When Suppiluliuma became king of Hatti, taking advantage of the death of the chosen heir to the throne (his brother, Tudhaliya), the kingdom’s situation was precarious. During his father’s reign, Suppiluliuma had led several campaigns in the north against Hayasha and the Kaska. The young king incessantly continued his military campaigns for about twenty years, at least according to later sources. This relatively obscure phase of Hittite history played a fundamental role in the development of the Hittite state (Figure 18.1). Before venturing into more ambitious endeavours, it was necessary to face the Kaska, who were too close a threat for the Hittite capital, and to deal with the tribes living in the Anatolian highlands.
While they dealt with the Kaska militarily, the Hittites managed to come to an agreement with Hayasha. This agreement was sealed through the marriage of Suppiluliuma’s daughter with the king of Hayasha. The
Figure 18.1 Map of the Hittite empire, fourteenth-thirteenth century bc.
Treaty was, however, atypical and marked by the constant worry about the ‘barbarian’ customs of Hayasha. These concerns not only could have tainted the reputation of the Hittite princess, but also her political role, making the agreement rather pointless. Hayasha was a kingdom in Anatolia of marginal importance. However, it had a crucial strategic position, able to prevent the campaigns against the Kaska. Hayasha also provided access to Ishuwa (on the Upper Euphrates), a region through which the Hittite kingdom could reach Mitanni. Ishuwa, located in the Keban and now submerged by a dam, was partly subject to Hatti’s authority. Nonetheless, the usual problems of expatriation, trespassing and raids made relations between the two very difficult. Further south, Kizzuwatna, a ‘protectorate’ during the reign of Tudhaliya II, was now fully annexed to the Hittite state. The role played by Suppiluliuma in this regard remains unattested, but we know the outcome: the Hittite state fully controlled the area extending from the Euphrates to the Amanus and the Mediterranean.
By establishing his position in the Pontus regions, the Hittite king had managed to consolidate his kingdom enough to get involved in more expansionistic ventures. Consequently, once interests in western Anatolia (Arzawa) were cast aside, this talented and ambitious Hittite ruler was able to focus on Mitanni and Syria. This interest could have been motivated by the remote (under Mursili I) and more recent (Tud-haliya II) history of Hittite control over the area, and by the crucial role of this territory in the international relations of the period. Therefore, the only way for Hatti to become a great power in the Near East and overcome its marginal position was to participate in the Syro-Mesopotamian interactions, forging relations with Egypt and Babylonia.
In this regard, scholars have often overestimated the significance of a victory against the Hittites boasted by the Mitannian king Tushratta in a letter to the king of Egypt. It is possible that both sides trespassed and raided each other’s territories without the direct involvement of their rulers. One gets the impression that during the twenty years spent fighting in Anatolia, Suppiluliuma had already developed an interest in Syrian affairs, though more diplomatically than militarily. Due to the loyalty of Mitanni’s Syrian vassals (Carchemish, Aleppo, Mukish, Nuhashe and Qatna) to their lord Tushratta, Suppiluliuma forged relations with two vassal kings under Egyptian control. These two vassals were interested in breaking free from their ties with Egypt and in gaining independence. As a result, the neighbouring states denounced the betrayal of Aziru, king of Amurru, and Aitakama, king of Qadesh, to the Egyptian king.
Suppiluliuma’s ambitious military campaign led him from the Euphrates to Lebanon ‘in one year’. It was undoubtedly a sudden military intervention, but by no means improvised. The Hittite king had already managed to seal alliances to support other candidates to the throne within the royal families of both Mitanni and at least one Syrian kingdom, Nuhashe. These agreements thus acted as pretexts for military interventions. The Hittite army began in the north and crossed the Euphrates at Ishuwa. From there, they descended towards the enemy’s capital, Washshukkanni. Tushratta refused to face the Hittite army and remained within his capital’s walls. Through the support of Suppiluliuma, the Mitannian, Artatama II, soon replaced Tushratta. However, the new king subsequently became involved in the grander scheme of the emerging Assyrian king, Ashur-uballit. At this point, Suppiluliuma left Mitanni and focused on Syria. The vassals still loyal to Mitanni fiercely opposed the king’s expansion, but the latter could rely on the support of Amurru and Ugarit. The Hittite army defeated all his enemies, crossed the Orontes Valley, reached Qatna and Qadesh, and stopped there in order not to interfere too much with the Egyptian sphere of influence. After all, the campaign had been already too long and the Hittite military bases were too far.
