The contest continued for more than a century with occasional treaties of peace and various vicissitudes of fortune, and at last culminated in the great battle of Kadesh, commemorated by the Egyptian epic poem of Pentaur, and followed by the celebrated treaty of peace between Ramses II. and Kheta-Sira, "the great King of the Hittites," the Hittite text of which was engraved on a silver tablet in the characters of Carchemish, and the Egyptian copy of it was engraved in hieroglyphics on the walls of the temples of Ramses, of which we fortunately possess the entire text. The alliance was on equal terms, defining the frontier, and providing for the mutual extradition of refugees, and it was ratified by the marriage of Ramses with the daughter of the Hittite King. The peace lasted for some time; but in the reign of Ramses III. of the twentieth dynasty, we find the Hittites again heading the great confederacy of the nations of Asia Minor and of the islands of the Mediterranean, who attacked Egypt by sea and land. The Hittites formed the greater part of the land army, which was defeated with great slaughter after an obstinate battle at Pelusium, about 1200 B.C. From this time forward the power both of the Hittites and of Egypt seems to have steadily declined. We hear no more of them as a leading power in Palestine and Syria, where the kingdoms of Judah, Israel, and Damascus superseded them, until all were swallowed up by the Assyrian conquests of the warrior-kings of Nineveh, and finally the Hittites disappear altogether from history with the capture of their capital Carchemish by Sargon II. in 717 B.C. The wide extent, however, of the Hittite Empire when at its height is proved by the fact that at the battle of Kadesh the Hittite army was reinforced by vassals or allies from nearly the whole of Western Asia. The Dardanians from the Troad, the Mysians from their cities of Ilion, the Colchians from the Caucasus, the Syrians from the Orontes, and the Phoenicians from Arvad are enumerated as sending contingents; and in the invasion of Egypt in the reign of Ramses III., the Hittites headed the great confederacy of Hittites, Teucrians, Lycians, Philistines, and other Asiatic nations who attacked Egypt by land, in concert with the great maritime confederacy of Greeks, Pelasgians, Tuscans, Sicilians, and Sardinians who attacked it by sea.