaemenid Empire* (Brill, 1989); J. M. Balcer, *Herodotus and Bisitun* (Franz Steiner, 1987).
- Bruce Lincoln, *Religion, Empire, and Torture: The Case of Achaemenian Persia* (University of Chicago Press, 2007), on *drauga* and *arta*.
- Herodotus, *Histories*, book 3, chapters 61-88.
- Lachish: David Ussishkin, *The Conquest of Lachish by Sennacherib* (Tel Aviv University, 1982); Sennacherib's annals in Kuhrt (above) and in *The Context of Scripture*, vol. 2 (Brill, 2000).