User blog comment:MilenHD/Season 3 Finale: Ashurbanipal vs Ramesses II/@comment-17814994-20170718140048/@comment-422690-20170718221047

While I'm not going to argue against Ashurbanipal winning, because I agree with you that he was more intelligent and cunning and Ramses II's military career was mostly fraudulent, your source quote to illustrate the supposed superiority of iron over bronze is disingenuous at best.

What it leaves out is that Ramses and his men were sorely outnumbered at the battle of Kadesh; the most conservative estimates put it at 2-1, the more liberal ones at 5-1. You do mention this in your second paragraph, but that was the actual key to the Hitite victory here; not metallurgy, which is an oft-repeated but mistaken idea, but numbers. And that is also why iron replaced bronze; it was cheaper, more abundant, and relied less on trade with possibly hostile nations.

I may vote later (or may not - Terra basically going "Leo said this so I will, too" for his vote on Cu Chulainn v Fionn kinda dampened my voting motivation for a bit), but I don't disagree that Ashurbanipal would win. Your verdict isn't incorrect; you just used shaky logic to get there.