A RECONSTRUCTION OF HITTITE HISTORY
By Barry Curnock
(An Abridged Version of “From Havilah Unto Thou Comest to Shur” [337 pages])
The Hittites had a distinct culture, using their own languages for written and sculptural inscriptions. There are
features of their art which are immediately recognisable as Hittite. The greatest period of their culture and
influence was in the second millennium BC, from the seventeenth century down to an abrupt end around
1200 BC. From the capital, Hattusas, in North-East Anatolia on the plateau north of the Taurus Mountains,
the Hittites ruled Southern Anatolia and Northern Syria.
Three separate periods are defined by historians, the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms. The latter period,
sometimes called the Hittite Empire, saw the greatest extension of Hittite rule, not only over their normal area
of domination in Northern Syria but also to the western coasts of Anatolia and eastwards beyond the river
Euphrates, to Armenia. Their power increased to the extent that they came into conflict with the Egyptian
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pharaohs of the 19 dynasty, particularly Seti I and his son Rameses II.
The cultural achievements of the Hittites were considerable, in a wide range of human development. Their
languages belong to the Indo-European group, which includes Greek and Roman and the modern languages
derived from them. When this was recognised, historians had to drastically revise their theories of the
development of Indo-European languages. They did not expect such a development in Anatolia in the
second millennium BC…
Thousands of clay tablets have been discovered at Boghazkoy. These are inscribed with wedge-shaped
(cuneiform) signs. The tablets contain a range of literature. In the tablets, the land is called „Hatti‟ and hence
the people are called Hittites, a name known from the Old Testament long before archaeologists uncovered
their remains. The Hittite religion, and in particular the story of the creation of the gods, anticipates religious
writings of Greek and Ionian scholars of the first millennium.
The Hittites were also the first to develop treaties between themselves and their neighbours and vassals.
Such treaties were re-introduced by the Assyrians in the eighth century BC. There were war annals for some
of the major kings, describing their battles and conquests. These anticipated the form of similar annals
recorded by the scribes of the Assyrian kings, hundreds of years later. In both religious concepts and in
various forms of literature, the Hittites were centuries ahead of their time.
Perhaps the greatest cultural achievement related to the Hittite kingdoms, was not by the Anatolian Hittites
themselves, but by their vassal kingdom of Ugarit on the coast of Northern Syria, opposite the island of
Cyprus. Ugarit was a major port and gave the Hittite kings access to sea-borne trade and a navy. The
Ugaritians invented an alphabet and used it to create an extensive range of literature, which has been
discovered by archaeologists on clay tablets. These were unearthed at the site of the ancient port, which has
the modern name Ras Shamra.
The letters of the Ugaritian alphabet include the same twenty-two letters of the Hebrew / Phoenician
alphabet, which was developed separately in the first millennium BC. The letters were also written in the
same sequence in both the Ugaritian and Hebrew alphabets. In Ugarit they used strokes to separate the
words, a technique, which didn‟t re-emerge until the sixth century in Cypriot texts. Ugarit was destroyed at
the same time as Hattusas, around 1200 BC, and was not re-inhabited. The alphabet died with the city, only
to be re-invented in identical fashion hundreds of years later.
Not only the city of Ugarit but the whole Hittite New Kingdom was destroyed at the end of the thirteenth
century BC and no semblance of continued habitation is visible at any of its major sites.
Two hundred years after the end of the Hittite New Kingdom, the Hittite culture was re-created, not in the
Hittite homeland of North-East Anatolia, but south of the Taurus Mountains in Cilicia, and in Northern Syria.
This is the so-called „Neo-Hittite‟ or „Syro-Hittite‟ period, which lasted down to the seventh century BC. The
same Hittite languages were used, including ‟Hieroglyphic Hittite‟, which was used for inscriptions in stone.
This is a picture script with some similarity in principle to the Egyptian hieroglyphics, but quite different in the
content. In the Neo-Hittite states, the same types of motifs and iconography were used in sculpture and the
same gods were worshipped.
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Although the Neo-Hittites inhabited the same areas that had been ruled by the Hittite emperors, new cities
were inhabited by them. No city has been excavated which demonstrates continuous use through both the
early and late Hittite eras. Cities of the early period, such as Hattusas and Alaja Huyuk on the Anatolian
plateau were not inhabited in the period of the Neo-Hittite kingdoms. Ugarit and Alalakh in Northern Syria
show exactly the same pattern, with no habitation after 1200 BC. The archaeological remains from Ugarit
include letters from the Hittite kings of Hattusas and therefore Ugarit must be dated to the early period.
Several Neo-Hittite cities have been excavated and their dating is securely linked to Assyrian records of the
ninth and eighth centuries BC.
Two major Neo-Hittite cities were Malatya, east of Hattusas, guarding a northern crossing of the River
Euphrates, and Carchemish in Northern Syria, also guarding a Euphrates crossing. No artefacts from the
early period have been found at these sites. The area of Malatya features strongly in the time of the emperor
Suppiluliumas I of the Hittite New Kingdom. He was based there when Hattusas had been over-run by
invaders. He also used the Malatya crossing on his way to attack the major Hittite enemy, Mitanni. In the
time of Suppiluliumas and his son Mursilis II, Carchemish was the seat of the „Viceroy of Syria‟. From
Carchemish, Piyasilis, son of Suppiluliumas, and his descendants ruled Syria for the Emperors. It appears
that the Hittite rulers left no trace of their occupation of these important cities.
Extensive remains of the Neo-Hittite period have been recovered from both Malatya and Carchemish. Other
major sites are Zincerli, in the foothills of the Taurus, Maras and Karatepe south of the Taurus, and Hamath
in Syria, at the southernmost point of Hittite dominion. None of these sites show evidence of the early period.
It has been noted by historians that the absence of remains from the early period at Zincerli, is difficult to
comprehend. The Hittite Imperial armies must have regularly passed through Zincerli on their way to Syria.
The late period of the Neo-Hittites lasted for about three hundred and fifty years, the same duration as the
early period of the Kingdoms of Hattusas.
One is tempted to write „If you believe that, you would believe anything!‟ The conventional view of Hittite
history strains credulity.
Can any nation be that inventive and progressive in several branches of human endeavour, and keep their
inventions to themselves? Even in ancient times there was considerable intercourse between countries and
states. Items were traded over vast areas. It is difficult to believe that innovations by one country would not
be recognised and copied by their neighbours.
Can a civilisation disappear and then be recreated two hundred years later?
Yet this is the story of the Hittites as told in any book on Ancient History, a disjointed history which splits two
parts of the Hittite experience into different times, with no apparent link between them, each part lasting for
about three hundred and fifty years. The conventional dating of Hittite history is shown in Figure 1.6.
Why are the Anatolian Hittite Empire and Neo-Hittite Periods Dated This Way?
The early period has links to Egyptian history during the Hittite New Kingdom. In particular, the Emperor
Suppiluliumas I wrote a letter either to pharaoh Akhenaten or one of his sons. There are many links between
the Hittite king Hattusilis III and the most famous of all Egyptian pharaohs Rameses II. A peace treaty and
other correspondence were exchanged between the two, and Rameses married the daughter of Hattusilis.
Evidence for dating the earlier periods of the Hittite Old and Middle Kingdoms is extremely scarce. There is
only one independent piece of evidence for the whole of these periods, which between them lasted over two
hundred and fifty years, with at least a dozen kings. There is a Babylonian Chronicle which says that „the
man of Hatti marched against the land of Akkad‟ (Babylon). This is synchronised with the Hittite story of
Mursilis I, one of the kings of the Hittite Old Kingdom, whose attack on Babylon is recorded by a later king.
The Neo-Hittite period is dated almost entirely by links to Assyria. The period from 900 – 600 BC was the
time of the Assyrian domination of the Middle East, and the Assyrians had many dealings with the Neo-Hittite
states, eventually capturing most of them, at the end of the eighth century BC. The dating of Assyrian history
in this period is very sound, partly through many references to Assyrian kings and their exploits in the Old
Testament. Other records, from South of Assyria in Babylonia, and North of Assyria in Urartu, also confirm
Assyrian history.
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Figure 1.6 Hittite History
BC
1700
Old Kingdom of Hattusas
1600
Mursilis I attacks Babylon
1500
Middle Kingdom of Hattusas
1400
New Kingdom of Hattusas
Suppiluliumas I establishes the Hittite Empire
1300
Battle of Kadesh against Rameses II.
Peace Treaty between Hattusilis III and Rameses.
1200
Hattusas destroyed and abandoned
1100
No evidence of Hittite culture in Anatolia or Syria
1000
The Neo-Hittite States of Southern Anatolia and
Northern Syria
900
Hittite coalition halts Assyrian army of Shalmaneser III
800
700
Sargon II of Assyria captures all the Hittite states.
Hittite kings of Tabal resist Assyria.
600
More than any other part of conventional Ancient History, the history of the Hittites demands a reassessment. The obvious question is whether Hittite history is distorted by an erroneous version of
Egyptian History. When the first Hittite remains were found by archaeologists, they were dated to the
first millennium, due to similarities with Assyrian art.
It was not until the treaty between Hattusilis III and Rameses II was found, in the remains of the Hittite
capital, that the dates were changed. According to Egyptian History, Rameses II lived in the
thirteenth century BC, so that must be the date for Hattusilis. It is clear that if we re-dated the Hittite
Kingdoms of the early period to the first millennium, to be concurrent with the Neo-Hittite period, all
the anomalies listed above, of language, literature, religion, art, and metallurgy, would be erased. We
would also no longer have to wonder how a culture could re-invent itself after two miserable
centuries, in which there was no literacy or cultural achievement.
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Such a revision would not contradict the archaeological record, but it would remove the dark age of
Anatolia, giving a much more rational interpretation of the archaeological remains. It would also
explain why no city shows a continuous habitation through both the period of the Hittite Kingdoms
and Neo-Hittite times. They would be one and the same period and all the major cities would have
existed at the same time. The remains at Malatya and Carchemish would be those left by the Hittite
Great Kings of Hattusas.
In the Amarna collection there is a letter from a Suppiluliumas. Among the Hattusas tablets are several
treaties between the Hittite Emperor Suppiluliumas I and his subjects in Northern Syria, other treaties with a
king of Mitanni, plus a document called „The Deeds of Suppiluliumas‟, written by his son Mursilis II.
Some of the dignitaries of the Amarna tablets are also found in the Hittite tablets of Suppiluliumas I.
These include Tushratta the King of Mitanni, Niqmaddu the King of Ugarit, Aziru King of Amurru, Adu-Nirari
King of Nuhasse, and the Hittite generals Lupakki and Zitana. Another person of less clear rank, found in
both sources, is Etakamma of Kinsa.
These synchronisms seemed to leave little doubt that Suppiluliumas I was the „king of Hatti‟ of the Amarna
letters, and this link has been one of the major aids to historians in fixing the chronology of the Hittites.
Despite the thousands of tablets found in Hattusas, no letter from any of the three Egyptian pharaohs has
ever been found.
With such good correlation between the Amarna letters and the texts of Hattusas, one would not anticipate
any problems, but nearly a century of scholarship has failed to resolve a series of inconsistencies between
the Hittite records and the letters.
Dahamunzu
In the synchronisation between Suppiluliumas I and the Amarna letters, one piece of evidence is crucial. In
„The Deeds of Suppiluliumas‟, Mursilis records that when his father was besieging Carchemish, the strategic
city on the River Euphrates in Northern Syria, the Emperor received an envoy from the Queen of Egypt. Her
name is given as Dahamunzu.
Her husband, the pharaoh, had died. He is called Bibhururia in one version of the text and Nibhururia in
another. She had no sons and did not wish to marry any of her subjects. She asked that Suppiluliumas give
her one of his many sons to become Pharaoh.
Carchemish fell to Suppiluliumas but the negotiations went on for some time, into the next year. Eventually
the Hittite Emperor agreed and dispatched a prince to Egypt. The young Hittite never finished his journey,
being assassinated on his way south.
The name of the Egyptian Pharaoh could be a Hittite attempt at Nibhurureya, one of the names of
Tutankhamen, but it is also similar to the name used to address Akhenaten in the Amarna letters, which is
Naphurureya. Several other pharaohs had similar names. However, the choice of which pharaoh was meant
was not difficult because only one queen from the Amarna period fits the situation of having no son as a
successor to her husband.
Amenhotep III was outlived by his main wife Tiye, and was succeeded by his son Akhenaten. Akhenaten
was outlived by his main wife Nefertiti, and was succeeded by his sons, first Smenkhare and then
Tutankhamen. Ankhesenamen, the wife and half sister of Tutankhamen, was probably only a teenager at her
husband‟s death and she had no children. The Egyptian queen, who sent an envoy to the Hittite emperor, is
therefore assumed to have been Ankhesenamen.
The Egyptian queen Dahamunzu did not wish to marry one of her subjects, but asked for a Hittite prince to
become her husband. Suppiluliumas was very surprised by the request. We should also be surprised if this
request came from the widow of Tutankhamen. On three counts, the request from Ankhesenamen has to be
doubted.
Firstly, Ankhesenamen was a young female, and they were not normally given great authority within
Egypt. Would she be allowed to make such a decision, which would have major ramifications on the
future role of the Egyptian monarchy?
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It is believed that at this time in Egypt, a senior official called Ay wielded great power. He actually became
the next pharaoh. Would he have allowed the queen to carry on protracted negotiations with the Hittite King?
It is feasible that it could have been his strategy to allow the youngster to have her say, but plan to
assassinate the Hittite prince if anything came of the negotiations, but this is a strange risk to take, being
guaranteed to lead to increased animosity between Egypt and Hatti.
Secondly, it had never been common Egyptian practice for princesses to marry foreigners. A
generation or so earlier, Amenhotep III makes this clear in a letter (EA4): „From time immemorial no
daughter of a King of Egypt is given to anyone‟. The request of Ankhesenamen goes against the
Egyptian policy on marriage for its royal women.
Thirdly, it is difficult to fathom the strategic logic behind the request of the Egyptian queen. When
you are at war with a foreign power, you do not offer them your kingdom by making your enemy‟s
son your king.
Basically Ankhesenamen was handing the kingdom of Egypt on a plate to Suppiluliumas. Dynastic
marriages such as this were usually arranged to cement an alliance against a third power, and even
then were more likely to involve the giving of daughters than sons...
Friendly Relations
There is one Amarna letter from Suppiluliumas (reference EA41). It is addressed „to Huriya, the king of
Egypt, my brother‟. The name of the king is corrupted and could be any of the Amarna pharaohs. The sender
is clearly a Suppiluliumas, and he is a king, but the tablet is damaged so that it is not clear if he was king of
Hatti.
The letter [EA41] is written to a son, shortly after the death of his father and recounts the friendly
relations between the sender and the recipient‟s father. The wish is for that state of peace and
friendship to continue. The text also records several gifts sent with the letter.
In the Hittite document „The Deeds of Suppiluliumas‟, the Emperor is astounded by the approach
from the Egyptian queen. He cannot remember friendly relations with Egypt, but he is told that long
before his time, Hatti and Egypt were friendly. After the assassination of his son, he is
understandably very angry with the Egyptians.
There is therefore no time in the life of Suppiluliumas when such a friendly letter as EA41 could have
been written. Any Hittite references to Egypt in the time of Suppiluliumas are concerned with war-like
relations. The Hittite record completely contradicts the content of EA41. The letter was written by a
Suppiluliumas, but this could not have been the Hittite Emperor Suppiluliumas I.
It is also of interest to note the gifts, accompanying EA41, sent to the Egyptian king - „One silver rhyton, a
stag„. A rhyton was a vessel, in the shape of an animal, for pouring liquids in religious rites. Some examples
have been retrieved in archaeological digs. The best Hittite example of a stag rhyton in silver dates from the
time of Telepinus, a king of the Hittite Old Kingdom, more than a hundred years before the days of
Suppiluliumas I. This suggests that the Suppiluliumas who wrote to the pharaoh lived some time earlier than
the Hittite Emperor.
Conflict with Mitanni and Naharina
In EA75, the king of Sumur relates the latest information to Amenhotep III: „The King of Hatti has taken Mitta
and Nahma, the lands of the Great Kings‟. It is generally assumed that Mitta and Nahma are Mitanni and
Naharina, countries well-known to Egypt. The whereabouts of Mitanni are uncertain. Archaeologists have
never discovered it. The remains of the cities of Mitanni have not been revealed to the modern world. The
Egyptian and Hittite evidence suggests Mitanni was to the east of Hatti, beyond the Euphrates. The
Mitannians spoke a Hurrian language, which is distinctly different from other languages of the time. Often the
Hittite records refer to the people of Mitanni as „the Hurrians‟.
Naharina in Egyptian means the land of the two rivers and was probably Babylonia, which was situated on
the two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, in the modern state of Iraq. In modern times, this area has
been called Mesopotamia, which is a name derived from Greek and means „between the rivers‟.
