KADESH: Tech Fails to Solve The Problem

 

I know the name of the world’s first professional horse-whisperer: Kikkuli. He was from the nation of Mitanni, in what is present day Syria. And about 1345 B.C.E. the new Hittite King Suppiliuma,  discovered Kikkui training horses in the Beqaa Valley, and hired him to modernize his army. At the time, horses were very high tech.

See, in North America the horse went extinct with its ice age compatriots the Woolly Mammoth and the giant sloth, while in EurAsia the horse survived. And the only difference between the two environments was that in EurAsia humans invented the wheel, probably because of the horse.

A wheel can reduce the energy required to drag your belongings across the ground by a factor of twenty-five, if the ground is fairly flat and not too rocky, like the steppes north of the Caspian Sea. That makes an expensive horse a reasonable investment  And a clue to the importance of the wheel for the horse is that its Proto-Indo-European root word, “kwel”, (to revolve), can be traced directly back at least 8,000 years to the grasslands right about where the archeological evidence indicates the horse was first put in front of a cart. And the first great empire to perfect the use of the horse and cart in war were the bad boys of the Bronze Age, the Hittites.

Nobody knows where the Hittites originally came from. They invaded Anatolia (central Turkey) about 3,800 years ago. They brutally conquered the real Hittites, replaced their royal family, enslaved their population, adopted much of their culture and language and even co-opted their name. These new Hittites were violent and paranoid in the extreme.

They built their new capital of Hattusa(above)  away from any major roads, and three miles from the nearest navigable river, to make it as difficult as possible on an attacker. And they cultivated a reputation for violence and vengeance, as when they sacked Babylon in 1660 B.C.E. in a sudden and brutal surprise attack. The key to their military power was their use of the chariot. And the Kings of Hattusa intended upon exploiting  that advantage.

Kikkuli, the self-billed “master horse trainer” wrote one of the first equine training manuals in history, four cuneiform tablets detailing a 75 day training regimen for chariot horses. Now, a dedicated chariot horse is very expensive to maintain. They have to be endlessly trained, pampered and exercised to remain in a state of readiness. And like a modern battle tank, the bronze age chariot was too fragile to travel long distances.  It had to be carried as close as possible to the scene of battle. And for more than  three hundred years the competing powers of the the Middle East, Egypt and the Hitties, defined themselves by their fleets of chariots, in much the same way that later generations would use tanks.

The function of the chariot – from the Gaelic word “carrus”, meaning a car - was to suddenly deliver the bow or spear man to within killing range of the enemy, and just as quickly withdraw him back to safety. The Hittite chariot, a “triga”, was pulled by two horses. The designers had lightened the wheels by reducing the spokes from eight to four. But they offset this weakening by moving the axle from the back to the center, stabilizing the fighting platform. They made use of the weight savings by adding a third man to the “car”; driver, a spear-or-bowman, and a shield man. Kikkuli had given the Hitties a lead on developing the chariot’s power plant. But, as any weapons’ designer can tell you, in the world of high tech, all advantages are transitory

The border between the two powers was a small city on the upper Orontes River in Syria, known as Kadesh (or Qadesh). The lands to the south were controlled by the Egyptians, ruled in 1274 B.C. by Ramsses II. He wanted to capture Kadesh and move the border further north. He was leading 37,000 infantry and almost 2,000 chariots. His army was divided into the Amun, the Ra, the Seth and the Ptah divisions of about 10,000 infantry and 500 chariots each.  And as he approached Kadesh, Ramses learned that the Hittites were still far to the north. He decided to exploit their tardiness by leading his Amun division on an overnight forced march, across the Orontes River (above) before dawn. By  noon Ramsses had established a siege camp just north of the city, isolating Kadash from the main Hittite army. Or so he thought.

As his men were fortifying their camp, his scouts brought in two Hittite soldiers. And after some enhanced interrogation, Ramsses learned that the entire Hittite army was lurking just over the next hill. He had been duped. The following Re division was still crossing the Orontes River, while the other half of his army was still on the south bank. Ramsses barely had time to consider the scope of his predicament, when the Hittites fell upon the Re division. They were caught still in marching column and were shattered in a single chariot charge.  Twenty per cent of Pharos’s army had been destroyed in the opening moments of the battle.

