Refugees, borders, mutual defense, non-aggression, and the question of how former enemies can live together permanently — it sounds like the agenda of a peace conference about today’s Middle East and Israel. Yet these are precisely the kinds of questions Egypt and the Hittite Empire were negotiating some 3,300 years ago, during a period that roughly corresponds to the biblical era between the Exodus, the conquest of Canaan, and the time of the Judges, depending on which chronology one follows. A newly identified fragment of the peace treaty between Pharaoh Ramesses II and the Hittite King Hattusili III shows how remarkably relevant these ancient questions remain. Particularly for Israel, which to this day lives between war, deterrence, and the search for peace, the find is remarkable: Have the rules of peace really changed so much since biblical times, or have we in the Middle East been negotiating the same questions over and over again for millennia?
A small piece of clay tells of a surprisingly modern idea: peace between former enemies and protection for refugees. Archaeologists have identified a...
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