During the archaeological excavations carried out in Hattusa, the capital of the Hittites, a new tablet fragment belonging to the Kadesh Peace Treaty, one of the most important diplomatic documents of the ancient world, was unearthed.
The discovery, announced by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, was made during excavations near the "E" building in Büyükkale, where the Hittite king's palace in Hattusa is located. As a result of scientific examinations carried out for about a year on the cuneiform tablet fragment, one side of which was preserved, it was determined that the fragment belonged to the front side of one of the copies of the treaty written in Akkadian.
The newly found fragment contains lines from the sections of the Kadesh Peace Treaty that regulate the treatment of people who fled between the two countries or took refuge in the other country.
In the readable parts of the piece, which is determined to belong to the provisions between the 12th and 20th articles of the treaty, people who escaped from Egypt and Hatti countries are mentioned, and there are also statements about not destroying the houses of these people. Since the tablet is broken and missing, the entire text is not preserved.
Kadesh Peace Treaty, Hittite King III. Hattusili and Egyptian Pharaoh II. It is known as one of the diplomatic texts made between Ramses II and regulating relations after the long period of conflict between the two powers. There are also copies containing the text of the treaty in the cuneiform tablet collection found in Hattusa. UNESCO included the Boğazköy/Hattusa tablet collection in the Memory of the World list in 2001.
Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said the following about the piece found:
We found thousands of years of traces of peace in the soil of Anatolia! It was determined through scientific investigations that the piece of cuneiform tablet found in the Büyükkale excavations in Çorum Hattusa belonged to one of the copies of the Kadesh Peace Treaty.
This valuable discovery, which we shared with the public on September 21, World Peace Day, once again reveals Anatolia's deep-rooted place in the history of peace and diplomacy.
This heritage, which has survived thousands of years ago, reminds us of our responsibility to protect human life and dignity. We wish for a future in which all people, especially our Palestinian brothers, will live in safety, peace and tranquility.
While Egyptian copies of the treaty were engraved with hieroglyphs on temple walls, fragments of clay tablets with Akkadian cuneiform writing were unearthed during the first period excavations carried out in Hattusa starting from 1906. The copy of the treaty found in Hattusa also played an important role in defining the city as the Hittite capital.
The previously found tablet fragments are now in the Istanbul Archaeological Museums, Anatolian Civilizations Museum, Berlin Near East Museum and St. It is in the collections of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
The newly discovered piece is expected to contribute to the work on completing the missing sections of the clay tablet copies of the Kadesh Peace Treaty in Hattusa. The ongoing excavations in Büyükkale aim to find other pieces of the treaty.