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It is difficult to believe an attack on Babylonia by Suppiluliumas I. There is no Hittite record of this.
Also he was married to a Babylonian princess, who was his chief wife, so he had friendly relations
with Babylon throughout his reign.
He did attack Mitanni, but did not maintain any control over it. He was unopposed by the forces of
Mitanni, who withdrew and did not engage the Hittite army, even when they sacked the Mitannian
capital. After the raid on Mitanni, Suppiluliumas went on to take Northern Syria in the same year…
In the conflicts between Hatti and both Mitanni and Naharina, related in the Amarna letters, we find
distinct disagreement with the records of Suppiluliumas I. Any conflict with Naharina is very unlikely
and the belligerent role of Mitanni in the letters is contradicted in the Hittite tablets…
Cyprus
There are several letters in the Amarna collection from the King of Cyprus to a King of Egypt, numbers EA33
- 40. The ancient name of Cyprus was Alashiya. It is generally assumed that the letters were written to
Akhenaten, starting from the early years of his reign, because his succession to the Egyptian throne is
mentioned: “I have heard that you are seated on the throne of your father‟s house” (EA33).
The King of Cyprus addresses the King of Egypt as an equal: “To the king of Egypt, my brother: Message of
the king of Alasiya, your brother. For me all goes well. For you may all go well” (EA33). Messengers were
sent between the two kings and gifts were exchanged. The King of Cyprus suggested that there should be
an alliance between the two kings (EA34).
He also stresses that he has treated the king of Egypt with special favour: “You have not been put on the
same level with the king of Hatti or the king of Sanhar. Whatever greeting gift he (my brother) sends me, I for
my part send back to you double” (EA35). Sanhar is a name for Southern Babylonia, similar to the Biblical
name Shinar.
It is clear from the letters of the king of Cyprus, that the island was an independent state during the
time of the Amarna letters. This was stressed by Vassos Karageorghis, Director of Antiquities in
Cyprus, in his book „Cyprus from the Stone Age to the Romans‟:
„The correspondence between the king of Alashiya and his allies, the pharaoh of Egypt and the king
of Ugarit, would suggest that Alashiya was independent.‟
This is in conflict with the Hittite records of the time of Suppiluliumas I. The Hittite king Arnuwandas
I, who lived about 30 years before Suppiluliumas, states that Cyprus was under Hittite rule: “The land
of Alashiya belongs to my Majesty” (CTH147).
It is usually assumed that Cyprus remained a Hittite possession throughout the Hittite New Kingdom.
Hattusilis III, the grandson of Suppiluliumas is believed to have exiled his nephew to Cyprus.
Once more the Hittite records do not appear to agree with the Amarna correspondence.
Aziru and Etakamma
Aziru, King of Amurru and Etakamma of Kinsa feature in both the Hittite treaties of Suppiluliumas I and the
Amarna letters. These countries were in Syria.
There is a Hittite treaty between Suppiluliumas and Aziru. In both this treaty [CTH 49], and a later one
between Mursilis I and a descendent of Aziru [CTH 62], the loyalty of the king of Amurru to Hatti is stressed.
Throughout the Amarna letters, Aziru is a loyal vassal of the king of Egypt. Late in the Amarna period he
visited Egypt.
The situation with Etakamma of Kinsa is the opposite way round. With Shutatarra, his father, he opposed
Suppiluliumas when the Hittite king attacked Syria [CTH 51]. In the Amarna letters, Etakamma is a Hittite
ally, regularly attacking Syrian cities with the help of Hittite troops.
A late dating for Suppiluliumas I could reconcile the evidence for Aziru, by putting his transfer to Hatti after
the end of the Amarna period. However this assumption makes the situation with Etakamma untenable. He
would be a Hittite ally at the time when the Hittite records say that he opposed the Hittite invasion.
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Mursilis records that, as late as the siege of Carchemish, his father recognised Kinsa as Egyptian territory,
which conflicts with the Amarna view of Etakamma of Kinsa as a Hittite ally. In his annals, Mursilis makes it
very clear that Etakamma opposed him until he was murdered by his son, Ari-Teshub, who then submitted
Kinsa to Mursilis.
Historians can point to an implication in the treaty with Suppiluliumas that Aziru changed sides: “Aziru knelt
down at the feet of My Majesty and came from the gate of Egyptian territory”. This can not mean that Aziru
changed from loyalty to Egypt to Hittite vassalage, because there is an unequivocal statement in a later
Hittite treaty with Amurru (CTH105) that states that Aziru was a subject of the King of Hurri before he
changed his allegiance to Hatti.
The Aziru and Etakamma of the Amarna letters had different allegiances to the Aziru and Etakamma
of the Hittite treaties. It cannot be argued that they both changed sides. Although individuals with
these names feature in both the records of Suppiluliumas and in the Amarna letters, the information
about them is contradictory.
In both the Hittite texts and the Amarna letters, Aziru is king of Amurru, but the location of his domain
appears to be different in the two records. The location of Amurru in the time of the Amarna letters can be
deduced from information about the two successive kings of Amurru: Abdi-Ashirta and Aziru.
The former is associated with several towns, but only Sidon is securely located. Soon after Aziru succeeded
Abdi-Ashirta, Rib-Hadda of Sumur reported to the pharaoh that Aziru and his brothers were in Damascus
(EA107). Aziru was also mentioned in connection with Damascus in a later letter (EA197).
Other letters link him with Sidon and Beirut (EA147) and also with an attack on Usu, the mainland opposite
Tyre (EA149). At one time, Aziru resided in Tunip (EA161/5/6). From there he wrote to the pharaoh saying
that he could not visit Egypt, because he was concerned about the King of Hatti, who was in Nuhasse, only
two days march from Tunip. Nuhasse was in Northern Syria, south of Carchemish.
The exact location of Tunip is not known, but some commentators have suggested it was at Baalbek in the
valley between the two mountain ranges of Southern Syria, the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, an area called
Coele-Syria. Baalbek would be fifty to sixty miles south of Nuhasse, which would fit with Aziru‟s description of
two days march from Nuhasse. Baalbek was about forty miles north of Damascus.
From the information in the Amarna letters, the land of Amurru appears to have been centred around
Baalbek and Damascus. The kings of Amurru had close links with the coastal towns of Beirut, Sidon
and Tyre, which were to the west or south-west of Baalbek and Damascus.
The Hittite records locate Amurru further north; according to the treaty between Suppiluliumas I and
Aziru (CTH49), Amurru bordered on Mukish (the Amuq Plain), Kinsa (on the southern Orontes) and
Nuhasse (south of Carchemish). This locates it north of Coele-Syria on the middle Orontes,
somewhere close to Hamath.
The latest treaty between Hatti and Amurru (CTH105) forbade Greek trade from the North Syrian coast
through Amurru to Assyria; this confirms Amurru must have been in Northern Syria…
There is evidence in favour of Suppiluliumas I being the King of Hatti of the Amarna letters, but there is also
evidence against this assumption. It has not proved possible to reconcile the evidence, during the nearcentury of time, when the translations of the texts have been available to historians…
Names of kings can be useful, but without confirmatory actions they should be treated with caution.
Five Hittite rulers called Suppiluliumas are known, two from the New Kingdom and three from the
Neo-Hittite period. There were at least three kings of Ugarit called Niqmed. Addu-Nirari (or AdadNirari) was a common name; there were three kings of Assyria by that name (from 911 to 783 BC).
The name Aziru appears several times in Syrian history, sometimes in the form Hazael, but also in
the form Hadad-ezer…
The records of the Old Kingdom of the Hittites give some indications that the Old Kingdom was
contemporaneous with the Amarna period of Egypt. Each of the major items in the letters, which
relate to the Hittites, finds a parallel in the Old Kingdom records of Hattusas.
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There was a major counter-attack by Mitanni, the capital Hattusas was at peace after internal conflict
and the Hittites recovered quickly, such that a King of Hatti took all the lands belonging to Mitanni
and Babylonia. Some time later a campaign to Northern Syria was led by Zidanta…
In the Old Kingdom, the kings of Hatti did not claim dominion over Cyprus, so this also accords with
the Amarna information...
The Samsu-ditana – Mursilis I Synchronism
Before we move on and consider the implications of this unparallelled re-dating of the Hittite Old Kingdom,
we should look at the reason it is currently dated to 1600 BC. The single piece of evidence, which anchors
the Old Kingdom in time, is a single line in a Babylonian Chronicle (number 20):
“At the time of Samsu-ditana, the Hittites ....... to Akkad”.
Akkad was the ancient name for central Babylonia. There was a king of Babylon, called Samsuditana, whose dates are approximately 1625-1595 BC. It is assumed that he was killed by the Hittite
attack and therefore the raid by Mursilis I is dated to 1595 BC.
Of course, one thing not in dispute is that the Old Kingdom pre-dated the New Kingdom and therefore if the
th
New Kingdom is dated to the 14 century in conventional history, an indication of a date at the start of the
th
16 century for the Old Kingdom is reasonable.
The actual copy of the Chronicle, which contains the line, was written in the Neo-Babylonian period, in the
sixth century BC, a thousand years after the actual event. There is an unusual feature of the line. It is
inserted in small characters between two existing lines. The tablet had clearly been substantially completed
before the scribe found the extra piece of information and inserted it as best he could, writing sufficiently
small to get it in.
The line may have simply been an omission during the copying of a similar, older tablet. Alternatively the
scribe may have found it elsewhere on another tablet and inserted it, based on his knowledge of the lists of
the kings of Babylon. It follows that the line is suspect and its position in the chronicle may not be correct.
The line is therefore an unreliable text on which to build the complete history of the Hittite Old Kingdom.
All we can definitely derive from the line is that sometime before the latter part of the sixth century BC, in the
time of some-one called Samsu-ditana, the Hittites did something to Akkad. These comments are not
intended to decry the use of the text for dating. When nothing else is available, such crumbs are very
valuable. We will remember this dearth of evidence, when we seek to re-date the time of Mursilis and his raid
on Babylon…
Velikovsky had suggested some evidence for dating the emperor Suppiluliumas I to the seventh century, but
the test would only be conclusive if the whole of Hittite history confirmed the late dates. From the internal
Hittite documentation the sequence of the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms of Hatti are well defined. This
cannot be changed. If the Emperors, who fought against Rameses and then had peaceful relations with the
Egyptians, are dated to the sixth century, the rest of Hittite history must also move down the centuries. It was
seen that such a shift would reconcile the two halves of Hittite history and make the Kingdoms of Hattusas
contemporaneous with the Neo-Hittite period, which has always been dated in the first millennium….
From the perspective of this current work, it is fortunate that our analysis has pointed to the Old Kingdom of
the Hittites. This provides two opportunities. Firstly, Velikovsky did no work on this part of Hittite history. We
are embarking into uncharted territory. Velikovsky‟s limited work on Hittite history related to the New
Kingdom, centuries later. This provides us with a further test. Even if we can provide some evidence to back
up our hypothesis on the Old Kingdom, this could be questioned by those not convinced of our arguments. It
could just be further coincidence. However, if we start with the Old Kingdom and we follow Hittite history
through the centuries, through the Middle Kingdom to the New Kingdom, and eventually we end up at the
same point as Velikovsky - his dating of Suppiluliumas and Hattusilis III - then this cannot be coincidence…
Secondly, we are about to start on the re-write of Hittite history, in an interpretation never told before. It is
gratifying to be able to start at the beginning, the Old Kingdom, and to tell the complete story in chronological
order.
8
9
HITTITE OLD KINGDOM
Labarnas (Revised Reign: 900-875 BC)
The name Labarnas was used in three consecutive generations at the very start of Hittite history:
i) King Labarnas, the originator of the first Hittite dynasty, ruling from a city called Kussara.
ii) Labarnas, successor of Labarnas, who moved the capital to Hattusas and took the name
Hattusilis. Historians call him Hattusilis I.
ii) Labarnas, nephew of Hattusilis I and at one time his successor-elect. He displeased Hattusilis and
was discarded in favour of young Mursilis.
After this, no Hittite ruler used the name, through three hundred and fifty years. A title Tabarna was used by
later kings and this may be derived from the name Labarnas. In a similar manner, the Hittite queen bore the
title Tawanannas, which is derived from the name of the wife of the first Labarnas. Later Hittite kings traced
their ancestry to the first Labarnas and it was probably in deference to him that no ruler took his name. No
father named his son Labarnas and no king on his accession chose Labarnas as his throne name.
The Neo-Hittite rulers of the first millennium used similar names to their more illustrious ancestors
from the early period of the Hittite Kingdoms. For some reason they did not retain the same
reverence for the name Labarnas. There were two rulers in the ninth century BC with this name.
Again, as in the early period the use of the name spans two or three generations and then the usage
stops and the name was never used again. The usage of the name Labarnas in the seventeenth
century BC was repeated in the ninth century BC…
The edict of Telepinus provides some of the best information on the Old Kingdom:
„Formerly Labarnas was king: and then his sons, his brothers, his connections by marriage and his
blood-relations were united. And the land was small; but wherever he marched to battle, he subdued
the lands of his enemies with might. He destroyed the lands and made them powerless, and he
made the seas his frontier. And when he returned from battle, his sons went each to every part of the
land, to Hupisna, to Tuwanuwa, to Nenassa, to Landa, to Zallara, to Parsuhanda and to Lusna, and
governed the land, and the great cities of the land were assigned to them.‟
There are no inscriptions or texts attributable to Labarnas. Besides the words of Telepinus, we have a
reference by a much later king at the start of a treaty with the city of Wilusa (CTH76):
„Formerly, when my forefather Labarna had conquered all the lands of Arzawa and the land of
Wilusa ...‟ (CTH76).
Hattusilis I confirms that Labarnas was his predecessor, in his speech about Mursilis:
„My grandfather had proclaimed his son Labarnas (as heir to the throne) in Sanahuitta, [but
afterwards] his servants and the leading citizens spurned (?) his words and set Papadilmah on the
throne. Now how many years have elapsed and [how many of them] have escaped their fate? The
houses of the leading citizens, where are they? Have they not perished? ...‟
We do not know how Labarnas reclaimed the throne, but the other texts confirm that he did and became a
powerful king, ruling most of the lands, which eventually in the Hittite New Kingdom constituted the Hittite
Empire. Telepinus tells us that „he made the seas his frontier‟. Arzawa and Wilusa were in the West of
Anatolia and therefore, „the seas‟ may refer to the Aegean Sea. Generally it is believed that the reference is
to the Mediterranean Sea…
Of the cities listed above by Telepinus as the seats of government, all those which have been identified are
also in this general region. Tuwanuwa is Tyana, Lusna is thought to be Lystra, known from the journeys of
St. Paul, and Hupisna is probably the later Kybistra. The exact whereabouts of Parsuhanda are not known,
but other texts talk of it in the „Lower Land‟. This would position it somewhere in the same location as
Tuwanuwa and Lusna. The main area ruled by Labarnas was therefore south of the Halys River. Kussara
would be only one hundred miles from the Mediterranean coast.
10
We are indebted to the kings of Assyria for providing some of the most detailed information for the ninth,
eighth and seventh centuries BC. The ninth century saw a resurgence of Assyrian power under a series of
strong monarchs. Adad-nirari II (911-891 BC) drove out insurgents and strengthened the Assyrian homeland.
His descendent, Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC), and Ashurnasirpal‟s son Shalmaneser III (858-824 BC)
were more adventurous and regularly attacked surrounding lands to obtain plunder and tribute, thus greatly
increasing the wealth of Assyria…
Ashurnasirpal was the first Assyrian ruler for centuries to venture as far west as Syria. In his campaign of
877 BC, he crossed the river Euphrates and tribute was paid by the king of Carchemish. He then moved
further west to the Amuq plain, at this time called Hattina. This is the Assyrian record, carved on the
pavement slabs of the entrance to the temple of the god Urta in the city of Calah:
„To the city of Hazazi, belonging to Lubarna of the land of Hattina, I drew nigh - gold, garments (of
wool), linen garments I received. I passed on, I crossed the Apre River, and spent the night.
