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Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey
Peace Treaties do not come into existence in the absence of diplomacy. Diplomacy also thrives in the lead up to wars. Ancient leaders were no more stupid than modern leaders:- nobody wants war if it can be avoided.
We cannot claim to know the exact circumstances under which KT got hold of his dagger, but if we can recall our high school history lessons we do have virtually irrefutable evidence for exactly where that dagger blade came from.
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Certainly some diplomacy was at work in the day of Ramses II before this peace treaty went into effect. This was a result of the Battle of Qadesh, so the two great powers already were at war. But i cannot find much, if any diplomacy between Hittites and the Eqyptians
before this time.
There is plenty of records of correspondences between Egypt and other smaller powers in the area, especially with the Mitanni kingdom who were once rivals of Egypt, but joined forces with them for protection from the Hittites. There is apparently even actual clay tablet correspondence between the King of Mitanni and King Tut's grandfather, Amenhoep III that mentions a dagger sent to the Pharaoh that was booty from the Hittites. Who knows, perhaps this is the very dagger of our current conversation that was left to King Tut from his grandfather and eventual entombed with the boy king when he died.
"We also know that iron dagger blades were important enough to be mentioned in diplomatic correspondence. The best-known example is a letter from King Tushratta of Mitanni (today in northern Iraq and Syria) detailing a dowry of his daughter who was to be sent as a bride to Tutankhamun’s grandfather, King Amenhotep III. This letter intriguingly refers to a dagger blade of “habalkinu”, a poorly documented word derived from the ancient Hittite language that some linguists have translated as “steel”."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7066216.html