Slitherine

That's right, the missing 1800 years

OK, every tactical ancients game that ever covered the "biblical" era had Bubastis as its first scenario, and Kadesh/Qadesh as the second.

There are reasons for this. Bubastis was the first battle in recorded military history. We know that it took place and -

Who - the upper and lower Egyptians
What - fought a battle
Where - egypt, near the city of Bubastis!
When - circa 3000 BC
Why - for the unification of Egypt

and the know the upper Egyptians won, but that's about all we know.

Kadesh was a different story.

Who - the Egyptians and the Hittites
What - fought a battle (duh!)
Where - the Levant, near the city of Kadesh
When - circa 1274 BC
Why - for control of the Levant

Kadesh is notable for several reasons.

First and foremost, because it is arguably the best-documented battle of the pre-roman era. Yeah, I know that's a big claim, but think about it. The damn greeks were terrible slackers as far as any kind of objective, quantifiable accounts of their battles. They preferred to write great epic poems about how handsome somebody's boyfriend was in his noble death. And who else was there, until the romans came along? Maybe the persians left some useful historical record, but if so it's never come to light.

Second, it was a mucking huge chariot battle, involving over 5,000 chariots. Stop and think about that for a bit, and imagine the dust cloud!

The battle in a nutshell - Pharaoh Ramses II made a classic military error and divided his troops in two columns as they approached the area of the city of Kadesh, with half of his troops on the other side of the Orontes river from his main body. The Hittite/Canaanite defenders pounced on Ramses and his troops, and almost captured/killed Pharaoh himself. At the last minute, some Syrian auxiliaries came stumbling up, whereupon the Hittites decided that it was a trap, and withdrew in great haste.

Ramses II, being as shrewd politically as he was inept militarily, promptly went back to Egypt, told everybody about the famous victory he'd won, along with tales of his vast personal courage, and proceeded to erect heroic monuments to himself, complete with detailed bas reliefs showing him slaughtering Hittites in droves from his mighty chariot

Right, so, enough about Kadesh. GODS, but I ramble on sometimes!

The point here is, WTF happened in the years between 3000 BC and 1274 BC?

We know a lot about political, social, economic, and religious events in these years. And we know the Hyksos Invasion circa 1600 BC had a major impact on Egypt. Obviously, there must have been major battles in the Hyksos Invasion. What about the Seven Rebel Princes?

Why do we have no actual information on any discrete battles during this period?

I've never heard of Bubastis, but here are numerous battles of which we know a few comments from 3000 BC - get hold of a copy of Stillman and Tallis's "Armies and enemies of het ancient Near East" - it's got several pages of them.

And there's Megiddo somewhere in between too, which is the earliest set piece battle I've ever read anythign substantial about - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_ ... tury_BC%29

Excellent point, I had totally forgotten about Megiddo

So call it 15 centuries then

I'm guessing that Bubastis is a name given to the battle represented on the Narmur palette by somebody somewhere. I don't believe it is common usage as to my knowledge there is no evidence as to where this took place. Even the date is only based on the estmated age of the palette IIRC.

However, to answer the original question as to why we have no information on battles for most of the EBA there are 2 real reasons. One because the survival of information is down to chance and it hasn't survived (if it existed which is a major assumption in itself) and, two because the people of the time (presumably) didn't believe the information was worth recording. There is some good stuff on this latter in Hamblin's recent book on pre-chariot warfare.

BTW Possum, your account of Qadesh is a bit wrong - e.g. Ramses' army was in more than two parts, I think it was 4 "armies" plus the ne'arin.

First and foremost, because it is arguably the best-documented battle of the pre-roman era.

I don't think Thucydides (don't know how to spell his name in english) was an epic-poem writer concerned by boyfriends or whatever. He really did a good work describing the greek war. And there are some pre-roman battles in it He's not Herodotus (or whatever, Herodoto in spanish)

There are various bits and pieces of accounts of Sumerian and Babylonian battles, but not enough to fully reconstruct a battle. The Assyrians put down a little more detail in both pictures and writing, but that wasn't until 1000 BC or later, and everything they claim needs to be taken with at least a grain of salt, if not the entire shaker. A lot of it still exists, but needs to be translated and organized from scattered fragments, and put into proper context with competitive accounts by the Babylonians, Egyptians, and Jews. The following Persian empire kept detailed accounts of troop strengths and musters, following the Assyrian administration's example, but that wasn't until after around 600 BC, and most of their records were destroyed by the Macedonians and subsequent invaders.

Many of the "greatest victories" of history weren't "won" on the battlefield, but were converted into successes through propaganda by the king or temple. The Biblical era view of "truth" throughout most of the Middle East was not what "actually" happened, but what was "supposed" to happen. The "minor details" of reality that didn't fit were just seen as an inconvenient aberation due to the inherent flaws of mortal existence, and any attempt to dwell on the inconsistencies was probably considered a crime against both the king and the gods. Kadesh is a fine example, where both sides retreated in disarray and then returned home to "bask in their glory".