Then the Hittite chariots and infantry fell upon the Amun division’s unfinished camp. They smashed through the half built defenses. Slowly the Amun infantry were constrained and slaughtered, while the Amun chariots, surrounding Ramsses, were forced to pull back.

Meanwhile still more Hittite chariots and infantry had crossed the Orontes River and were now pummeling the unprepared Seth division. It looked as if Ramsses’ over confidence had destroyed his entire army.  But two things saved him. First there was his own courage. Surrounded by battered, confused and defeated men, Ramsses led his chariots on repeated counter charges against his own captured camp. And second, by accident or by design, this played into the strengths of the Egyptian chariot, which was based on a different design than the Hittite one.

The Egyptian chariot was a “biga”, and carried just two men; the driver and the spear/ bowman. This made the lighter Egyptian chariots nimble and quick. And Ramsses used that speed and maneuverability to repeatedly throw his men at the weary and now disorganized Hittite troops, while avoiding getting too close to their greater numbers.

 By late in the afternoon, after six charges, Ramsses had managed to cut down the Hittite strength, fight his way clear of the Hittite chariots, re-cross the Orontes River and rejoin what was left of his army.

It had been the biggest chariot battle in history, with 6,000 carts and some 36,000 trained horses wheeling back and forth across the plain in front of Kadesh, destroying each other. Both sides pulled back to lick their wounds.

When he got back to Egypt, Ramsses II wrote his own version of the battle on his temple walls. In this comic book story he humiliated the Hittites. But the treaty which ended the war (and this is the first international treaty we have copies of from both sides) show that Kadesh remained part of the Hittite Empire. At best Ramsses had fought the Hittites to a draw. However,…

Hittite causalities were so high that just a century after the battle of Kadesh, in about 1160 B.C.E., the strain of maintaining order tore the empire asunder. A civil war broke out in the Hittite royal family. And in the middle of the night, the mysterious Hittite rulers stripped Hattusa of all its wealth, burned the palaces and temples to their very foundations, and then faded into the dark corners of history from which they had come. There is no record of where they went, or what they became.

It was not until 1906, when German archaeologists first uncovered the city, and began reading the 30,000 soot stained cuneiform tablets which had been left behind when they burned down the great library of Hattusa.  Among the tablets were Kikkuli’s book on the care and feeding of chariot horses, and the Hittite copy of the treaty of Kadesh, and the only independent report detailing the Trojan War. And it was through those tablets that the Hittite Empire was resurrected, along with missing details of the history of humans and the horse, and the first failure of high technology to solve international relations.

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THE FIRST BATTLE

I might call Thutmose III a mummy’s boy. His official mother was his aunt, Hatshepsut (above), the second female Pharaoh (we can be certain of).  She had been the Great Royal God Wife of Thutmose II until he died in 1479 B.C. E.  Thutmose III’s actual father was also Hatshepsut’s own half brother - Egyptian royal family trees tend to lean heavily on inbreeding.  But in this case it worked out.

Stone age pottery kilns were able to produce temperatures above 900 degrees Celsius.  A mere two hundred degrees higher melted copper, which, when naturally contaminated with tin or arsenic, made bronze.  And bronze tools had many advantages over stone. They held a point and an edge longer. They are easier to shape, easier to sharpen, they are durable and should they break, they can be heated until they soften, and then can be reformed. Or,  melted and cast as an entirely new tool. 

The Bronze Age had begun about 4,000 years before today, and although copper was a relatively rare metal, it was heavily mined along the southern end of the narrow strip of arable land which connects Africa to Eurasia, called the Levantine Corridor,  This was why Egypt had invaded and conquered the Levantine about 1500 B.C.E., dominating the local Philistine population.  

                

Hatshepsut ran the two Kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt (above) for twenty years as Pharaoh, while Thutmose III remained the Pharaoh-in-waiting, since his actual birth mother,  Iset,  had been a "lesser" wife.  And it seems likely Hatshepsut was a difficult boss lady.