From the river Apre I departed, to Kunulua, the royal city of Lubarna of Hattina, I drew nigh. Before
my terrible weapons and my furious battle array he became frightened, and to save his life he laid
hold of my feet. Twenty talents of silver, one talent of gold, 100 talents of lead, 100 talents of iron,
1000 head of cattle, 10000 sheep, 100 garments of brightly coloured wool, linen garments, a couch
of boxwood, which was sumptuously inlaid, beds of boxwood, beds, which were sumptuously inlaid,
many tables of ivory and of boxwood, whereof the weight could not be computed, 10 female
musicians, his brother‟s daughter with her rich dowry, and a great pagutu (?), and mighty .... I
received from him as his tribute, and I had mercy upon him. The chariots, the horsemen, and the foot
soldiers of the land of Hattina I took with me, and hostages I received from him.‟
Luckenbill I, 476/477
Ashurnasirpal and his army then crossed the river Orontes and travelled down the coast, receiving tribute
from Byblos, Sidon and Tyre. The whole area seems to have been taken by surprise by the Assyrian
invasion and there are no reports of any significant fighting…
Looking at the Assyrian text, we notice the wealth, at least of the ruling classes. The gift of a daughter and
the taking of hostages would be insurance against a retaliatory attack. Ashurnasirpal must have thought that
Labarnas could muster a serious army, if given time. Whether Labarnas was actually present should not be
taken for granted. The expression „he laid hold of my feet‟ should not be taken literally. This terminology was
regularly used by the Assyrians to indicate submission. The fact that only a niece was offered with her dowry
suggests that it may have been Labarnas‟ brother who paid the tribute. We are reminded of the Telepinus
text, which says that the relatives of the king governed the great cities.
Was Labarnas of Hattina the semi-legendary Hittite Great King Labarnas, the progenitor of the Hittite
nation? All we can say is that the timing, early in the ninth century, is exactly what we would have
expected, following our earlier analyses.
Also he is in charge of the Amuq plain, as we have inferred from the Hittite texts relating to Labarnas.
We must also remark on the name given to the Amuq at this time. Hatti-ni means belonging to Hatti.
Normally, the Assyrians called this area Unqi, which is similar to Amuq and also to Amqu, which is
used in the Amarna letters. Only in the time of Ashurnasirpal and his son, is the name Hattina used,
suggesting that at this time, 880 to 830 BC, it was considered a possession of the Hittites.
The identification of Labarnas of Hattina with King Labarnas can only be tentative; there is no more
information to help us. However, it will be strengthened if we can identify other Hittite kings following him in
later decades. Also we must not forget the very limited use of the name Labarnas in Hittite society…
Hattusilis I (Revised Reign: 875 – 856 BC)
Hattusilis I succeeded Labarnas as king in Kussara. From the reign of Hattusilis comes the first Hittite
cuneiform writings on clay tablets. These include part of the war annals of Hattusilis, covering six years
campaigning, plus his „political testament‟, in which he appointed Mursilis as his successor. Through these
documents we know more about Hattusilis than all the other personalities of the Old Kingdom put together.
He is the first real character in Hittite history. His annals show him as a warlord leading the Hittite troops on a
fresh campaign each summer. The „testament‟, written at the end of his life, shows him as a proud man,
frustrated and angered by the in-fighting within the royal family, but full of home-spun advice and surprisingly
forgiving of the hurt caused him by his close family.
11
Telepinus said the same about Hattusilis as he did about his predecessor, verbatim: „He subdued the lands
of his enemies with might. He destroyed the lands and made them powerless, and he made the seas his
frontier‟. The war annals give us much more detail about his exploits. In the first year there were local
operations, but in year two the Hittite army was in the Amuq plain in Syria, to attack the city of Alalakh. To
get from Kussara to the Amuq would mean a march through Cilicia, the coastal plain in the south-east of
Anatolia, so it is assumed that Cilicia was under Hattusilis‟ control. This is borne out by Telepinus who tells
us that it was lost by a later king. After the assault on Alalakh, several other cities were attacked in Northern
Syria, including Urshu on the West bank of the Euphrates, North of Carchemish.
A text concerning a siege of Urshu was found in the collection of tablets at Hattusas and this probably relates
to this campaign. In the third year, Hattusilis turned to the West and attacked the country of Arzawa. The
exact location of Arzawa continues to be the subject of debate among Hittitologists, but it is clear from the
many references to it in the Hittite tablets, that it was in the west of Anatolia. Correspondence from the king
of Arzawa was found at Amarna. The absence of the Hittite troops was the opportunity for the Hurrians to
attack from the East, forcing Hattusilis to turn back towards the Hittite homeland and recover the situation.
There were local operations in years 4 and 5, and then in year 6 a major operation was launched against
Hassu, a city in Hurrian territory across the Euphrates.
„In those days he set off. Like a lion, the Great King crossed the river Pura and overcame the city of
Hassu like a lion with his paw. He heaped dust upon it and filled Hattusa with its possessions. Of
silver and gold there was neither beginning [nor] end....‟
A fragmentary text says that there were troops provided by Aleppo to defend Hassu, plus a contingent of
troops of the „Umman Manda‟. The reinforcements from Aleppo were led by general Zukrashi. A text from
Alalakh also mentions Zukrashi and tells us that his master, the king of Aleppo, was called Iarim-lim. There
appears to have been a continuing conflict with Aleppo during Hattusilis‟ reign, without a clear conclusion.
This is mentioned in a much later text (CTH75). At one time Hattusilis captured an effigy of the Storm God of
Aleppo, who was venerated by the Hittites and many others.
Hattusilis was very proud of his conquest and relates:
„None had ever yet crossed the Euphrates. I the great King crossed it on foot, and my soldiers
crossed after me on foot. Sargon had also crossed it and defeated the soldiers of Hassu. But he did
no (harm) to the city of Hassu. But I defeated the king of Hassu‟.
It has been suggested that Hattusilis was referring to the Great Babylonian king Sargon of Akkad, who had
crossed the Euphrates with his army, hundreds of years before.
The campaigns of Hattusilis are typical of the way the stronger countries behaved. At this time, most of the
countries were quite small, some being no more that a single city with its agricultural hinterland. Economies
were based on agriculture, but trade was also extensive. There were international markets for good quality
art, pottery and clothes. Basic materials such as copper, tin and iron were always in demand. Access to the
Mediterranean ports was extremely important to control sea-borne trade. The great wealth that created
elaborate temples and sumptuous palaces was obtained by the larger states by extracting treasures, artists
and artisans from other countries.
The Amarna pharaohs had achieved a form of empire, with regular tribute from Syria and Palestine, with, in
theory, a measure of protection, provided by Egyptian governors in the major cities, supported by small
contingents of troops. Assyria of the ninth century is more typical, not attempting any lasting imperial
infrastructure, but content to plunder on an annual basis. If the smaller states resisted they were attacked
and often brutally destroyed. If they gave in without a fight they would be subject to the paying of regular
tribute. The arrangements might include a certain amount of security provided by Assyria, if only to
safeguard the flow of tribute. Foreign policy was based on large scale armed robbery and / or a protection
racket. In his annals, we see Hattusilis indulging in similar pursuits.
But all was not well for Hattusilis. After his standard phrases, Telepinus goes on to tell of insurrection:
„But afterwards, when the servants of the princes turned faithless, they began to devour their
houses, conspire against their masters and spill their blood‟
We hear much more of his problems in the „Testament‟, which was written at the end of Hattusilis‟ reign and
records a speech he gave at Kussara. The start of the text shows that his original name was Labarnas, the
same as his predecessor, and Hattusilis was a name he assumed during his reign. He had moved the
12
administrative centre of the kingdom from Kussara to Hattusas, further North on the Anatolian plateau, but it
seems that when close to death he returned to be buried in his own city:
„Great King Labarnas spoke to the fighting men of the Assembly and the dignitaries (saying): Behold,
I have fallen sick. The young Labarnas I had proclaimed to you (saying) 'He shall sit upon the
throne'; I, the king, called him my son, embraced him, exalted him, and cared for him continually. But
he showed himself a youth not fit to be seen: he shed no tears, he showed no pity, he was cold and
heartless. I, the king, summoned him to my couch (and said): 'Well! No-one will (in future) bring up
the child of his sister as his foster-son! The word of the king he has not laid to heart, but the word of
his mother, the serpent, he has laid to heart.‟... Enough! He is my son no more! Then his mother
bellowed like an ox: 'They have torn asunder the womb in my living body! They have ruined him, and
you will kill him!' But have I, the king, done him any evil? ... Behold, I have given my son Labarnas a
house; I have given him [arable land] in plenty, [sheep in] plenty I have given him. Let him now eat
and drink. [So long as he is good] he may come up to the city; but if he come forward (?) [as a
trouble-maker], ... then he shall not come up, but shall remain [in his house].
Behold, Mursilis is now my son. ... In place of the lion the god will [set up another] lion. And in the
hour when a call to arms goes forth." you, my servants and leading citizens, must be [at hand to help
my son]. When three years have elapsed he shall go on a campaign. ... If you take him [while still a
child] with you on a campaign, bring [him] back [safely]...
Till now no one [of my family] has obeyed my will; [but you, my son] Mursilis, you must obey it. Keep
[your father's] word! If you keep your father's word, you will [eat bread] and drink water. When
maturity [is within] you, then eat two or three times a day and do yourself well! [And when] old age is
within you, then drink to satiety! And then you may set aside your
Father‟s word. „
Hattusilis recounts the desperate situation of the revolt and that it was sparked off by his own daughter - she
„caused the city of Hattusa to rebel‟.
„And the great ones and my own court nobles opposed me in open hostility .... then did brother kill
brother at feud, and friend kill friend. Hatti‟s sons died in droves. And he who still possessed an ox, a
sheep, a house, a barn, a vineyard and some plough land, his whole property, too, was ruined in
consequence of the evil times.‟
Eventually Hattusilis had regained control, but it probably took a year or two.
„Then the gods gave my daughter into my hand, she that had encompassed the death of Hatti‟s
sons...‟
Despite the grievous harm he had been caused, Hattusilis showed remarkable mercy.
„Bur now she is banished from the city. As soon as she enters my house, she will overthrow my
house; but as soon as she comes to the city of Hattusa, she will cause it to rebel a second time. A
house has been allotted to her in the country ... But you must do her no ill‟
The old king was very conscious of the threat posed by the continuing dissent in the royal household and
among some of the senior men of the kingdom. Although he presumably hoped to ease the problem by his
conciliatory treatment of his daughter and Labarnas, he still warned Mursilis:
And you (Mursilis) shall not delay nor relax. If you delay (it will mean) the same old mischief ... What
has been laid in thy heart, my son, act thereupon always!...
Finally he sums up his reign and anticipates his funeral:
„I have vanquished my foes abroad with the sword and preserved my country in peace ...
Bathe my corpse as it behoves, hold me to your bosom, and against your bosom hide me in the
earth‟.‟
The tablet finishes with a footnote from the scribe:
„The tablet of Tabarna, the Great King, [written when] Great king Tabarna fell sick at Kussara and
appointed young Mursilis to royal authority.‟
13
Two other sons of Hattusilis are recorded, Huzzia and Khakkarpilis. Huzzia had also been a disappointment.
He had been put in charge of the city of Tapassanda, but his head had been turned by the people there,
leading to him being deposed by his father.
Hattusilis had a brother called Pimpirash, who played an important role and may have been the regent after
the king‟s death, until Mursilis became of age.
Before we turn to the records of the ninth century BC, it is worth explaining how the names of Hittites were
pronounced. This will help in recognising familiar Hittite names in the writings of other countries. The word
Hittite is that used by the Old Testament and is used universally by historians for the name of these ancient
people. However, the letter „h‟ in the Hittite language was pronounced as a „kh‟, and therefore in the Assyrian
writings the name of the land is „Khatti‟. The Egyptian equivalent was „Kheta‟. The name Hattusilis was
therefore pronounced Khattusilis. In the latest edition of the Cambridge Ancient History the „k‟ is included in
all the Hittite names to give a better impression of the actual pronunciation.
True to the „advanced nature‟ of the Hittite culture, their language is written in a pseudo-alphabetic form, but
using the standard cuneiform signs for syllables. Each syllable usually consisted of a consonant and a vowel
but in the Hittite writing the syllable is used as a consonant.
There was also a practice of repeating some consonants to distinguish them from others. This can make
some names very unwieldy, including more letters than were actually pronounced. As an example, the name
Muwatallis was quite common throughout Hittite history. There was a minor Neo-Hittite king of Maras in the
land of Gurgum called Muwatallis. In the Assyrian texts he is called Mutallu. This example also shows some
common traits. The syllable „wa‟ was either not pronounced by the Hittites or pronounced lightly, perhaps in
a similar way in English where in some accents the letter „r‟ is pronounced as ‟ah‟. This syllable rarely
appears in a foreign spelling of a Hittite name, suggesting, it was not audible. The spelling of many names
ended in the letter „s‟, but it appears that this also was not pronounced; it seems to have been omitted often
by foreign scribes, who probably based their spelling on the spoken word…
Ashurnasirpal II of Assyria reigned until 859 BC. In 866 BC, his eighteenth year, he campaigned on the East
side of the Euphrates and he records that whilst he was in Khuzirina, he received gifts from Katazilu of
Kummukh - beams of cedar, silver and gold. This is a decade after we heard of Labarnas and therefore this
could be Hattusilis I, but would we expect Hattusilis to be the king of Kummukh? Map 2 shows the NeoHittite states of the first millennium BC.
The city of Kussara was at the western end of Kummukh and therefore this is exactly where we should
expect to find the Hittite Great King. Also the campaign by Hattusilis across the Euphrates to the city of
Hassu, confirms that the Hittite King held all the land of Kummukh, up to the banks of the great river.
Ashurnasirpal calls the items from Katazilu, tribute, but they appear to be gifts from one Great King to
another. It is clear from the itinerary of Ashurnasirpal that Kummukh, on the other side of the Euphrates, was
not in danger…
Shalmaneser III wasted no time in making his intentions known. In the year of his accession he attacked
Urartu, North of Assyria, and then in his first full year as king, 858 BC, he attacked the Aramean kingdom of
Bit-Adini, which controlled a Euphrates crossing. Then, on rafts of goat-skin, the Assyrian army crossed the
Euphrates. At this point he records that he received gifts from Katazilu of Kummukh. If the gifts were an
attempt to forestall an Assyrian attack on the Hittites, it didn‟t work because Shalmaneser drove on into
Gurgum and towards Samal (Zincirli).
A small alliance of the local states was assembled and the Assyrians were engaged in battle. The Hittite
kings, Hani of Samal, Sapalulme of Hattini and Sangara of Carchemish, joined forces with Ahuni of Bit-Adini.
Shalmaneser claimed victory and seems at least to have caused the allies to withdraw. The Assyrians turned
south and Shalmaneser followed his father‟s route and crossed the Orontes, but the alliance had regrouped
and now included extra Hittite forces from Cilicia, including a battalion led by Kate from the land of Que
(Eastern Cilicia). Also an army, under the command of Pihirisi, marched from Khilakku to strengthen the
allies. Again the armies fought and again Shalmaneser claimed victory, but if that were true he failed to take
much advantage. After a visit to Mount Amanus he attacked a few minor towns and then returned home,
accepting tribute from Bit-Agusi on the way.
In the next few years the Assyrian king concentrated his efforts on Bit-Adini, to ensure he held the Euphrates
crossing, but he did not venture further west to the Hittite lands. In these subsequent years, he records that
he received tribute from Hattini, from Arame the king of Bit-Agusi and from Sangara of Carchemish. There
were also gifts from Katazilu, but these were minimal, consisting of 300 cedar logs and 20 minas of silver.
Compare this with the tribute of Sangara - 3 talents of gold, 70 talents of silver, 30 talents of copper, 100
talents of iron, 20 talents of purple wool, 500 weapons, his daughter with her dowry, 100 daughters of his
nobles, 500 cattle, 5000 sheep. This again suggests that Katazilu was providing a few gifts and did not feel
14
threatened by the Assyrian. Sangara, at Carchemish immediately North of Bit-Adini, would be in a
completely different situation.
After 857 BC we hear no more of Katazilu. In 853 BC, there was a new ruler in Kummukh called Kundashpi.
In our quest for the Hittite Old Kingdom in the ninth century BC, we have seen the name Katazilu in the land
of Kummukh, following on from the name Labarnas in the previous generation, but there is much more to
confirm that we really are on the right path.
As we come down in time to the 850s, we enter the period of the Amarna letters, towards the end of
the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep III. We can identify Suppiluliumas, the writer of Amarna letter EA41
as Sapalulme of Hattina. Here we see the likely pronunciation of the name, which is written in the
Hittite language as Suppiluliumas. As ruler of the Amuq, we do not know how independent
Sapalulme was of the Great King, Katazilu / Hattusilis, but it appears he was able to carry on friendly
correspondence with Amenhotep and his son, without reference to the Great King.
As we saw earlier when we compared the Amarna letters to the Hittite records of Hattusilis and Mursilis, the
Amarna period starts towards the end of the reign of Hattusilis. The attack of Shalmaneser probably took
place in the last years of Hattusilis, which would explain why he was not involved in the allied army.
However, if a strong Hittite coalition were formed to resist the Assyrian, we would expect the troops of
Hattusilis to provide support. It appears that this support was provided and the army was lead by his brother
Pimpirash, called Pihirisi in the Assyrian inscription. Pihirisi brought an army from Khilakku to assist the allies
and it appears that this changed the balance of power, allowing the coalition to prevent further advances by
the enemy. Shalmaneser appeared to be following the same course as his father had done, almost twenty
years before, but the second clash with the Hittite armies cut his progress short.
