The oldest surviving peace treaty has a replica at the UN

A copper replica of the Kadesh Peace Treaty, the earliest known surviving peace treaty, agreed between Egypt’s Ramesses II and the Hittite king Hattusili III in the 13th century BC, hangs in the second-floor delegates’ corridor of the UN Conference Building in New York, beside the Security Council Chamber. Turkey presented it on 24 September 1970.

Ask when the original was made and the answers disagree. The UN’s gift catalogue says 1269 BC, Guinness World Records says 1271 BC, and a University of St Andrews research guide says 1259 BC. None is a typo: the treaty is dated by the year of Ramesses’ reign, and Egyptologists still argue by about a decade over when that reign began. “The mid-13th century BC” is the honest answer.

Copy	Medium	Where it is now
Two originals	Silver tablets	Never found
Clay copies from Hattusa	Akkadian cuneiform on clay	Istanbul, Ankara, Berlin, St Petersburg
Temple inscription	Hieroglyphs carved in stone	Karnak, Luxor
UN replica (1970)	Copper relief by Sadi Calik	New York

The twist is in who kept what. Each court sent its draft to the other on a silver tablet, so the clay tablet dug up at the Hittite capital in 1906, the one the UN copied, records Egypt’s version, pressed in Akkadian, the diplomatic language of the day and the same language as the world’s oldest customer complaint. Karnak, meanwhile, preserves Hattusili’s wording in translation. The text never mentions the famous Battle of Kadesh it is named after.

“He is my brother and is at peace with me; and I am his brother and am at peace with him forever.” — the treaty, in a Turkish Culture Ministry translation

The record is still growing. On 21 September 2026, International Day of Peace, Turkey announced that a fragment excavated at Hattusa belongs to the treaty. It preserves parts of sections 12–20, the clauses on fugitives: the treaty required them to be sent home but forbade cutting off their ears or feet, or destroying their homes and families.