Examination of her mummy (above) in the Cairo museum reveals that besides menopause (she was in her mid-fifties when she died) Hatshepsut suffered from arthritis, diabetes, liver and bone cancer, and really bad teeth. Of course most Egyptians had bad teeth, a by-product of chewing sand in every mouth full of food. 

But what finally put Hatshepsut in her Luxor Temple, on 10 March, 1459 B.C., was blood poisoning caused by an abscess in her gums. And then, finally, after all those years playing second fiddle to his aunt,  Thutmose felt the need to show his  power by invading somebody, and quickly. 

So within days of ascending to the Throne of Horus, the 22  year old Thutmose III (above) ordered the  army to gather troops and supplies by the last week of August 1458 B.C, at the border fortress of Tjaru in the Nile Delta. He was a powerful young man, with a strong strain of Nubian blood in his veins. And there was need to reassert Egypt's authority.  The great Sahara desert protected Egypt to the west. But to the south, north and east threats to the empire hovered.

To the south, beyond the cataracts and in the great bend of the Nile was the gold rich Nubian desert kingdom of Kush, The Egyptians had been waring with these fellow pyramid builders for a century, at one time even being ruled over by Kushite Kings. But at the moment, Kush was under Egyptian control. 

To the north was the Mediterranean Sea, occupied by the trading and war fleets of Mycenae, Greece, and the Greek city states and their Asian colonies, such as Ephesus. North of that, up the coast of modern day Turkey, was the rich city of Wilusa, known to the classical Greeks as Troy, Wilusa was a protectorate of the rising Hittite Kingdom to the east in modern day Turkey,

And across the Sinai Desert, beyond the border at Gaza Wadi, were the Philistines, occupying a Semitic land known  as Canaan.  The Canaanites were a loose confederation of city states in the Levantine Corridor, and because of their copper deposits, they had been dominated by Egypt for over a century.

But, during the distracted leadership of Hatshepsut's later years, the most northern Canaanite city of Meggido (above), sitting north of the Carmel Ridge, and commanding the rich agricultural Jezreel valley, had sought a more comforting and closer alliance with a nearer military power, the kingdom of Mittani. 

Three hundred fifty miles north of Meggido and along the Queiq river, was the capital of Mittani  (above),  the city of Aleppo, one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in the world. The Empire was on the rise, having recently defeated the ancient power of Babylon. King Barattarna of Mittani decided to make a treaty with Meggido as a tentative first challenge to the Egyptians.  He supplied them with bronze chain mail and a few three man chariots. It seemed a low risk strategy as long as  Hatshepsut was sick.  After her death, Thutmose III decided to attend to his wayward Canaanites.

There was a delay in gathering the army, and Thutmose did not leave Tjaru until February of 1457 B.C. His Egyptian army was mostly infantry, perhaps 10,000 men, divided into platoons of six to ten men each, consisting of bowmen and lancers. 

The smaller mobile force of two-horse chariots were not built for long distance travel, and on the march the chariots had to be light enough for each to be carried by their shield men. On this march across the Sinai (the Red Deseret) skirmishers advanced to the front while raiding parties ranged along the flanks, gathering sheep, goats grain and water for each night’s camp. Behind came the baggage train of ox carts carrying supplies, repair tents and blacksmiths, soothsayers, priests and musicians.

These people were used to walking, and never rode on horseback, so the army did not reach the Philistine fortress of Gaza (“The key to Syria”) until mid-March.  After another 11 days marching up the coastal plain Thutmose’s army entered the port of Jamnia, near present day Tel Aviv. Here they rested while scouts brought word that the Canaanite army was awaiting him on the Plain of Esdraelon, before  the hill fortress of Megiddo. So in early May, with his communications back to Egypt secured by his navy, Thutmose swung inland, to the small village of Yaham.

In front of Thutmose now rose a line of low hills, stretching from the northwest (Mt. Carmel at 1,740 feet) to the southeast (Mts Tabor & Gilboa, 1,929 feet). Megiddo and the Canaanite army were on the northern flank of these hills, and his generals told Thutmose there were two possible routes to attack Megiddo 

The most direct route headed due north from Yaham and then turned northwestward on the Via Maris (sea route) to the village of Taanach, before reaching Megiddo. The longer path headed northwest from Yaham along the flank of the mountains before crossing the hills to reach the valley at the village of Yokneam. From there it was an easy backtrack southeastward to Megiddo. 