One state is conspicuous by its absence from the allied forces, which took on Shalmaneser: Bit-Agusi. This
country was right in the middle of the area of the conflict and had the city of Aleppo at its centre. It was ruled
by Arameans, not Hittites, but this should not have been an issue. The Aramean state Bit-Adini joined forces
with the Hittite states. The independent stance of Bit-Agusi fits the situation as we see it from the records of
Hattusilis. There was enmity between Hattusilis and Aleppo and therefore we should not expect that state to
join a coalition with the states controlled by Hattusilis. We also note the name of the king of Bit-Agusi,
Arame, which could be a shortened form of Iarim-lim, the name of the king of Aleppo in the time of
Hattusilis…
It seems that the reference to Sargon in the text of Hattusilis is a reference to Sangara, king of Carchemish,
who presumably had crossed the Euphrates and engaged the troops of Hassu, but did not do as complete a
job as the troops of Hattusilis. It was not uncommon for scribes to swap letters in names, so Sangara could
easily be written as Sargon…
Hattusas the New Capital
It has long been stated that Hattusilis must have moved the capital from Kussara to Hattusas for
strategic purposes. Now we see the reason: the move to Hattusas was to make sure the treasures,
families and administrative machinery of the kingdom was out of reach of the Assyrians.
But wait! Archaeology says that Hattusas, and the entire Anatolian plateau around it, was uninhabited from
1200 to 750 BC!
James Mellaart in his book „The Archaeology of Ancient Turkey‟ explains „There was no occupation from the
end of the Hittite empire until a reoccupation by „Late Phrygian‟ people, including fortifications and a city gate
outside which stood a statue of Kybele. The statue is similar to others from the same period, between 700
and 500 BC.‟ However the basic appearance of the site did not really substantiate Mellaart‟s interpretation. It
was not easy to believe that the site could have been abandoned for any lengthy period. Peter James points
out this anomaly in his book „Centuries of Darkness‟ quoting Kurt Bittel, the excavator of Hattusas:
„The earliest constructions (in the seventh century by the Phrygians) were undertaken at a time when
Hittite ruins still lay visible above the surface. On top of them there is no trace of a sterile stratum as
would have been formed by natural sedimentation. This stratigraphic observation as such does not
give a measure of time, but it tends to limit the interval between the end of the Hittite citadel and
level II'. Also „Not a single find has turned up, which can be attributed safely to the centuries
immediately following the fall of the Hittite capital‟.
After the fall of Hattusas around 1200 BC, there are no finds until level II was built on the citadel in the
seventh century. However, there was no accumulation of composted sedimentation from the five centuries of
wild vegetation, which would grow on any area left undisturbed for so long. Constrained by Egyptian
chronology, which forces the end of the Hittite Empire back to 1200 BC, Bittel had no choice but to agree
15
that the site was uninhabited for around five hundred years, but this went against his instincts as an
archaeologist, which told him that there was no evidence for a long abandonment of the site.
We see that the archaeology of Hattusas does not support the conventional chronology. By clinging to the
conventional sequence, provided by the Egyptian dating, the excavators could not reconcile the findings
beneath the soil of Boghazkoy with the prevailing view of Hittite history. On a later page, we will consider the
archaeology of Hattusas in more detail.
The Country of Hattusas - Tabal
If Hattusas were inhabited in the ninth to sixth centuries it cannot have gone unnoticed. The contemporaries
of the Hittite kings, particularly the Assyrians, must have had a name for the country around Hattusas. It must
have been one of the so-called Neo-Hittite states. Using the Assyrian records, which cover this period down
to the latter part of the seventh century BC, historians have located the Neo-Hittite states with reasonable
accuracy. Only one state, called Tabal, is difficult to position on the map of Anatolia. This is what Oliver
Gurney had to say about the location of Tabal in his book‟ „The Hittites‟:
„In the Taurus Mountains and on the Southern edge of the central plateau Tuwana, Tunna,
Hupisna, Shinuktu and Ishtunda were scarcely more than city states; somewhere in this
region, or to the North or East of it, is to be localised the confederacy called Tabal.‟
Why is it so difficult to locate Tabal? From the Assyrian sources it is clear that Tabal was the furthest
Hittite kingdom from Assyria and had to be beyond Malatya.
Shalmaneser visited Tabal in 837 BC. His route took him from Malatya to Tabal and then through the Taurus
Mountains to Khubushna. Some of the clearest information on Tabal comes from the reign of the Assyrian
king Sargon II (721-705 BC). In a letter to the Assyrian governor of Que, he asks: „What will all those kings of
Tabal do in future? You, from this side and the Phrygian from that side, will squeeze them....‟ There are
further references in Sargon‟s inscriptions:
„Ambaris of Tabal, whom I had placed upon the throne of Hulli, his father, to whom I had given my
daughter, together with the land of Hilakku, which did not belong to the territory of his father, and had
extended his land...‟
Luckenbill II, 55
„.... Urartu, Kasku, Tabal, up to the land of Muski (Phrygia)...‟
Luckenbill II, 118
Tabal bordered on Malatya, Phrygia and Hilakku (Cilicia), which made it a large state, or one with a
very funny shape! The last quote from Sargon is a compelling geographical statement. The Kaska
were well known in the time of the Hittite Old, Middle and New Kingdoms. They were unruly
tribesmen who inhabited the area north and east of Hattusas. If we follow the countries listed by
Sargon, from east to west, from Urartu, through the Kaska lands to Phrygia, Tabal can only be on the
northern part of the Anatolian plateau, i.e. the land around Hattusas.
Of course, the difficulty in locating Tabal is caused because, in conventional chronology, the
Anatolian plateau was uninhabited in the period of the Neo-Hittite states. We do not have that
problem and therefore we can say categorically that the land of Hattusas was called Tabal by the
Assyrians.
If Tabal were the homeland of the Great kings of the Hittites, we would expect Tabal to have had a
special position among the Neo-Hittite states. In the eighth century BC, Wassurme, king of Tabal
claimed the title „Great King‟, as did his father Tuwatis. Among the Neo-Hittite states, only the kings
of Tabal assumed this title.
Our identification of Tabal as the land around Hattusas is a momentous and challenging decision at this early
point of our reconstruction of Hittite history.
The Great Kings of Hattusas must be the kings of Tabal. The actions of the kings of Tabal must agree
with what we know of the actions of the kings of Hattusas. The history of Tabal through the ninth,
eighth, seventh and sixth centuries must be the history of the Hittite Old, Middle and New Kingdoms.
16
As we have seen above, only Tabal can be the name of the homeland of the Great Hittite Kings. No other
Neo-Hittite state can possibly be located in the correct place, north of the river Halys, around the city
Hattusas.
The identification of Tabal is a major constraint on our research, but such narrowing of the path ahead must
be welcome. A constraint such as this will minimise the opportunity for coincidental evidence to be acquired
and presented, and thus further strengthens the value of any evidence, which is used to substantiate our
hypothesis. We set out to apply as much rigour as possible to our work and this is one more important
stricture that should add value to the final result.
The Name Hattusilis
The assumption of the name Hattusilis was a major step for the Hittite king. It is sometimes translated as
„man of Hatti‟, but in the treaty between Rameses II and Hattusilis III, during the later stages of the Hittite
New Kingdom, the name is written Khetasar in the Egyptian version. Khetasar is unambiguous; it means
17
„king of Hatti‟. By taking the name Hattusilis, the second Labarnas was announcing that he was the Great
King of all the Hatti lands.
Just like the name Labarnas, the name Hattusilis is very rare. In all the texts and inscriptions of the Old,
Middle and New Kingdoms of Hattusas, there are only three known persons with this name, each a Great
King of Hatti. We have already mentioned Hattusilis I and Hattusilis III. Hattusilis II lived at the end of the
Middle Kingdom. He is an obscure figure, only known from later lists of kings.
In all the references to Hittites in the records of other countries, only two instances of the name Hattusilis
occur, and one is to Hattusilis III, consisting of the various Egyptian documents relating to his contacts with
Rameses II. The only other records of some-one called Hattusilis are those cited above for Katazilu, the King
of Kummukh.
As with the name Labarnas, the rarity of the name Hattusilis adds greatly to the probability that
Katazilu was Hattusilis I. To put it another way: there is only one Neo-Hittite king called Hattusilis and
we found him in the right time and the right place that our previous analysis had said he would be.
The Umman-Manda
Finally in our review of the life of Hattusilis I, we must mention the Umman Manda, who came to defend the
city of Hassu. This term is found in use in the seventh century, by the Assyrians, when it is applied to
branches of the Cimmerians, who over-ran Anatolia at the start of the century and made various alliances
with the northern kings. The Cimmerians are associated with the so-called „Catacomb‟ culture. Twenty
Catacomb graves were uncovered at Artik in Armenia, 25km south-east of Leninakan. A burial of the
Catacomb type was also found on the slope of Mount Ararat. Both are dated around 900 BC. Herodotus, the
Greek historian who lived in the fifth century BC, said that the Cimmerians “evidently appear to have fled
from the Scythians into Asia and settled in the peninsula in which the Grecian city of Sinope now stands”.
This is the area immediately North of Hattusas.
The Cimmerians arrived from the North and occupied an area from north of Hattusas, eastwards to Armenia,
north of Urartu. Archaeological finds confirm that they lived in Armenia from 900 BC down to the seventh
century.
A reference to the Umman Manda hundreds of years before 900 BC is an anachronism. In the conventional
chronology, which dates Hattusilis I to 1600 BC, the Umman Manda would have had to be in the area, seven
hundred years before the time, which has been established by archaeological evidence. The Umman Manda
migrated southwards from the Russian steppe into Armenia around 900 BC or a little earlier. They lived to
the north and mainly to the east of Anatolia, not far from the eastern side of the Euphrates, where the city of
Hassu was situated.
The Start of a Sequence
Our identification of Labarnas of Hattini with the Great Hittite King Labarnas was tentative, based on minimal
evidence, but that identification is strengthened, in a small way, by the evidence presented above for
Hattusilis, his successor. There is a period of approximately twenty years between the two kings, which is
appropriate for a king and his successor. It is not impossible of course that the Labarnas of Hattini was
actually Hattusilis I and not his predecessor, as Labarnas was the latter‟s original name. This is unlikely
though, if we consider the Assyrian records of Ashurnasirpal, carved on the pavement slabs at the temple
entrance in Calah. These are the most extensive version of the King‟s annals and cover most of his reign.
They mention both Labarnas and Katazilu, so it is very unlikely that the same individual would be given two
names on the same set of inscriptions. Either the King himself, or senior officials who would check the text,
would have been clear about the identity of the two Hittites.
We are starting to establish two sequences, which must agree at each step. In a similar way that Velikovsky
juxtaposed the Egyptian eighteenth dynasty and the Old Testament history of the Israelite Monarchy, we will
compare the sequences of the Hittite Old Kingdom and the Neo-Hittite history of the ninth century BC. Both
sequences are firmly established, the first by the contemporary history, recounted by its last major king,
Telepinus.
The Neo-Hittite sequence is defined by the records of the Assyrian kings. In particular Shalmaneser III had
many contacts with his Hittite neighbours over his long occupancy of the Assyrian throne, and most of his
inscriptions date his activities to the particular year of his reign. As each step in the sequence is shown to
agree with the corresponding step in the other sequence, all parts of the reconstruction are boosted in value.
A third sequence will also play a part in the analysis. This is the order of events implied by the Amarna
correspondence.
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Throughout this analysis it must be remembered that conventional chronology dates the Hittite Old Kingdom
to the years 1680 - 1500 BC, in the Age of Bronze. We have started to re-date the Old Kingdom to the ninth
century BC, which is firmly in the Iron Age. Is it feasible that Hattusilis I lived in a time when iron was the
dominant metal?
Hittite Great Kings traced their ancestry to Labarnas, but we do have some knowledge of Hittite rulers, who
lived before him. Some time, maybe a century or so before Labarnas, a king of Kussara, called Anittas, ruled
most of the highland of Anatolia. A text of this king was found at Boghazkoy. In it he describes his wars
against various cities and records his destruction of Hattusas. The text is a later copy; it is very unlikely that
Hittite cuneiform had been developed in the time of Anittas. The earliest surviving fragment of the inscription
was written in Hittite cuneiform during the Old Kingdom.
Oliver Gurney suggests that the text must have been reworked, because some of the content is implausible:
„The statement that Anittas received among the tribute from Purushkhanda such large iron objects as a
sceptre and a throne certainly looks like an anachronism.‟ Following the reconstruction presented above,
Anittas must have lived much later than conventional chronology admits, but may not have lived during the
period when iron objects were commonplace. Whether the extant text is a faithful copy of the original, or the
word „iron‟ was inserted into the inscription during the Old Kingdom re-write, the mention of iron items would
still be anachronistic within the accepted chronology. Now we know the Old Kingdom flourished in the ninth
century BC, the problem melts away; this was the early Iron Age and the Hittite scribe would have been
familiar with the regular use of iron…
Mursilis I (Revised Reign: 856 – 848 BC)
There are no texts from the reign of Mursilis and therefore we have to rely on Telepinus to give us some
detail of the young king‟s exploits. Once Mursilis was old enough to go on a campaign, Aleppo was his first
target. Telepinus tells us that Mursilis destroyed Aleppo. The word „destroyed‟ is used regularly by Telepinus,
but we should not assume complete destruction of a city, more likely it was the resistance and independence
of a city that was destroyed. A separate fragment of text confirms the story from Telepinus:
„Mursilis set out to avenge his father‟s blood and whereas Hattusilis had passed on Aleppo [to his
son] to deal with, he punished the king of Aleppo.‟
Once Aleppo was brought to vassalage, Mursilis used it as a base for a much grander adventure. He
led the Hittite army from Aleppo down the River Euphrates to attack the great city of Babylon, five
hundred miles south-east of Aleppo. There was much treasure acquired on this campaign and this
was transported back to Hattusas. Babylon was not the only great country to be subdued by
Mursilis; the Hurrians also had to give ground to the young king and his army. Telepinus sums up
the achievements of Mursilis:
„Mursilis destroyed Babylon and defeated all the lands of the Hurrians.‟
The young Hittite had surpassed the accomplishments of his illustrious forbears, but there was to be no long
reign and life of luxury as a reward for his deeds. Once again we turn to Telepinus, who recounts the sad
end of Mursilis:
„And Hantili was cup-bearer. He had Harapsili, the sister of Mursili to wife. Then did Zidanta
approach Hantili, and they committed an outrage: they slew Mursili and committed murder.‟
After a reign of probably less than ten years, Mursilis was dead. He was succeeded by Hantilis, his assassin
and brother-in-law…
In our analysis of the Amarna letters we saw that Rib-Haddi of Sumur told the pharaoh about the conquests
of the King of Hatti and we recognised in the detail the similarity to the gains made by the Hittites under the
leadership of Mursilis I…
Our work above on Labarnas and Hattusilis I has also brought us to the 850s. Katazilu is not mentioned after
856 BC and therefore we will assume that the Great King died about this time…
In 851 BC, conflict broke out in Babylon. The new king Marduk-zakir-shumi was opposed by his brother,
Marduk-bel-usate, and the land of Babylonia was divided between them. The rebel brother was aided by the
Arameans, who inhabited the land to the north-west of Babylon. The whole northern half of the country fell to
the rebels. The Babylonian king invoked the clauses of the treaty his father had agreed with Assyria and
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called on Shalmaneser for help. There was stalemate in 851 BC. Shalmaneser attacked a rebel stronghold
at the town of Gannanate but could not take it. In the following year, hostilities were renewed and this time
the Babylonian king and his Assyrian ally prevailed. Gannanate was taken, but Marduk-bel-usate had
escaped. He was pursued and eventually taken and killed. The rebels were routed and their rebellion
collapsed. Shalmaneser was feted in Babylon and the other major cities of the land. He then embarked on a
minor campaign to Chaldea in Southern Babylonia, towards the Persian Gulf.
The war between the two brothers is recorded in the Assyrian inscriptions of Shalmaneser‟s reign and also in
a Babylonian chronicle (number 21, the so-called „Synchronistic History‟).
Was the conflict in Babylonia the backdrop to Mursilis‟ march on Babylon? The quiet period, after the clashes
with Assyria in 858 BC, would have provided the opportunity to re-build the Hittite forces and for Mursilis to
cut his teeth in battle. Perhaps Shalmaneser‟s visit to Aleppo in 853 BC and his adoration of the Storm God,
much revered by the Hittites, was the last straw, prompting Mursilis to finally settle the score with Aleppo,
outstanding since Hattusilis‟ time. With Shalmaneser elsewhere, 852 BC would be the opportune time for
Mursilis to take Aleppo.