For six years, Suppiluliuma remained in Syria to consolidate his conquests. In this regard, there were three main problems. The first was to make sure that the former Egyptian vassals, who had not been conquered militarily, understood that there was no space for independence. Consequently, Amurru, Ugarit and Qadesh became Hittite vassals, equal to the former Mitannian vassal states. To force them to submit, however, Suppiluliuma had to resort to his army, replacing the dynasties ruling these vassal states. The second problem was purely military: Hatti had to conquer the last cities standing in its way while defending itself from Mitannian attacks. Military control was consolidated through the siege and conquest of Carchemish, the last city able to resist thanks to its strategic position along the Euphrates. The third problem was to keep
Egypt at bay. In fact, Egypt was increasingly worried by the loss of its vassals in the north, and of the arrival of the ambitious Suppiluliuma in place of Tushratta, who had been an ally of the Egyptian king.
Some battles between Hatti and Egypt took place, but Suppiluliuma’s expansion was facilitated by Egypt’s internal crisis. The latter was linked to the end of the ‘heretic’ cult of the Aten, the return of the court to Thebes, and the revival of the cult of Amun. At the peak of Suppiluliuma’s interventions in Syria (that is, the siege of Carchemish), the widow of Amenhotep IV (Tutankhamun, for some scholars, despite the chronological problems) wrote to the Hittite king to marry one of his sons. This request was clearly against the interests of the Egyptian court at Thebes, which was trying to regain control in Egypt. Despite the initial hesitation, Suppiluliuma agreed to send a son, who was killed en route. The Hittite reaction was violent and resulted in a couple of fights at Beqa, near Damascus. This episode benefited the consolidation of the Hittite position in Syria, effectively justifying the Hittite conquest of Egyptian territories and the establishment of a Hittite border extending from the source of the Orontes to Lebanon.
The conquered states received different treatments. Suppiluliuma appointed two of his sons as kings in two important cities: Aleppo, for its prestige; and Carchemish, for its strategic position. The two kings settled in these cities with a large retinue of Hittite functionaries. The enthronement of Telipinu in Aleppo was aimed at containing the ambitions of a city that had previously held a hegemonic position in Syria and that was still respected by the Hittites. This contrasted with the appointment of Piyashshili in Carchemish which was predominantly aimed at creating a Hittite base in northern Syria. This position would allow an area to be kept under control, which was otherwise too distant from Hattusa (in case of sudden attacks from that front). The first and most important occasion in which Piyashshili had to prove his role as Hittite viceroy in Syria was the expedition that defeated the Mitannian king, Artatama II in favour of Shattiwaza. Carchemish’s location in the Middle Euphrates therefore made it the centre of the newly conquered territories which extended from Mitanni to Syria.
In the other cities conquered by Hatti, local kings were kept in place. The rulers of states that deliberately surrendered to the Hittites and contributed to their success (such as Amurru and Ugarit), had to pledge their loyalty to Suppiluliuma and pay tributes in order to keep their thrones. The states that opposed the Hittites, however, saw the appointment of new pro-Hittite rulers, who were chosen from among the members of the local royal families. This different treatment of states did not affect inter-state relations. In both cases, states had to become Hittite vassals and pay tributes. Personal enmities and loyalties were punished or rewarded through the removal of, or the permission to keep, one’s throne. Overall, however, the submission of a ‘small kingdom’ always followed the same pattern. In this way, the Hittite king took over the legacy of the Mitannian king he had defeated and part of the Egyptian legacy, without any dramatic changes for the smaller states of the area.
Soon after these conquests and the political and legal consolidation of power (that is, the selection of rulers and the stipulation of treaties), Suppiluliuma died. After thirty years of constant campaigns, he left a remarkably larger kingdom than the one he had inherited. This kingdom, however, was also extremely exhausted, both in terms of energy and resources. In this regard, the pestilence that spread throughout Anatolia, brought by soldiers and war prisoners from Syria, is only one representative symptom of an exhausted state. The maintenance and consolidation of Suppiluliuma’s conquests (or their loss and the subsequent reduction of the kingdom) was hanging by a thread and constituted a great responsibility for Suppiluliuma’s successors.
World History
