Discovered at Qantir 120 kilometres (75 miles) northeast of Cairo, the tablet dates back to the time of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh, Ramses II (1298-1235 BC) and confirms his capital, Pi-Ramses, was in the Nile Delta.

"Its the first time that such a written record has been found in the capital of Ramses II, which confirms the location of Pi-Ramses," Mohammad Abdul Aksud, director of antiquities in the Delta region told AFP.

Although small and badly preserved, the tablet takes the form of an 11-line letter sent by the central Anatolian Hittite court to that of Ramses II, Aksud said, which "could lead us to the lost archives of Ramses II".

It was found by a team of German archaeologists, lead by Egyptologist Edgar Pusch, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities, Zahi Hawass told AFP.

It dates from shortly after the Egyptian and Hittite empires made peace in 1278 after years of war, Hawass added.

The tablet is written in cuneiform script, invented in about 3,300 BC by the Sumerians and used throughout the Middle East until the first century AD.

Quoting Pusch, Hawass told AFP it was comparable to another tablet written in cuneiform found in Turkey and others found at Tell Al-Amarna, in southern Egypt.

Tell Al-Amarna was capital during the time of Akhenaton (1372-1354 BC), remembered in history for having switched his kingdom to monotheism with the worship of the one sun god, Aton.

The tablets found there show the earliest diplomatic correspondence ever discovered.

The Qantir tablet may be followed by the discovery of a temple in the same region, where Ramses II built his capital.

Ramses II married a Hittite princess to shore up peace with the central Anatolian empire, so he could concentrate on the threat posed in Mesopotamia, where the Assyrian empire was bent on conquest.