When Marduk-zakir-shumi called in the Assyrians, did this prompt his brother to ask for assistance
from the forces of another Great King; those forces which had resisted the Assyrians in the past and
had now taken Bit-Agusi? The Arameans, who lived in the north of Babylonia, would be quick to fight
against the Babylonian king. They had been poorly treated by his father. We are reminded of RibHaddi‟s letter to Amenhotep III:
“the king of Hatti has overcome all lands, which belonged to the king of Mitta or the king of
Nahma, the land of the Great Kings. Abdi-Asirta, the slave, the dog, has gone with him”
(Mercer).
Abdi-Asirta, the Aramean king of Damascus, was operating with the King of Hatti. This is the biblical BenHadad, who had also been involved in the coalition which fought at Karkar in 853 BC. The Amarna letter
confirms that Arameans supported the rebels in Babylonia.
In the Cambridge Ancient History, Oliver Gurney poses major unanswered questions about the attack on
Babylon by Mursilis:
Why did the Hittite king undertake this ambitious campaign only to yield the fruit of victory to
others? Why was the Hittite army allowed to march south for five hundred miles unopposed?‟
Neither of these questions is difficult to answer, if Mursilis went to assist the rebel brother. He would
only have been interested in the short term spoils of the campaign. Telepinus records the great
booty that he brought back to Hattusas. The only longer term benefit would be to have as an ally the
Great King of Babylon, assuming the rebels had been successful.
With the Arameans assisting the rebels, and the North of the country in rebel hands, the Hittite army would
have been marching through country held by their allies, all the way from Aleppo to Babylon.
Support of the revolt, 500 miles from his bases in Northern Syria, would have been very difficult strategically
for Mursilis. Only a short stay in Babylonia would be practical. The Hittites would have withdrawn for the
winter period. Whether they even renewed their support in 850 BC we do not know, but it would have been
difficult to sustain their help, given that Shalmaneser‟s bases in Assyria were much closer to the area of
conflict. Having obtained considerable booty, it is unlikely that Mursilis would have had much interest in
repeating his marching feat in the next year…
Hantilis, Zidanta, Ammuna & Huzzia (Revised Reigns: 848-825 BC)
The figure of Zidanta dominates the next period of Hittite history. He conspired with Hantilis to put the latter
on the throne of Hattusas. He then became the Great King himself and was succeeded by his son Ammuna,
in whose reign the power of Hatti started to decline. We are indebted to Telepinus once again for the small
amount of information we have on these reigns. The lack of other texts suggests the reigns may have been
reasonably short.
It would be too simplistic to assume that the assassination of Mursilis was motivated only by the lust for
power and wealth. There may also have been political reasons behind the removal of the young king. The
nobles of Hattusas exerted influence on the actions of the Great Kings and it may have been that the
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hazardous adventure to Babylon was seen as beyond the strategy of previous kings. In the next three
hundred years, no Hittite King would again venture that far from the homeland.
Throughout Hittite history, the kings of Hattusas sought to dominate the Hittite lands of Anatolia, and
Northern Syria as far as Hamath. Hatti was always in danger of attack from across the Euphrates by the
Hurrians and Mitanni, and also from the North from the unruly Kaska. With the bulk of the army so far away,
the land was at risk of being unable to repel insurgents. The nobles may also have thought that conflict with
Assyria was not in the best interests of Hatti…
Hantili recorded that he fortified Hattusas, claiming that it „was in no way protected by walls before‟.
The wall of Hantili, over 8 metres thick was uncovered at Boghazkoy. The stratum attributed to the
Old Kingdom was designated level IVc…
Zidanta was succeeded by Ammuna his son, who may have murdered his father. There are no texts from the
time of Ammuna and it appears that the rot had set in. The power of Hatti, weakened by the court
assassinations, was waning. The Edict of Telepinus relates that control of the important state of Adana was
lost in the time of Ammuna. Adana was situated in Cilicia on the river Seyhan, a little way to the east of the
city of Tarsus. Both Adana and Tarsus were probably within the area known as Kizzuwatna.
We now need to relate the history of Zidanta, as told by the internal Hittite sources, to the history of the ninth
century BC as told by the Assyrian and Old Testament sources. We will also check the Amarna letters, to
amplify the history of this period.
Mursilis was probably assassinated a few years after the march to Babylon in 851 BC. Hantilis would have
come to the throne in the 840s BC…
The Amarna letters demonstrate a shift in the alliance of the Kings of Damascus with the Kings of Hatti.
Abdi-Ashirta (the Ben-Hadad of the Old Testament) was an ally of the King of Hatti according to letter EA75:
„Abdi-Asirta, the slave, the dog, has gone with him‟. By the time of Hazael / Aziru, there is dread of the
approach of the King of Hatti:
„If the King of Hatti [advances] for war against me...‟ (EA157).
„The King of Hatti has come to Nuhasse and I cannot go. Just let the King of Hatti depart...‟ (EA164).
„The king of Hatti is staying and I am afraid of him‟ (EA165).
The same sentiments are expressed in letters EA166 and EA167.
Abdi-Asirta / Ben-Hadad had been an ally of Mursilis of Hatti, but a new regime had been installed in
Hattusas, which was opposed to the policies of the assassinated king.
The fear that the kings of Syria had for the King of Hatti is also shown in the book of Kings. BenHadad had besieged Samaria but he was frightened off by the apparent approach of the army of a
Great King:
„For the lord had made the host of the Syrians to hear a great noise of chariots and a noise of
horses, even the noise of a great host: and they said one to another, Lo, the King of Israel
hath hired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon
us. Wherefore they rose and fled in the twilight... 2 Kings 7 v 6, 7.
In his book on the „New Chronology‟, called „The Lost Testament‟, David Rohl admits with great
candour „I have no idea what this is about. The Hittite empire had collapsed a decade earlier...‟ The
Velikovsky chronology has no problem at all with these verses.
The passage from the Bible confirms precisely the situation of the Amarna letters. Egypt had ruled all
of Syria, but the King of Hatti was a serious contender for control of Syria and was much more active
than the pharaoh. It is interesting to note that despite his forays into Syria in the 840s, neither the Old
Testament nor the Amarna letters mention Shalmaneser, King of Assyria, as the major threat. The
fears of Aziru were fully justified:
„Moreover, troops of Hatti under Lupakku have captured cities of Amqu, and with the cities
they captured Aadduni. May our lord know this. Moreover, we have heard the following:
Zitana has come and there are 90,000 infantrymen that have come with him.
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As Zitana / Zidanta is mentioned separately to the King of Hatti, this was probably in the reign of
Hantilis, when the Hittite army also attacked Carchemish. Nuhasse was south of Carchemish…
The King of Hatti concentrated on a thrust south from the Amuq to Kinsa, where the help of Aitukama was
enlisted. The King of Assyria concentrated east of the Orontes on Hamath and South of Kinsa on Damascus,
Israel and the ports of Byblos, Tyre and Sidon. This was not the route to the major Mediterranean ports
preferred by the Assyrians. Ashurnasirpal had taken the route through the Amuq and across the Orontes to
its western bank. Shalmaneser had also started on this route on his first campaign to Syria, when he had
been attacked by the Hittite armies, but on his later campaigns he avoided the Amuq and kept to the eastern
bank of the Orontes. It is almost as if Hatti and Assyria divided the land of Syria between them…
It appears, from the details given by the inscriptions of Shalmaneser and Kilamuwa, that there were many
small states south of the Taurus, not all of them Hittite. For example, Samal was ruled by Arameans. The
Great King of Hatti clearly „owned‟ several of the states, whence the loss of Adana.
The relation with some of the states may have been less clear-cut, requiring a show of force and/or a treaty,
to enable unhindered passage of the Hittite armies on their way to Syria. The treaty between a Zidanta and
Kizzuwatna fits perfectly into the situation of the 830s BC, and therefore there is no need to invent a second
Zidanta, ruling at a later time.
The cities of Adana and Kisuatni feature in both the Hittite and Assyrian records of the 830s. Over a century
after Zidanta, the names Adaniya and Kizzuwatna appear in two copies of a treaty from Boghazkoy and it is
clear from the texts that by this time the two names were used for the same place, the land of East Cilicia.
Murder continued to be the means of sorting out the succession of the Hittite kings. The Edict of Telepinus
was aimed at stopping this by putting in place an agreed format for deciding the heir to the throne. It was
important therefore for Telepinus to record the sorry state of things in the decades before him. Ammuna
appears to have died a natural death, but this only prompted further assassinations, to bring a man called
Huzzia to the throne:
„Zurush murdered Tittish and Hantilis. Then Huzzia became king‟…
Having put Huzzia on the throne, Zurush wanted a throne of his own! One of the last records of Shalmaneser
III comes from 831 BC. The old king, who had ruled Assyria for twenty-seven years, no longer went on
campaigns. These were entrusted to his second-in-command, the Turtanu. This is the inscription for year 28,
carved on the Black Monolith:
„In the twenty-eighth year of my reign, while I was staying in Calah, word was brought to me
that the people of Hattina had slain Lubarna their lord, and had raised Surri, who was not of
royal blood, to the kingship over them.
Daian-Assur, the Turtan, the chief of my large host, I dispatched, sending him at the head of my
army and camp. He crossed the Euphrates at its flood. In Kinalua, his royal city, he came to a halt.
Surri, who was not of royal blood, - the awe-inspiring splendour of Assur, my lord, overcame him and
he went to his fate. The people of Hattina became afraid before the terror of my mighty weapons, the
sons of Surri, together with the rebels, they seized and gave to me ... Sasi, an Uzzite , seized my
feet. As king, I set him over them ...‟
Luckenbill I, 585
The language is a little poetic towards the end, because Shalmaneser was not actually present. The text is
full of interesting information. Surri must be Zurush, organising a further assassination to put himself in power
in the Amuq, but the assassin, the King‟s bodyguard, did not have the right credentials, not being related to
the Hittite royal family. The example of Kizzuwatna shows that the ‟z‟ could be written as „s‟ by the Assyrians.
Another example from Assyrian texts is the name of Rezin, a king of Damascus, which was written Rasunu.
Given the rarity of the name Labarnas, it is tempting to suggest that Lubarna, who must have been of royal
blood, was the rejected nephew of Hattusilis. He may have recovered some influence and power after the
death of Mursilis. Having identified Zurush, we can assume that Huzzia was now the Great King of Hatti.
Shalmaneser was keen to install some-one of royal blood. That would mean a relative of Huzzia, and this
must be the meaning of the „Uzzite‟. It is assumed by Hittitologists that Huzzia was a relative of Ammuna and
therefore an „Uzzite‟ would be of the royal line.
We assumed from the visit of Shalmaneser to Tabal, that some form of accord existed between Hatti and
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Assyria. In the incident in year 28 we see Shalmaneser taking action to preserve the royal line in the Amuq,
although since his pitched battles with Sapalulme of Hattina and the Hittite coalition, he had kept clear of this
region. As written treaties between kings became a regular means of settling arguments in the subsequent
centuries, some form of agreement may have existed between Shalmaneser and the King of Hatti. We saw
earlier that Shalmaneser had a treaty with Nabu-apla-iddina of Babylon, and his involvement in the
Babylonian fraternal conflict would have been to preserve the intended line of succession. In the later
treaties there was often a clause, which obligated each king to ensure the other‟s heir was duly appointed as
the new king after the death of the current incumbent. Here is the section on succession from the famous
treaty between Hattusilis III and Rameses II:
„And the son of Hattusili, King of Hatti, shall be made King of Hatti in place of Hattusili his father,
after the many years of Hattusili, King of Hatti. And if the people of Hatti commit an offence against
him, then Rameses, beloved of Amon, must send infantry and chariotry to his aid and take revenge
for him.‟
Such an agreement could have existed between the Great Kings of Assyria and Hatti, and therefore
Shalmaneser would have been fulfilling his promise when he sent the Turtanu to Hattina in 831 BC.
But why did the King of Assyria take action and not the King of Hatti? The agreement was probably
with Zidanta. As Zurush/Surri had been instrumental in putting Huzzia on the throne of the Great
King, it would be unlikely that Huzzia would have removed Zurush. He may even have been behind
the intrigue in Hattina, as a means of rewarding the assassin. The power of Hattusa was waning and
Shalmaneser may have been exerting his authority, demonstrating that he would maintain the royal
line, even if the Great king of Hatti was not disposed to do so.
Alalakh
The ancient city of Alalakh was situated in the Amuq Plain, east of the northern curve of the Orontes River.
The site, tell Atchana, was excavated by Sir Leonard Woolley in 1937-1939 and 1946-1949. Woolley found
seventeen architectural levels, dating from the beginning of the second millennium BC to the end of the Late
Bronze Age around 1200 BC. He stressed the importance of the site:
„It involves continual reference to the great empires of ancient Sumer, of Babylon, and of Egypt, to
the Hittite empire centered on Bogazkoy in Anatolia and to the less-known powers of Hurri and
Mitanni; it bears on the development of that Cretan art which astonishes us in the palace of Minos at
Knossos, it is associated with the Bronze Age culture of Cyprus, bears witness to the eastward
expansion of the trade of the Greek islands in the proto-historic age, throws an entirely new light on
the economic aspects of the Athenian empire and even, at the last, suggests a Syrian contribution to
the Italian Renaissance.‟ (A Forgotten Kingdom, Penguin 1953)
In the first level, Woolley discovered ample evidence of the Hittite Empire, including a carving of Great King
Thudkhaliyas IV and his queen. Thudkhaliyas was one of the last Hittite kings of Hattusas. Also in this level
he found a statue of a king of Alalakh called Idri-mi, but it transpired that the statue had been built into
several re-buildings of the temple. A set of tablets found in stratum IV confirmed that this level was the city of
Idri-mi and his immediate successors.
Level VII also contained a set of tablets, which gave the names of several kings of both Alalakh and Aleppo.
The tablets of level VII provided a clear Hittite link. There were two kings of Level VII recorded in the tablets,
Iarim-lim and his son Ammitaqum. A text of the latter referred to the general Zukrashi, who is also mentioned
in a Hittite text from the time of Hattusilis I, of the Hittite Old Kingdom. As Hattusilis is recorded as having
attacked Alalakh, it was concluded that Level VII was ended by the attack of Hattusilis. The particular form of
cuneiform script used in the first Hittite texts of Hattusiis I cannot be derived immediately from any known
school of the period so its immediate antecedents are not identified. However it is very similar to the script of
Level VII at Alalakh, helping to confirm the validity of the link to Hattusilis.
Several Late Helladic Mycenaean sherds of the Amarna period were found in Levels VI and V, with one
LHIIIA sherd being found in Level IV. The Mycenaean sherds of Levels VI and V conflicted with the accepted
chronology, so Woolley declared them to be “inconsistent with their context” and he dated Level IV to the
Amarna period.
Woolley did not over-state the importance of Alalakh. It is the only excavated site, which has strong
links to both Egypt and Hattusas, and in particular has links to the Old Kingdom of the Hittites.
Through our work on the Amarna tablets, we have proposed a fundamental shift in the dating of the
23
Hittite Old Kingdom in relation to Egypt. By making Mursilis I, and not Suppiluliumas I, the
contemporary of Amenhotep III, Egyptian and Hittite histories have been displaced by approximately
two centuries. If we are wrong, Alalakh could provide the proof that this shift of up to two hundred
years is not feasible.
We have dated Hattusilis I to c. 870 BC, so this would be the terminal date for Level VII. Levels VI and
V must follow from this date, which is the Amarna period in our chronology. The Mycenaean pottery
found in these levels is therefore not out of context; it is exactly where we would expect it to be.
Although there were only two kings of Alalakh mentioned in the tablets of Level VII, the same texts mention
six kings of Aleppo, who represent several generations. Alalakh was a vassal of Aleppo, although from the
reign of Iarim-lim it was granted a reasonable level of independence. Estimates of the duration of Level VII
vary between seventy-five and one hundred years. Our dates for Level VII are therefore c. 970- 870 BC. This
is contemporary with the eighteenth dynasty of Egypt, from Thutmose III to Amenhotep III. This requires a
„Late Bronze‟ context for Alalakh Level VII, not a ‟Middle Bronze‟ setting as assumed in conventional
chronology.
Some evidence that Woolley stretched the dating of Alalakh is found in the presence of „bichrome ware‟ in
Level VI. In conventional chronology, the appearance of this pottery at Alalakh is the earliest known, several
decades before it appears in either Cyprus or Sharuhen, which were the two centres of its manufacture!
However for the clearest evidence for the dating of Level VII, we must examine its links with the Aegean.
The palace of Iarim-Lim at Alalakh, built early in Level VII, is famous for its Aegean frescoes. In recent years,
Manfred Bietak has uncovered the remains of Aegean frescos at Avaris, from the palace of Ahmose I, the
first king of the Egyptian eighteenth dynasty. Avaris and Alalakh remain the only examples of such work in
the Middle East. Some historians have been upset by Bietak‟s changes to his dating of the Avaris frescoes;
they preferred his original earlier dating, because it might have made the two examples contemporary.
