Found beside Building E<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Excavators recovered the piece at the Bo\u011fazk\u00f6y-Hattusa archaeological site, in the Bo\u011fazkale district. It lay near a structure called Building E on B\u00fcy\u00fckkale, the hill where the Hittite royal palace stood. Only one face of the fragment survives, covered in cuneiform signs pressed into the clay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cuneiform is the wedge-shaped script that scribes across the ancient Near East used for several languages. It also appears on stone, as on an Assyrian royal stele recovered at Bab Shamash<\/a>. On this fragment, the language is Akkadian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Specialists studied the piece in detail for about a year before they could match it to the treaty, the ministry said. They concluded that it comes from the front side of one of the Akkadian copies kept at Hattusa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the ministry, the new lines match provisions in articles 12 through 20 of the treaty. Those articles cover people who escaped from Egypt or from Hatti, the Hittite kingdom. They also set out how the other country had to treat them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The text is broken and has gaps. Even so, the readable parts mention people fleeing from both lands, along with statements that their homes should not be destroyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u00c7orum Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism<\/a> posts an English translation of the whole treaty. In it, runaways had to be sent back to their own king. The returned men were not to be maimed, and “their houses with their wives and their children are not to be destroyed.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is extradition with limits on punishment, not a right to stay abroad. Ersoy singled out the homes clause in his message. In Turkish, he said those statements “carry a powerful message from thousands of years ago to our day.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The agreement ended a long war between Egypt and the Hittites. The \u00c7orum directorate dates the great battle at Kadesh to 1274 B.C. Ramses II fought there against the Hittite king Muwatalli.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Muwatalli did not live to make the peace. His successor, Hattusili III, signed it with Ramses around 1269 B.C., the date that the directorate and the United Nations both give.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the treaty, the two rulers call each other brothers and promise never to attack each other. The \u00c7orum translation also names Benteshina, king of Amurru, a small state between the two empires. He too had to hand over fugitives who reached his land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The kings first had the treaty inscribed on silver tablets, and those originals have never turned up. What survives are copies in two forms, the ministry says. In Egypt, scribes carved the Egyptian version in hieroglyphs on temple walls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Hattusa, scribes wrote the Akkadian version on clay tablets, the everyday writing material of the region<\/a>. The first pieces of those tablets came out of the ground during early digs between 1906 and 1912.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Four museums now hold those earlier fragments, the ministry notes. They are the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin and the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. The new piece helps the effort to complete the clay copies from Hattusa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The treaty also has a place at the United Nations. Turkey presented a copper replica of the tablet<\/a> on September 24, 1970. According to the UN gift catalog, it hangs in a second-floor corridor near the entrance of the Security Council Chamber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The catalog calls the original “the oldest known peace treaty.” It lists the pledges as “eternal friendship, lasting peace, territorial integrity, nonaggression, extradition, and mutual help.” The sculptor Sadi Calik made the replica, which measures about 59 by 72.5 inches (150 by 184 centimeters).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hattusa itself has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1986. The UNESCO listing<\/a> highlights its temples, royal residences and fortifications, plus the Lions’ Gate and the rock art at Yazilikaya. Other digs in central Anatolia keep adding to that picture, including infant burials around a monumental structure<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ministry has not released a transcription or translation of the new lines. Until it does, nobody outside the team can compare the fragment word for word with the known text. The statement also gives no measurements, and no excavation report has appeared yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even a complete copy would say little about what happened in practice. The treaty records what two kings promised. It cannot show whether any returned fugitive actually kept his home, his family or his eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Work on B\u00fcy\u00fckkale continues, and the ministry says the team hopes to find more of the treaty’s missing pieces there. The announcement was published by Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism on September 21, 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Photo: Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Turkish archaeologists at Hattusa, the old Hittite capital in \u00c7orum province, have identified a clay fragment from a copy of … <\/p>\nArticles 12 to 20 on fugitives<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Two kings after Kadesh<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Silver originals, clay copies<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A copper replica in New York<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Copper](\"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/un-kadesh-copper-replica.jpg\")
Missing lines and missing pieces<\/h2>\n\n\n\n