The Canaanite army had divided their infantry, with almost half guarding Taanach and the other half Yokneam. Stationed at Megiddo (in the center) were the Canaanite chariots with some infantry support, ready to fall upon either approach the Egyptians made.

However there was also a third choice. On the road north toward Yokneam there was a cutoff, a path less traveled, that ran through the village of Aruna (above, center) and then through a narrow defile, so tight that the army could pass through only single file, before debauching onto the valley directly in front of Megiddo. It was the most direct route, but Thutmose’s men would arrive piecemeal, where they could be destroyed “in detail”, one unit or even one man at a time. But this route also offered an opportunity. 

It seems that Thanuny feinted toward the two main roads, using perhaps two thirds of the army. But before dawn Thutmose lead his spear and shield men through the pass, single file; perhaps 3,000 men in all. When they stepped out of the pass it was about 1:00 p.m., 9 May , 1457 B.C. 

The Canaanite chariots, surprised by their enemies sudden appearance, hastily charged at the Egyptian spearmen, and let loose a barrage of arrows. But defended by their shield men, the Egyptian formations stood firm. And then, as the Canaanites withdrew to reform and attack again, the Egyptian ranks opened up and from the defile appeared Egyptian chariots, carried through the pass and reassembled, Like a whirlwind they fell upon the fewer Canaanite chariots.

“Even when moving at a slow pace, …(the Egyptian war chariot) shook terribly, and when driven at full speed it was only by a miracle of skill that the occupants could maintain their equilibrium…the charioteer would stand astride the front panels, keeping his right foot only inside the vehicle…the reins tied around his body so he could by throwing his weight either to the right or left…pull up or start his horses by a simple movement of the loins…he went into battle with bent bow, the string drawn back to his ear…while the shield-bearer, clinging to the body of the chariot with one hand, held out his buckler with the other to shelter his comrade.” (History of Egypt Chakdea, etc. G. Maspero. Groilier Society) 

The Canaanites panicked at the sudden Egyptian charge, and their causalities tell the story; just 83 killed, but 240 taken prisoner and 924 chariots and 2,132 horses captured. 

The Canaanite infantry on the wings, now divided by the Egyptian chariots in the center, abandoned Megiddo and scattered in retreat. 

And although the fortress held out for seven months before finally surrendering, from the moment Thutmose III reached the valley  he had ensured his capture of the hill fort of Megiddo, or, in the Canaanite language, Armageddon. And thus ended the first battle recorded in detail in history.

No one came to Meggido's rescue (above). The surrounding Canaanite cities were not likely to rush now to defend their defeated fellow Philistines.  All of northern Canaan and many Syrian princes now sent Thutmose III tribute, and even their sons to serves as hostages,

But this first campaign was just the first of 17 campaigns for Thutmose III. The following year he finished his conquest of Mittani, even crossing the Eurphates River.  Now the Assyrians, the Babylonians and Hittite Kings sent him tribute. During his entire fifty-three year reign, Thutmose III captured 350 cities, subjected many peoples, and dominated the middle east from the Euphrates River to the fourth cataract of the Nile. Under his reign, the Egyptian Empire reached it's greatest expanse. 

He rebuilt much of Karnak, along with 50 other temples up and down the Nile.  

Thutmose III  (above) died in the 54th year of his reign, some 3,500 years before today. He was entombed at Luxor (below).  He is remembered, for good reason, as "The Napoleon of Egypt".

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BATTLE OF THANKSGIVING

 

I don’t understand why anyone believes any of the popular myths about Thanksgiving. The truth is our Puritan forefathers were a humorless bunch who showed their devotion to God by going hungry, not by eating. And the only feasts they had were in the late  summer, when food was plentiful.  By late November they were already deep into their grain stores, and watery stew.  These Christian pessimists would only say thanks if they were staving to death!