The Avaris fragments suggest the frescoes included scenes of the famous Minoan sport of „bull-leaping‟,
which developed on the island of Crete. Alalakh VII is also connected with the Minoan sport: a seal
impression from the Level VII palace at Alalakh depicts bull-leaping. However, the oldest preserved Minoan
representation of actual bull-leaping comes from the MM III-LM IA Knossian Temple Repositories of Crete,
which is later than Level VII at Alalakh!
Some historians have taken this evidence at face value and argued that bull-leaping was a special sport of
Indo-Europeans and started in Northern Syria, being exported to Crete. This suggestion fails to note that
there is no evidence of Indo-Europeans in Alalakh Level VII! Also this idea does not stand close scrutiny of
the iconography; in a major review of the issues, Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier makes it clear that the transfer of
motifs was in the opposite direction: “On the Alalakh VII sealing the bull-leapers are symmetrically doubled in
an unrealistic way, apparently indicating that the iconographic motif was adopted from Crete, but probably
not the actual ritual sport of bull-leaping”. Bietak has raised this issue as a major problem. The Alalakh bullleaping obviously derives from the Cretan activity, but Alalakh comes first!
J G Younger, who worked closely on the bull-leaping images from Crete, doubted the Aegean origin of the
Avaris frescoes, showing that the two preserved bull leapers do not conform accurately to any of the poses
reconstructed by himself and Sir Arthur Evans, the major excavator of Crete. This seems over-critical,
particularly as there are other Aegean motifs associated with Ahmose I, in particular, a Minoan Griffin on his
axe-head. Despite Younger‟s misgivings, one of the two Tell ed-Daba/Avaris acrobats grasps the neck of the
bull in a similar manner as the acrobat on a sealing from the Knossian Temple Repository, which dates from
the time of Ahmose, making the two examples contemporary and therefore making it likely that the designs
of Ahmose were influenced by Cretan originals…
Evidence from Mycenaean pottery, the bull-leaping seal and the Aegean frescoes all suggest that the
conventional dating of Alalakh VII is wrong; the date should be approximately one hundred and fifty years
later. Rather than disprove our shift of Hittite history in relation to Egyptian history, Alalakh VII provides stong
evidence in support.
Several examples of Cypriot pottery were found at Alalakh. These finds do not contradict the Aegean
evidence. Examples of White Painted, Red-on-Black, and Black and Red Slip pottery were uncovered in the
palace of Iarim-Lim. These are typical of Cypriot wares from the Middle Cypriot III (MCIII) and Late Cypriot I
(LCI) periods. Eventually in LCI, new pottery types appeared - Base-Ring ware and White Slip ware - and
slowly these replaced the older types. Modern excavations, particularly in Egypt, have clarified the dating of
the newer ceramics.
24
White Slip ware is not found in Egypt before the time of Thutmose III. This date is supported by a piece of
White Slip I, which was found at Akrotiri on Thera, buried in the tephra from the first explosion, which is dated
to the reign of Hatshepsut, whose reign was concurrent with Thutmose. We date the start of the reign of
Iarim-lim in Alalakh VII to the reign of Thutmose III or a little earlier. This would be a decade or two before the
appearance of White Slip ware. It is likely therefore that if Iarim-lim wished to use Cypriot pottery in his new
palace, it would be of the MCIII types. The latest thinking, based on Egyptian finds, is that Base-ring ware
appeared a little later than White Slip.
Base-Ring and White Slip I and II were present in Alalakh Level VI. The presence of White Slip II is
important because this pottery is not usually found before the reign of Amenhotep III. It is usually
associated with the Amarna period or later. The range of pottery suggests that Alalakh Level VI
started before the time of the Amarna correspondence, but continued into the reign of Akhenaten.
This is exactly in line with our dating: Hattusilis I destroyed Alalakh VII in the middle of the reign of
Amenhotep III. Alalakh VI started at this time and continued through the Amarna period.
Cyprus gives us another clue to the dating of Alalakh. Throughout its history the island had close links with
Minoan Crete and the mainland of Greece, but contact ceased sometime in the Middle Cypriot period, before
MCIII. No LMI pottery has been found in Cyprus and little LMII. Contact was only re-established in the time of
Thutmose III, the gap without contact being about two hundred years. It would be surprising if Minoan traders
failed to reach Cyprus, but continued to trade with Syria during this period.
We would expect contact to be lost with both Cyprus and Syria. Contact with Cyprus re-commenced at the
time of Thutmose III, and this is exactly what we see at Alalakh VII, if we date it to this period. The
conventional dating of Alalakh VII is in MCIII, when apparently Minoan and Greek contact with the East did
not exist, and yet Iarim-lim had Aegean frescoes painted on the walls of his palace!...
The arms of the throne of Idri-mi were supported by sculpted lions. There were also other lion sculptures at
Alalakh from the same time. Woolley expressed his surprise to find the lions:
„In the 'Syro-Hittite' period, gateway lions of this sort are so regular a convention as to be almost the
hall-mark of North Syrian art … now for the first time we have a series of lion sculptures which
cannot be later than the fourteenth century BC‟
As Woolley admitted, such lions are normally assigned to the 9th-7th centuries BC. Idri-mi even confirmed
that he had copied a Hittite style: „I made my throne exactly like the thrones of the kings of Khatti‟. The
confusion caused by the find of the Alalakh lions was summarised succinctly by Dale E. Landon (Professor
Emeritus of History, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, from 1967 to 2000):
„Should we view the Alalakh lions as early forerunners of the whole series of Syro-Hittite lions? Were
they also the model for the guardian lions of Assyrian palaces, anticipating both sets by five hundred
years? Could they have provided the inspiration for the 500-year-later sculptures? If, by the 9th
century BC, the Alalakh lions were completely buried over by debris and long forgotten, and no
similar lions exist to span the Dark Age in this region, how can we explain why the system of flanking
gates with large, guardian figures and stone reliefs in the ninth-century Assyrian palaces resembles
so much that employed here at Alalakh and other contemporary centers some 400-500 years
earlier?
In addition to the lions, the Idri-mi statue was very unusual in style, employing very simple techniques. The
closest example of a similar artistic approach is the statue of a seated goddess from Tel Halaf, on the
Khabur River east of Carchemish. This statue is dated to the ninth or eighth century BC.
The sculpture of Idri-mi shows characteristics of sculpture of the ninth or eighth centuries, not the fourteenth.
The archaeology of Alalakh IV confirms our revised dating of the Hittite Old Kingdom, both in its relation to
Egyptian history and in the absolute dating in the ninth century BC…
The reign of Huzzia was short. He sought to remove his brother-in-law but was outwitted by him. The victor
spared Huzzia‟s life, realising that further bloodshed did not serve the purposes of the Kingdom. Huzzia was
driven away and his brother-in-law became the Great King.
25
Telepinus (Revised Reign: 825 - 800 BC)
The new incumbent was determined that a law of succession would be enacted, so that the killing, which had
so be-devilled the monarchy for decades, would be brought to an end, once and for all. Never again would
Hatti suffer at the hands of assassins. The rules for choosing the heir to the throne would be defined, and
followed by all. To this end, a great Edict was written. The new king was Telepinus…
As we noted above, Homer preserved many details of the Trojan War, not least the names of Anatolian
peoples who sent contingents of troops to aid the defence of the city. Besides Lycians, Carians and
Phrygians, Homer also tells us about the Ketoi.
In the Odyssey, Odysseus remembers a worthy foe, Eurypylus, son of Telephus. Eurypylus helped
defend the city with his Ketoi warriors and died in battle. Remembering that the Egyptian name for
the Hittites was Kheta, it is clear who the Ketoi were.
Eurypylus looks like the Hittite name Warpalawas, which the Assyrians wrote as Urballa. Telephus, must
have been the king of the Ketoi. In the early stages of the conflict with Troy, the Greeks had landed south of
Troy opposite the island of Lesbos. Later Greek writers, Pindar and Strabo, said that these early landings
were repulsed by the forces of Telephus. This king of the Ketoi was sufficiently important to have been
remembered as a major player on the side of the Trojans.
The similarity of the name Telephus to Telepinus, King of the Hittites, has been noted before, but
conventional chronology, and also the recent revised chronologies, all put Telepinus three hundred years
before the Trojan War. The conventional dates for Telepinus are 1525-1500 BC, so he could not have been
the Hittite king who sent his son to resist the Greek invaders.
In the complete history of the Kings of Hattusas, there is only one king called Telepinus, so the
information from Homer and other Greek authors could not be tied into Hittite history. We now know
that Telepinus lived not long after Akhenaten, and the evidence from Mycenaean links to Amenhotep
III and Akhenaten suggest that the Trojan War occurred around the time of the Egyptian heretic
king…
Velikovsky‟s work on the Amarna letters encouraged us to look for the Hittite Old Kingdom in the ninth
century BC and we were rewarded with identification of all the major players. The detailed dates from
Assyrian records enabled a set of dates to be established for most of the Hittite kings of the Old Kingdom.
This has resulted in much shorter reigns for some of these kings than usually assumed.
The long reigns of conventional chronology are not substantiated by evidence; they are simply an expedient
to fill the gap between the accepted synchronisms of Mursilis to Samsi-Ditana of Babylon and of
Suppiluliumas to Akhenaten. Our shortening of the elapsed years from Mursilis to Telepinus is a second
major re-dating of the Hittite Old Kingdom.
Careful, logical application of the evidence has brought us to a conclusion, which dates Telepinus to
the last quarter of the ninth century. Our brief look at the Trojan War and the dating of LHIIIA/B
pottery suggests that we may be able to identify Telephus of the Ketoi as Telepinus of the Khatti…
If the Hittites really helped to defend Troy, was the famous city mentioned in the Hittite texts? This
has long been debated by historians. In a text dated to Thudkhaliyas II, a king of the Hittite Middle
Kingdom, there is a long list of the countries of Western Anatolia, starting with the Lukka Lands in
the South-West and ending in the North-West with Wilusiya and Troisa. The similarity of these two
names to Ilios and Troy is overwhelming, particularly as the original Greek form of Ilios was Wilios. It
appears that Troisa was the city, and Wilusiya was the land around it.
A similar name Wilusa is also found in a late treaty and this is probably the same as Wilusiya. The
introductory words of this treaty (CTH76), between Muwatallis, grandson of the emperor Suppiluliumas, and
Alaksandus, king of Wilusa, are instructive:
„Formerly, when my forefather Labarna had conquered all the lands of Arzawa and the land of
Wilusa, thereafter the land of Arzawa began war, and the land of Wilusa defected from Hatti - but
because the matter is long past I do not know from which King. When the land of Wilusa defected
from Hatti, its people were indeed at peace with Hatti from afar, and they regularly sent them
messengers. But when Tudhaliya came against the land of Arzawa, he did not enter the land of
Wilusa. It was at peace with him and regularly sent him messengers....‟
26
Tudhaliya in the text is King Thudkhaliyas II, mentioned above.
Muwatallis goes on to say that Wilusa remained at peace with Hatti in the time of Suppiluliumas and then
comes up to date:
„... Arzawa began war against me and entered your land, then you called on me for help. I came and
I destroyed the land of Masa...‟
The mention of Masa (Mysia) strengthens the argument that Wilusa was in the same vicinity as Troy. Mysia
was the land immediately east of Troy.
We see that there were peaceful relations between Troy and Hattusas from the time of Labarnas, fifty years
before Telepinus, and that Wilusa was seen as being under the protection of Hatti. Friendly relations existed
when Telepinus was the Hittite Great King and so it would not be surprising that he should send aid to the
beleaguered city…
Telephus of the Ketoi was Telepinus of the Khatti. He reigned in the years 825 - 800 BC. Troy was besieged
by the Mycenaeans, when Telepinus was the Great King of Hatti. The ten year conflict took place in the last
quarter of the ninth century BC. Although a son of Telepinus led the Hittite troops at Troy, this would still be
in the lifetime of Telepinus, because he outlived his sons…
The End of the Old Kingdom
Telepinus was the last king of the Hittite Old Kingdom. Ironically, the king who defined the rules of
succession, was not succeeded by a son, but by his son-in-law, Alluwamnas, as laid down in the Edict:
„Let a prince, the son of a wife of the first rank, be king. If there is no prince of the first rank, let one
who is a son of the second rank become king. If, however, there is no prince, let them take a
husband for a daughter of the first rank and let him become king.‟
The expansion of Hittite control under Labarnas and Hattusilis had led to the ambitious campaigns of
Mursilis. Hantilis and Zidanta had made attempts to maintain the domination of Hattusas over Northern Syria
and probably extended it to Carchemish. After Zidanta, the Syrian and Cilician territories had been lost,
leaving Telepinus to rule a much smaller land, north of the Taurus Mountains. Through his edict, he had
stabilised the government of Hatti, but the unstable nature of the last few decades had frittered away the
gains of previous years. The power of Hatti as a major player had waned.
The Hittite ruling class had found it impossible to handle the massive increase in power and wealth
generated by the first three kings of the Old Kingdom. Internal rivalries had weakened the Kingdom, until one
last strong character, Telepinus, put an end to the divisions. Thankfully for the modern historian, he prefaced
his edict with the history of the earlier years, to show how his predecessors had failed to build on the initial
successes.
After the reign of Telepinus, there are no Hittite historical documents from Hattusas for a period of about fifty
years. There are administrative and legal documents but no clear evidence of the course of events or the
rulers of the Kingdom. The immediate successors of Telepinus are not known with any certainty, although it
is clear, from the limited archaeological remains, that there was continuity of the Hittite civilisation.
Mitanni
One thing that is transparent, from the records of later Kings, is that the dominant power during this
period was the land of Mitanni. The states of Northern Syria came under the control of Mitanni. After
the decline of Hittite domination of Syria, the tables had been turned and Idrimi of Alalakh recorded
that he raided Hittite territory with little resistance.
To continue our re-telling of Hittite history, it is important that we establish the identity of Mitanni. The
whereabouts of Mitanni have not been established by historians or archaeologists. No cities of Mitanni have
been excavated. The site of its capital, Wassukanni, is unknown. With Hittite history moved forward in time to
the first millennium, it is a reasonable assumption that the kingdom of Mitanni was actually a well-known
nation, called by a different name. This would explain the failure of archaeologists to locate any of its
remains. It could not be found because it never existed as a separate country.
27
Velikovsky proposed that Mitanni be equated with Media, the country, which was to be a major power at the
end of the seventh century BC…
There are several references in Herodotus to the Matieni. The first is „The River Araxes rises in the
country of the Matieni‟ (I, 202). In his second book, he lists the twenty provinces of the Persian
Empire: „Eighteenth: The Matienians, the Saspires and Alorodians‟ (II, 94). Finally in book 5, in a
geographical survey of the Middle East: „The Armenians ... and next to them, here, the Matieni.‟ (V, 4).
The River Araxes, modern Aras, rises in the east of modern Turkey. In the first half of the first
millennium BC, this area was in the north of the country known as Urartu.
Alorodian is a corruption, typical of Herodotus, of the name Urartian. Armenia was immediately North of
Urartu. Velikovsky was actually wrong to include Matieni within Media. Herodotus makes it clear in his list of
the twenty provinces that Matieni was not part of Media: „Tenth: Ecbatana and the rest of Media‟.
The references in Herodotus, from the fifth century BC, show that Matieni was not part of Media, but
was in the area that had been occupied by the land of Urartu, at least until the century before
Herodotus. The arguments put forward by Velikovsky for equating Mitanni with Media are not
convincing. We would expect the Aryan gods to be given more prominence in a Median pantheon,
and if the similarity of the name of Matieni to Mitanni is significant, this points to Urartu, not Media…
Perhaps the most important piece of evidence, in finding a candidate for the land of Mitanni, is to be
found in its language. The language of Mitanni was called Hurrian.
Some examples of the language were found in Boghazkoy and a few examples have been found in Syria.
The majority of text in the Hurrian language is found in the letters of Tushratta of Mitanni to Amenhotep III
and Akhenaten. Hurrian is not a member of the Indo-European group of languages. It is quite distinct.
There is only one similar language known to historians - Urartian! It is often written that Urartian is a
descendent of Hurrian, but a detailed analysis of Hurrian and Urartian showed that there was unlikely
to be a long period of time between them. Igor Diakonov studied the two languages, looking at the
phonology, the system of sounds, and at the morphology, the way words were formed. In some
ways, Hurrian was more advanced than Urartian, but in other ways, Urartian was more advanced. He
concluded that they were different dialects of the same language…
The evidence from language points towards the identification of Urartu as being the land of Mitanni. There is
no other country in the first millennium BC, which spoke Hurrian. The Medes spoke an Indo-European
language, as did the Indo-Aryans…
The evidence of language points to Urartu as the country, which the Hittites called Mitanni. The name
Mitanni, in the slightly different form of Matieni, was still applied to the inhabitants of Urartu in the fifth century
BC, when they were part of the Persian Empire. The Assyrians also knew the name and applied it to the
area around the city of Araziki, later called Arzashkun, which was in Urartu. The Mitannians were renowned
for their skill in horse-training, a skill perfected by the Urartians…
If Mitanni were Urartu and came to prominence in the 800s and 700s BC, the progress of Indo-Aryan
influence is straightforward. Indo-Aryans and their culture spread westwards from India, through Afghanistan
to Iran in the tenth and ninth centuries BC.
Urartu, bordering on Iran, was also affected, incorporating some of the Indo-Aryan gods into its own
pantheon and using some Indo-Aryan names and words. Whatever the origins of Indo-Aryan civilisation, the
deletion of Mitanni from the second millennium greatly simplifies the problem…
Biaini was the name the Urartians used for their country. The name Urartu, used today by historians, was the
name of the country used in Assyrian texts.
Argishti‟s expansion of Urartian interests brought him into conflict with Assyria, and the Assyrian texts
mention campaigns against Urartu in 781, 780, 779, 777 and 775 BC, but there is only one record of an
Assyrian victory. Argishti‟s records talk only of success and it seems that in general Assyria was unable to
prevent the expansion of Urartian power, particularly in Northern Syria, where several states became
Urartian vassals. Urartu now controlled the routes to the Mediterranean coast, which gave it access to seaborne trade. Urartian items have been found in Phrygia and as far west as Greece and Italy…
28
According to Hittite history, Mitanni dominated Hatti and Northern Syria for half a century following
the death of Telepinus, whom we have dated to the end of the ninth century BC. Urartu dominated
Hatti and Northern Syria for fifty years, from the end of the ninth century. The history of Mitanni
coincides with the history of Urartu…
29
HITTITE MIDDLE KINGDOM
Alluwamnas, Tahurwaili, Tuwatis, Muwatallis I & Wassusarmas (Revised Reigns: 800 – 730 BC)
The Old Kingdom of Hattusas ends with Telepinus. Alluwamnas and his successors form the Hittite Middle
Kingdom. The Hittite texts uncovered at Boghazkoy fail to illuminate the period of Mitannian domination. The
start of the Middle Kingdom is shrouded in darkness. This half century is the only period of the Kingdoms of
Hattusas where there is no direct historical record.
We are now in a position to remedy this problem, because we have re-dated the period to the first half of the
eighth century BC and have recognised that the country of Hattusas was called Tabal. We must examine the
records of the eighth century to see if they shed any light on the fortunes of Tabal and the „lost‟ kings that
ruled in Hattusas at this time.
The recession of Assyrian might meant that the kings of Assyria did not campaign in Anatolia in this period,
so Tabal does not get a mention in the Assyrian records throughout the first six decades of the eighth
century.
The first Assyrian reference is dated to 738 BC, when the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III records
that he received tribute from Wassurme of Tabal. Wassurme is also known from his own and his
servants inscriptions, written in Hieroglyphic Hittite, where his name is given as Wassusarmas. One
of the monuments, found at Topada, just south of the Halys River, records the name of his father,
Tuwatis. This king is also mentioned on two separate monuments of his servants, again close to the
Halys.
Tuwatis and Wassusarmas could be the missing kings of Hattusas. In the Topada inscription, Wassusarmas
calls himself:
„Great King, Hero, son of Tuwatis, Great King Hero‟.
As we have noted before, among the Neo-Hittite kings, only the kings of Tabal called themselves „Great
Kings‟…
The Assyrians did not campaign in Anatolia in the first half of the eighth century, but the Urartians did.
Menua attacked the land of Hatti, after passing through Malatya. Argishti did the same, about 783 BC, and
recorded more detail of his campaign. As we have seen, he brought back over six thousand prisoners, to resettle in the north of Urartu. His annals relate that the Urartian army under his leadership marched into the
„Lands of the sons of Tuatte‟, as far as Pitiera and the river Helia.
It is generally assumed that Tuatte is the same as Tuwatis, Great King of Tabal. Tuatte is dated
approximately forty-five years before the first mention of Wassusarmas, so it is possible that Tuatte could be
Tuwatis, the father of Wassusarmas.
The brief records of the Urartian king are a significant confirmation of our reconstruction of Hittite history.
Firstly, we note that the lands were ruled by the sons of the Great King, a typical feature of Hittite
government from the time of Labarnas. More importantly we note that the Urartians referred to the
lands of Tuatte as the land of Hatti. Tuatte was King of Hatti; Tuwatis was Great King of Tabal. If, as
most historians believe, the Tuatte of the Urartian inscription was the same as Tuwatis of the
Anatolian monuments, then we have confirmation that the land of Tabal was the seat of the Great
Kings of Hatti.
Writing about Argishti‟s campaign, in the Cambridge Ancient History, R D Barnett includes a
footnote:
„The possibility exists that Pitiera corresponds with Herodotus‟ Pteria (Boghazkoy) and that
the river Helia is the Halys‟.
No further comment is made. He is referring to the story in the writings of the Greek historian Herodotus,
which relates the attack by Croesus, king of Lydia, on the city of Boghazkoy in 547 BC:
„When the army was over the river and had reached the district called Pteria in Cappadocia (Pteria is
the strongest place hereabouts and lies more or less in a line with Sinope on the Black Sea),
30
Croesus encamped and began to devastate the crops on the Syrian‟s land. He captured the town,
enslaved the inhabitants, and took all the neighbouring settlements, driving the innocent Syrians
from house and home.‟ (I, 76)
In the time of Herodotus, in the fifth century BC, the town of Sinope was a well-known port, situated due
north of Hattusas/Boghazkoy, on the coast of the Black Sea.
The consequences of Barnett‟s little footnote are sensational. We must state the logic carefully:
i) Tuatte/Tuwatis was king of Tabal and was attacked by Argishti of Urartu.
ii) Argishti attacked Boghazkoy, the site of Hattusas.
iii) From (i) and (ii) we conclude that the capital of Tabal was Hattusas. This confirms our earlier
assumption that Tabal was the country around the ancient Hittite capital.
iv) From (ii), we conclude that Boghazkoy was inhabited in 783 BC and was sufficiently established
and wealthy to make it the target for an attack by the most powerful monarch of the day.
Item (iv) is a serious setback for conventional chronology, which says that Boghazkoy was abandoned
around 1200 BC and not re-occupied until approximately 700 BC. Some archaeologists have argued that the
re-occupation of the site could be as early as 750 BC, but the record of Argishti suggests that it was
inhabited throughout the eighth century.
The annals of Argishti I of Urartu contradict the accepted archaeological view of Boghazkoy. Where
in the remains of Boghazkoy is the thriving city of Tuatte? The answer of course is that Tuatte‟s city
is one of the layers dated, mistakenly, to the second millennium. Level IVc of the citadel of
Boghazkoy was built by Hantilis, who we now date to the 840s BC.
This stratum was destroyed by fire, but the excavators could not link the destruction to any known
attack on the Hittite capital. We can now identify the cause of the fire, which brought level IVc to an
end. Sixty years after Hantilis fortified the city, it was sacked by Argishti I of Urartu, when Tuatte was
Great King of Hatti…
The dark period after Telepinus is filled in most books on the Hittites by names of kings based on later „King
Lists‟, which were drawn up in the New Kingdom… In the lists, the Middle Kingdom consists of the following
names:
Alluwamnas, Hantilis, Zidanta, Huzzia, Thudkhaliyas and Arnuwandas.
The last two are well known from various texts. We have just discussed the reign of Thudkhaliyas and will
soon look at the reign of his son Arnuwandas. The three names, Hantilis, Zidanta, Huzzia, must be a little
suspicious as they repeat the names of three kings of the Old Kingdom and in the same order…
In the last years of the twentieth century, two other rulers were inserted into the Middle Kingdom list, based
on textual evidence from Hattusas. A king called Tahurwaili was placed after Alluwamnas, and another,
called Muwatallis was placed after Huzzia. These were interlopers, both having been involved in
assassinations. There is evidence that a battle was fought against the son of Muwatallis, who tried to regain
the throne after his father‟s death. Tenure of the kingship was clearly frought with danger in these times and
the period was far from settled…
Of course, there could have been more than the two kings between Alluwamnas and Thudkhaliyas; it is still
possible that one or more of Hantilis II, Zidanta II or Huzzia II existed. Perhaps Tuatte lost the throne due to
the attack by Argishti, and Wassusarmas eventually reinsated the royal line, after defeating the imposter
Muwatallis…
Thudkhaliyas II (Revised Reign: 730 - 720 BC)
A major event in the time of Thudkhaliyas II was an attack on Aleppo. This was the first time since the time of
Mursilis I that a Hittite king had approached the great Syrian city. The capture of Aleppo was justified by
Thudkhaliyas as revenge for the city‟s defection to the Hurrians, half a century earlier.
31
In conventional chronology, Aleppo‟s vassalage to Mitanni and the attack by Thudkhaliyas cause
some difficulty as they occur in a period when Thutmose III, Egypt‟s great warrior pharaoh, was
master of Syria. Oliver Gurney recognised the problem:
„It is difficult to believe that the Hurrian Empire could have flourished at the very time when
Thuthmosis III was in control of most of Syria‟.
This difficulty has been swept away. When Thudkhaliyas II attacked Aleppo it was the second half of
the eighth century. The rule of Thutmose III had finished over one hundred and fifty years before…
In the annals of Thudkhaliyas, four campaigns were documented. The first was to the West to the land of
Arzawa, the Seha River Land and Khapalla. The second was against Assuwa, which was in the North-West
of Anatolia. It is this record which lists the Western states, including Wilusiya and Troisa, which we discussed
earlier. The third campaign was in the opposite direction, to the North-East. The Kaska, tribesmen who lived
to the north and east of Hattusas, attacked Hatti and were defeated in a pitched battle at a place called
Tiwara…
In 739 BC, with Bit-Agusi turned into an Assyrian province, Tiglath-Pileser turned to the North, to push Urartu
back from the edges of Assyria. He conquered the land of Ullubu, which was immediately north of Assyria
and had been taken by Sarduri. In just a few years he had defeated Urartu and its allies, conquered Northern
Syria and taken Ullubu from Sarduri. In 738 BC he was able to record the tribute paid by a long list of
subordinate rulers…
A further list of tributary kings appears in the inscriptions of the Assyrian for 732 BC. It is similar to that of
738. Once again Wassurme of Tabal is included, but the list is followed by a note, which says that Wassurme
refused to pay. This was unacceptable and such was the might of the Assyrian king by this time, that he sent
a senior officer to depose Wassurme and replace him on the throne of Tabal with some-one of his own
choosing.
Thus the reign of Wassusarmas came to an end. The Assyrian records do not say if he resisted or what
happened to him, but clearly Tabal was not able to match the Assyrian forces. The laconic statement of the
action is contained in a tablet found in the city of Calah, recounting the first seventeen years of TiglathPileser III, down to 729 BC, so Wassusarmas was replaced between 732 and 729 BC:
„Wassurme of Tabal was indifferent toward Assyria‟s achievements and did not come into my
presence. My official the Rab-shaku I dispatched. Khulli, son of a nobody, I set upon his royal
throne. 20 talents of gold, 1000 talents of silver, 2000 horses I received.‟
Luckenbill I, 802
The new king immediately organised the tribute for his Assyrian master. In this short commentary on
the Nimrud Tablet are the long-awaited answers to the questions concerning the succession of the
kings of the Hittite Middle Kingdom, and why Thudkhaliyas II did not claim to be of the royal line.
Given the tendency of the Assyrian scribes to shorten the difficult Hittite names, Khulli must be a
shortened form of Thudkhaliyas.
The new king of Tabal was the appointee of the Assyrian monarch and was not related to the royal family, he
was „son of a nobody‟. In this situation, Thudkhaliyas had to prove himself to the men of Hatti…
If we put the Hittite records of Thudkhaliyas II together with the records of Tiglath-Pileser III, we
conclude that Thudkhaliyas fought with the Assyrians in the wars against Urartu and Bit-Agusi, and
sufficiently impressed the Assyrian king to be given the kingdom of Tabal, when Wassusarmas
rebelled and refused to pay tribute.
The rise to power of Tiglath-Pileser III was swift. Within a few years of becoming king of Assyria he had
engaged and beaten Urartu and its allies. This suggests that he had allies of his own to bolster the strength
of the Assyrian army. After a half century of Urartian domination, there would be no shortage of states,
particularly in Anatolia, who would come to his aid to drive back the Hurrians…
One of the continuing debates among Hittitologists is the geography of Anatolia in the time of the
Kings of Hattusas. Arzawa was definitely in the West, but its exact location cannot be determined
from the Hittite texts…
32
If we examine the geography of Western Anatolia in the ninth to sixth centuries BC, the dominant
state was the country of Lydia, with its capital at Sardis… It is easy to conclude therefore that Arzawa
must have been Lydia. The Arzawans spoke a language similar to Hittite, called Luwian…
The excavations of Sardis, the Lydian capital, in the outer north-western sector, showed signs of a
violent attack, which the archaeologists dated to 740-725 BC. No attack on Sardis is known from this
time. Historians have not been able to demonstrate who was responsible for the sack of the city. In
our reconstruction this is the time when Thudkhaliyas II led the Hittite army to attack Arzawa. The
archaeology of the Lydian capital is in agreement with our view of Anatolian history; it was
Thudkhaliyas II who sacked Sardis, around 728 BC…
A further synchronism will strengthen our new model of Hittite history. In his book „The Kingdom of the
Hittites‟, Trevor Bryce describes a new policy implemented by Thudkhaliyas II:
„… the transportation of large numbers of persons from the conquered territories for resettlement in
the Hittite homeland or other regions of the kingdom. It was a practice also adopted by the rulers of
the Assyrian New Kingdom.‟
The practice of transportation was instigated by Thudkhaliyas; the other major use of this economic and
political measure in the Ancient World was by the Assyrians. Bryce‟s allusion is confirmed by A Kirk Grayson
in the Cambridge Ancient History:
„Of particular note is the policy of massive transportation of peoples, which began in Tiglath-pileser‟s
reign‟.
Thudkhaliyas II followed a policy, which had been implemented by his sponsor, Tiglath-pileser III of
Assyria. Transportation was implemented by the Hittites and the Assyrians at the same time. The
Assyrians did not re-invent the policy seven hundred years later!
Arnuwandas I (Revised Reign: 720 – 713 BC)
Arnuwandas succeeded his father Thudkhaliyas II as the Great King of Hatti. In fact the family line of
Thudkhaliyas would not be broken right through the rest of the history of the kings of Hattusas. Descendants
of Thudkhaliyas II would rule until the end of Hatti as a major power in the Middle East. The dynasty of
Thudkhaliyas would last for nearly two hundred years.
The reign of Arnuwandas was probably quite short. There is little evidence from Boghazkoy of campaigns
abroad during his tenure. There were administrative documents signed by him and his wife, Ashnu-nikkal,
and some documents, which she signed on her own…
Arnuwandas calls Thudkhaliyas II his father several times in the „Indictment of Madduwattas‟, but his wife
was called Ashnu-nikkal, which in Hurrian means „Daughter of the King‟. This is perplexing because it
appears to suggest that the king and queen were brother and sister. Although such marriages were common
in some ancient societies, incest was forbidden in Hittite law…
Two copies of a treaty, one in Akkadian (Babylonian) and one in Hittite were uncovered in the archives of
Boghazkoy. The treaty was between a King of Hatti and a king of Kizzuwatna, called Shunashura… For the
moment it is important to note a statement in the treaty, which looks back to the time of Arnuwandas:
„Formerly, in the time of my grandfather, Kizzuwatna came into the possession of Hatti, but
afterwards the land of Kizzuwatna freed itself from Hatti and turned to the land of Hurri.‟
Beckman (CTH131)
The expression „came into the possession of Hatti‟ is unusual. Normally possession of a country would come
after conquest. Sometimes a beleaguered state might submit and become a vassal, without a fight,
recognising the superior force of the aggressor. Neither of these situations seems to be summed up by „came
into the possession‟.
By the time of the treaty, Kizzuwatna seems to be the name for most of Cilicia. In the Akkadian version of the
treaty, Kizzuwatna is called „the land of Adaniya‟, suggesting it now included the city state of Adana in
Eastern Cilicia.
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Another text from Boghazkoy shows that Arnuwandas also controlled the port of Ura in Western
Cilicia… Without apparent effort, Arnuwandas extended the land of Hatti, taking possession of Cilicia
and also the island of Cyprus! The island was called Alashiya by the Hittites.