The real mother of Thanksgiving was actually the widow who wrote “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and other innocent poems, Sarah Hale. She was the 19th century version of Martha Stewart. For forty years Sarah was the editor of the prestigious “Godey’s Lady’s Book” magazine. And each November Sarah would bombard her 150,000 subscribers with recipes for Roast Turkey, Turkey stuffing, Turkey gravy, and Turkey stew. Now a lot of selling and some kitchen chemistry was required because 19th century turkeys were scrawny and almost exclusively dark meat. Sarah championed the turkey because her middle class homemakers were on tight budgets, and per pound the randy, strutting bird-brain turkey cost less than half what a chicken might.

But the real revolution came when, in 1934, the United States Department of Agriculture discovered the key to making turkeys palatable; artificial insemination.  In 1932, before the breeding revolution, the average American ate just two pounds of turkey a year. Today, that amount is closer to twenty pounds. Turkey farmers across America, are very thankful for that big government intervention. So are most turkey eaters, although they don't seem to know it.

But the increased popularity of turkey has come at a price - no sex for the turkey.  Today’s buxom white breasted Tom Turkey is too obese to climb atop an equally buxom white breasted hen. Without human intervention, the Thanksgiving turkey would have have gone extinct - Ah, ceste se la guerre. But this brings us to my real topic, which is the year when Thanksgiving became a political de la guerre; 1939

It was the third year of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s second term as president. And Republicans were determined (read terrified) that he might want to seek a third term. However they were not in a good position to prevent it, holding only 177 seats in the House of Representatives (to 252 Democrats) and a paltry 23 seats in the Senate (to 69 Democrats). But then in August, Roosevelt handed Republicans an early Christmas present.

In July Franklin had received a visit from Fred Lazarus (above), head of the Federated Department Stores, at the time the single biggest retail chain by volume in America. He controlled Macy’s and Bloomingdales department stores in New York City, Filenes in Boston, and Strauss in Brooklyn. Fred pointed out to the President that in 1939, November would have five Thursdays; the second, the ninth, the sixteenth, the twenty-third and the thirtieth. And Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation calling for a day of Thanksgiving -  first issued after the battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, and re-issued by Presidents every year since - specifically designated Thanksgiving as the final Thursday in November. That final Thursday would be, in the case of 1939,  the 30th . The previous time Thanksgiving had fallen on the fifth Thursday in November had been 1933. 

That year the Christmas shopping season, which traditionally began the day after Thanksgiving, was just 20 shopping days long, and had proven disastrous for retailers. Of course, the Great Depression had also bottomed out that year, but retail business folks are like farmers, they always worry about the rain. Did it come too early, or too late? Is it too much, or too little? Anyway, Lazarus wanted Roosevelt to move the Turkey Day back one week, to give merchants another week to tempt their customers into spending on Christmas. The President had also heard from lobbyists at the National Retail Dry Goods Association, as well as executives from Gimbels and Lord & Taylor.

Being a long time politician, Roosevelt listened to the business community. And at a Press Conference held on Monday, 14 August,   he made a little speech.  “I have been hearing from a great many people", he began, "complaints that Thanksgiving came too close to Christmas”. Roosevelt reminded the press corps that Thanksgiving was still not an official holiday, and that each year the President picked the date for it.  And, since business "experts" believed that adding another week to the shopping season would increase sales by 10%,  Franklin announced that this year of 1939,  he was moving Thanksgiving to Thursday,  November 23rd., the fourth Thursday in November. Not the last Thursday.

The first alarm went off  the very next day, when Fred Lazarus ran into his younger brother. Simon Lazarus was ranting over the change because it had disrupted his Ohio State Universities’ Thanksgiving day football game. “What damn fool got the president to do this?” Simon barked at his brother, who, in fact, was the damn fool himself. But that was just the beginning.

The Republican attorney general for Oregon, turned to poetry. “Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November; All the rest have thirty-one; Until we hear from Washington.”  A shopkeeper in Kokomo, Indiana preferred to protest in prose. He put up a sign in his shop window which read, “Do your shopping early. Who knows, tomorrow may be Christmas.” 

Republican Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire urged the President to simply abolish winter by fiat. And Methodist minister Norman Vincent Peal got very outraged, charging it was  “…contrary to the meaning of Thanksgiving for the president of this great nation to tinker with the sacred religious day with the specious excuse that it will help Christmas sales. The next thing we may expect Christmas to be shifted to May 1st to help the New York World’s Fair of 1940.”  Did anybody point out to Norman, that the bible never mentioned which Thursday Thanksgiving should fall on?  If they did, it seems nobody was paying attention.

Twenty-three governors went with the President’s switch, and twenty-two did not. Texas and Colorado couldn’t make up their minds and recognized both days as the holiday in question, although the Republican Governor of Colorado, Ralph Carr, announced he would eat no turkey on the 23rd. 

The 30th was labeled as the Republican Thanksgiving, while the 23rd became the Democratic Thanksgiving, or, as "Nucky" Johnson, the recently indicted Republican mayor of Atlantic City called Franklin Roosevelt’s holiday, “Franksgiving”.

There were a few real problems hidden under this haze of invented political outrage. Calendars could not be changed in time for the 1939 switch over. And schools were suddenly uncertain of vacation schedules. Some families found their bosses forced their holiday dinners to be split between the two dates. But it turned out that the real problem had been identified by Simon Lazarus, the angry brother - American football.

The headline in the New York Times said it all; “PRESIDENT SHOCKS FOOTBALL COACHES” The coach of Little Ouachita college in Arkansas warned, “We'll vote the Republican ticket if he interferes with our football.'” Chairman of the Athletic Board at New York University wrote to Roosevelt, “…it has become necessary to frame football schedules three to five years in advance, and for both 1939 and 1940 we had arranged to play our annual football game with Fordham on Thanksgiving Day…” And then Roosevelt had changed the date!

A Gallup poll found that 62% of Americans wanted the President’s decision reversed. But it was too late for Roosevelt to change his mind in 1939. And FDR was too stubborn to admit defeat in November 1940, which also had five Thursdays, and was a Presidential election year. Despite the addition of even more politics into the mix, in 1940 nine states switched from the Republican Thanksgiving (the fifth Thursday) to the Democratic one (the fourth Thursday). 

That left just sixteen celebrating the “old” Thanksgiving. And that seems to have been enough of a victory for Roosevelt, that looking ahead to November 1941 (which surprisingly also had five Thursdays), he asked New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia to study the sales figures. Was that extra week of shopping really helping the economy? In fact it had, but not very much; certainly not enough, considering all the angst and confusion the move had cost.

In early May of 1941, LaGuardia’s report informed the White House that “the early Thanksgiving date has not proved worthwhile".  So on  20 May 1941, Roosevelt set Thanksgiving 1941 back to the last Thursday in November. And in a rational world, that would have settled that. But, of course, politicians are not rational beings, anymore than the people who vote for them.

Being lawmakers the politicians in the House of Representatives decided to get involved by writing a law. House joint resolution 41 justified itself by pointing out that there was nothing to designate the day as a holiday except the annual President's Proclamation (which Roosevelt had mentioned at the start of this mess!). Henceforth, said the Representatives, the last Thursday in November would legally be Thanksgiving.  But when HR 41 got to the Senate, those gentlemen felt compelled to improve upon it.  

They did this by changing one little word. Thanksgiving would now be not the last Thursday in November as the House had intended, but the fourth Thursday in November, as Fred Lazarus had wanted.  As Connecticut Senator John A. Danaher pointed out, in four out of five years, the last Thursday in November was the fourth Thursday in November, anyway. The House went along and Roosevelt signed the new law into effect on 26 December, 1941. And amazingly, since that date, the Republicans had been determined not to notice that Roosevelt and the merchants had won.

No matter what conservative or liberal sympathizers may chortle about on their blog posts, the merchants' got their earlier date for Thanksgiving, and that extra week of Christmas shopping..  They got it by allowing the politicians to choke on their own press releases. Money always wins every political argument. And most moral arguments, too.  And the great political storm of 1939 - 1940 seems quaint and gentle, in a world where the Christmas shopping season begins shortly after Halloween!.

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