The final exploit of Madduwattas recounted in the „Indictment‟ was to join with his previous enemy
Attarissiyas and plunder Cyprus. In the document, Arnuwandas makes it clear that such action was
unacceptable, because Cyprus belonged to the Great King of Hatti:
„Because the land of Alashiya belongs to My Majesty, and the people of Alashiya pay me tribute why have you constantly raided it? But Madduwattas said as follows: “When Attarissiyas and the
ruler of Piggaya were raiding the land of Alashiya, I often raided it too. But the father of his Majesty
had never informed me to the effect: “The land of Alashiya is mine - recognise it as such!” If his
Majesty now demands the civilian captives back, I will give them back to him!” And since Attarissiyas
and the ruler of Piggaya are rulers independent of My Majesty - why have you joined up with them?‟
The reign of Arnuwandas seems to be full of unusual situations! Gurney remarks on the Hittite control of
Alashiya:
„One wonders by what right the land-locked Hittites should have claimed the island as one of their
possessions‟.
Alashiya, just like Kizzuwatna, paid tribute to Arnuwandas without any apparent conquest by the Hittite
King…
In general the Assyrian strategy in this region was to support local rulers rather than install Assyrian
governors to run the countries. Initially Sargon continued this approach and when Khulli died he confirmed
Khulli‟s son as the King of Tabal. By this time, about 720 BC, trouble was brewing to the west of Tabal and
Sargon recognised that he needed a strong buffer state between Northern Syria and the Phrygians, who
were gaining in power and influence.
He decided to strengthen the position of the King of Tabal by a two-fold strategy. First he created a family tie
by giving his daughter, Akhat-abisha, in marriage to Khulli‟s son. Secondly, he extended the Hittite King‟s
realm by giving him Khillakku as his daughter‟s dowry for the marriage. The extended Kingdom now
stretched from the plateau north of the Taurus, right down to the Cilician coast. These moves would give
Sargon reliable eyes and ears at the Tabalian court and would increase the wealth of the land, in theory
giving the Hittites good reason to remain faithful to their Assyrian overlord. Khilakku was a potential source of
tribute, but allegiance to the Assyrian crown was fragmentary and there were several petty rulers who would
rebel if the opportunity presented itself.
In these moves of Sargon we have the answers to some of the questions about Arnuwandas. There
was no incest at the Hittite court. Arnuwandas did not marry his sister. His wife was the „Daughter of
the King‟, but the king in this title was the Great King of Assyria. On the Hittite documents she is
called by her title, Ashnu-Nikkal, her personal name is not recorded… A large portion of Cilicia „came
into the possession‟ of the king of Hatti. The unusual expression in the treaty with Kizzuwatna is
explained in the action of Sargon…
Madduwattas protested that Thudkhaliyas had not told him to stay away from Cyprus. He professed not to
know that Cyprus was tributary to Hatti. As Madduwattas had spent some time at the court of Thudkhaliyas,
he would have been reasonably well-informed of diplomatic matters and therefore would have known if
Cyprus had come under Hittite control. It seems that Hittite control of Alashiya was a new situation, which
had only recently come into being. Given the comprehensive control exercised by Sargon and his son-in-law
it would have been easy for Arnuwandas to exert pressure on Cyprus without threat of military action. He
could demand tribute to be paid in exchange for free access to the Cilician ports. From the „Indictment of
Madduwattas‟ we see that the island lost its independence in the reign of Arnuwandas…
The document, called by historians „The Indictment of Mita‟, was written by the Hittite King Arnuwandas I to
the men of Pahhuwa (sometimes spelt Pahhura and probably pronounced Pakhra). It asked them to extradite
Mita. It appears that Mita had been based in Pahhuwa. Originally he had been a vassal of the Hittite King,
presumably as a result of Thudkhaliyas‟ conquests, but he was exerting his independence and siding with
the enemy of Arnuwandas…
Pahhura must be Pakhri in Eastern Cilicia, and Timmiya must be Timur. The base of Mita‟s activities was in
Cilicia. Besides the attack on Timmiya, the land of Kummaha / Kummukh is mentioned. Kummukh was about
34
100 miles to the north-east of Cilicia. Mita was causing trouble to the south and south-east of Hatti. The
„Indictment‟ was written when Mita was enjoying freedom of action with Usapa and Piggana. Arnuwandas
entreated the men of Pahhura to take action and threatened that he would come and „bloody his hands‟.
There are no other texts from Hattusas that mention Mita so we do not know the outcome of the conflict
between the rebels and the King of Hatti. Were Mita and Usapa captured or did their rebellion lead to dire
consequences for Arnuwandas? The Hittite records do not tell us the answers to our questions, but the
answers will be found in the records of the last two decades of the eighth century…
Ambaridu of Tabal was confirmed as king by Sargon around 720 BC or a little later. After only a short
reign, the Assyrian lost faith in his son-in-law and deposed him in 713 BC. If Arnuwanda I of Hatti
was Ambaridu of Tabal, the „Indictment of Mita‟ must have been written in the years 720-713 BC…
Sargon accused Kiakki of breaking treaties and failing to pay tribute. In this action Kiakki was following the
example of his one-time ally, and suffered the same consequence. His behaviour was blamed on the
influence of the King of Phrygia, Midas. Phrygia was further to the north-west and outside Sargon‟s control.
The Assyrians called Phrygia, Mushki… In the Assyrian inscriptions, Midas is called „Mita of Mushki‟.
Conventional history books tell us that Mita was probably a recurring dynastic name in Anatolia. The
renegade of the fifteenth century BC had exactly the same name as the king of Phrygia at the end of the
eighth century BC! Arnuwandas I of Hatti is dated to 1440 BC in conventional history, based on Egyptian
chronology, and therefore this is the date for Mita. Recent attempted revisions of Ancient History date
Arnuwandas to 1190 BC (James et al) or 1070 BC (Rohl‟s New Chronology).
Only the current reconstruction dates Arnuwandas to 715 BC, precisely the time of Mita, King of
Phrygia. Across two millennia of Ancient History, the name Mita occurs only twice, once in the Hittite
document of Arnuwandas I, and once in the Assyrian records of Sargon II. This „recurring‟ name is
actually unique. Mita, the Hittite vassal who broke away from Hittite rule, was the same man as Mita
of Mushki, who was the focus of Sargon‟s attention for a decade…
We have already tentatively identified Arzawa as Lydia so this leaves Khapalla and the Seha River Land as
possible homes for Mita. We are told in the „Indictment of Madduwattas‟ that this ruler took the land of
Khapalla, so it could not belong to Mita at the same time. We are left to conclude that the Seha River Land
was the home of Mita and therefore that Phrygia was called the Seha River Land by the Hittites.
The land of Phrygia was based in the valley of the River Sangarius, with its capital Gordium on the banks of
the River. The Sangarius is one of the largest rivers in Anatolia, sufficiently important for a land to be named
after it. The ancient name for the Sangarius was Sehiriya. Seha must have been a shortened form of
Sehiriya. This is evident from the annals of the Hittite Emperor Mursilis II, who lived a hundred years after
Arnuwandas. In his campaign against Uhha-zitis, King of Arzawa, he passed the great river:
„I marched to Arzawa. As I reached the River Sehiriya, the awesome Tarhundas, my lord, manifested
his grace: he hurled a thunderbolt. The land of Hatti saw it from behind, and the land of Arzawa saw
it from the front.‟…
Three cities of Eastern Cilicia had been taken by Mita, King of Phrygia. In the time of Arnuwandas, Mita,
using Pahhura as a base, had taken three cities in Eastern Cilicia. In the Hittite text, the names are given as
Aparhula, Hurla, and Halmisna. Hurla is clearly Harrua. The Assyrian inscription is broken, so we only have
the first syllable, „Ab‟, of one city, but it is the same as the first syllable of Aparhula. The third city is called
Halmisna in Hittite and Ushnanis in Assyrian. These names are actually not as different as might appear at
first. Each name contains the syllables Ush-na.
Hurla, Halmisna and Aparhula were the three cities held by Mita, in the time of Arnuwandas.
Harrua, Ushnanis and Ab- were the three cities held by Mita, in the time of Sargon.
The „Indictment‟ must have been written before 715 BC, before Sargon took back the cities. In the usual egocentric annals of the Assyrian king, Sargon takes the credit for recovery of the three cities. We do not know if
his son-in-law, Arnuwandas / Ambaridu, was involved and „bloodied his hands„.
Subsequent events suggest that Arnuwandas / Ambaridu did not fulfil his promise to attack Midas,
and Sargon had to do the job himself. At any rate, two years later in 713 BC, Sargon accused his sonin-law of intrigue both with Midas and Argishti II of Urartu. Ambaridu was removed and taken with his
close family and nobles to Assyria.
35
As with Carchemish, Sargon‟s policy was not to appoint another Hittite, but to put Assyrians in
charge. Historians assume that his daughter took the throne, assisted by a senior Assyrian official
called Nabu-lei. This explains why some administrative documents from Hattusas are signed only by
Arnuwandas‟ wife. These documents would date from the period after Ambaridu was removed and
his wife had taken charge of Tabal.
Another problem from the time of Arnuwandas can be cleared up with the help of the Assyrian information on
Ambaridu. Arnuwandas was not succeeded by his son. The line of succession was passed through his
brother Hattusilis, who is called Hattusilis II, although it is unclear whether he actually reigned as King of
Hatti.
We now know that Arnuwandas‟ sons and immediate family were all carried off to Assyria and that
his Assyrian wife probably ruled the Kingdom. Her control of Hatti was probably quite short. Towards
the end of Sargon‟s reign, conditions north of the Taurus were deteriorating as tribesmen from the
North and East invaded Anatolia. Hattusilis must have avoided the deportation to Assyria and
sometime later he or his son regained the throne of Tabal.
In the ruins of Hattusas, an Assyrian seal was discovered. The seal was of the cylindrical type, typical of the
eighth century, and made from pink transparent agate. The seal is of high quality and represents the only
Assyrian item found at the site, during the periods of the Hittite kingdoms or afterwards… No explanation
was offered as to why an Assyrian seal should be found this far north. We have no problem with this find; the
seal is exactly what we would expect to be found at Hattusas at this period. It dates from the only time when
there was strong Assyrian influence over the city.
Hattusas was the capital of Tabal and around 730 BC, Thudkhaliyas had been appointed King of
Tabal by Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria. The daughter of Sargon lived in the city with her Hittite
husband and ruled the country after he was deposed. An Assyrian seal, signifying Assyrian authority
and dating from the second half of the eighth century, is completely in agreement with our
understanding of the history of Hattusas…
By 708 BC the Hittite kings had all been deposed by Sargon, but Midas and his family were beyond the area
of Assyrian domination. Phrygia remained independent and we can assume that Midas‟ father-in-law, Usapa
and brother-in-law, Piggana, were also beyond the reach of Sargon. The Assyrian rule in Anatolia was to be
short-lived.
The Kaska / Cimmerian Invasion (713 - 680 BC)
The Hittite rulers may have failed to halt Sargon‟s progress, but a new force would quickly erode the
Assyrian gains. Prompted by tribal migrations to the North, the Kaska were on the move. They had lived to
the North and East of Hattusas for some time, but at the end of the eighth century BC, they began to
encroach on the civilised lands of Urartu and Anatolia. They had always been a problem to the kings of
Hattusas, but usually in small bands. Now they were more organised and in much larger numbers.
Initially the Assyrians used the same name for the invaders, Kaska, as that used in the texts of
Boghazkoy. Later they would be called Gimirrai, which in Greek writings became Cimmerians, the
name we use today.
Urartu was to suffer first at the hands of the Cimmerians. Rusa I of Urartu, father of Argishti II was defeated
by a horde of Cimmerians in 714 BC. The advance of the Cimmerians was being watched closely from
Anatolia. News of Rusa‟s defeat reached Assyria in a letter to Sennacherib, the Assyrian crown prince. This
came from Nabu-lei, chief official of Sargon‟s daughter in Tabal. In the last years of his reign, Sargon
recorded that he had built fortresses on the northern boundary of Cilicia „against the Kashkai‟. Information is
sketchy about the exact situation in Anatolia, but it appears that by 705 BC, the Kaska / Gimirrai had overrun the plateau north of the Taurus, forcing Sargon to position a defensive line of fortresses to the south of
the mountain range…
Sargon had been killed in the Taurus Mountains. Only one further piece of evidence was recorded by the
Assyrians - the name of the enemy who had led the devastating attack on the Assyrian camp:
„Eshpai the Kulumean‟.
Revenge had been accomplished for all the violence and suppression meted out by Sargon in the previous
fifteen years. Unfortunately nothing is known of this individual, who was able to plan and execute an attack at
36
the heart of the Assyrian forces, to kill the commander-in-chief. In history books it is suggested that he may
have been a Cimmerian leader, but there is no evidence to substantiate this. Not surprisingly, the Assyrian
texts give no detail about the campaign. What is known is that after the death of Sargon, Anatolia was
irretrievably lost to the Assyrians.
Through our reconstruction, we can at last identify „Eshpai the Kulumean‟. The solution is in a document,
which historians believe was written in the fifteenth century BC - „The Indictment of Mita‟! As we have shown
in detail above, the „Indictment‟ was written around 718 BC and Mita was Midas the King of Phrygia. The
document, written by the scribes of Arnuwandas, lists the Anatolian enemies of Sargon and makes it clear
that the man behind the rebellious actions was not Mita, but his father-in-law:
Usapa of Kalimunaya.
Usapa, aided by his son and son-in-law, had resisted Sargon for most of the Assyrian‟s reign. He had
managed to stay out of reach of the Assyrian and eventually, when Sargon returned to Anatolia in 705 BC,
he had exacted retribution on his enemy…
Thudkhaliyas II, veteran of the war against Bit-Agusi, had used his military prowess to re-establish the power
of Hattusas for a short period. His son Arnuwandas I was torn between allegiance to the Assyrian king and
sympathy for Midas and the rebels. From the evidence we have, he threatened Mita and Madduwattas but
did not take action against them. Eventually Sargon decided that the sympathies of the King of Tabal were
with Midas, and he de-throned his son-in-law. Tabal lost any semblance of independence, along with all the
other Hittite states, but even the Assyrians could not withstand the onslaught of the Kaska, and Sargon had
to withdraw to Cilicia and abandon the Anatolian plateau.
In conventional history, this is the end of Hittite civilisation. There is some evidence for recovery of some
Hittite states in the seventh century, but the information is meagre. Our reconstruction has only reached the
end of the Middle Kingdom, so we cannot end here. If the reconstruction so far has been valid, this is not the
end. Hittite civilisation did not fade away under the oppression of Assyria and the barbarism of the Kaska.
Somewhere in the future, after 700 BC, we must find the New Kingdom and the Hittite emperors, but before
that we must understand the dark period, which ended the Middle Kingdom of Hattusas…
We have already mentioned that Sargon II of Assyria constructed fortresses in the North of Cilicia „against
the Kaska‟. This is an exact confirmation of the Hittite text. In the last decade of the eighth century BC, the
Kaska had taken the Anatolian plateau and were threatening Cilicia. In the Hittite text, normally assumed to
be talking about the last years of the fifteenth century BC, the Kaska had taken the Anatolian plateau and
were threatening Northern Cilicia. The westward movement of the Kaska around the turn of the eighth
century was prompted by a second wave of migration from the North by another group, called Scythians.
Kaska and Scythians also infiltrated Urartu and Persia.
Once more the jigsaw piece of our reconstructed Hittite history fits perfectly with the parts of the puzzle fixed
in the eighth century.
The Hittite and Assyrian texts use the identical name for the invaders: Kaska. Generally, in books on Ancient
History, the attack on Anatolia by barbarous hordes, at the end of the eighth century BC, is called the
„Cimmerian Invasion‟. Besides the term Kaska, the Assyrians also used the terms Gimmirai and Umman
Manda for the invaders, without distinguishing between them…
The Kaska are mentioned by the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser I around 1100 BC in the land of Subartu, north
of Assyria and west of Urartu. This may signify that the Kaska were present east of the Euphrates before the
bearers of the Cimmerian culture infiltrated Armenia. The Kaska only feature regularly in Assyrian annals in
the latter part of the eighth century, by which time the Assyrians did not distinguish them from the
Cimmerians…
The Assyrians held Cilicia and the Cimmerians moved westwards towards Phrygia. Greek authors tell of the
death of Midas at the hands of the Cimmerians, which is dated to 696/5 BC…
In the second full year of the new Assyrian king, 679 BC, the Cimmerians were still dominant on the
Anatolian plateau and able to attempt a strike southwards towards Cilicia, which was still held by the
Assyrians. „Teushpa of the Umman Manda‟, broke through the Taurus. He was defeated at Khubushna by
an army led by an Assyrian governor. The Assyrians pushed northwards into the Taurus, „mountain
fastnesses on the borders of Tabal‟, but they did not proceed into Tabal itself.
37
„From beyond the lower land came the enemy from Arzawa, and he too sacked the Hatti lands and
made Tuwanuwa and Uda his frontier.‟
The Kaska had taken the Anatolian plateau, but others would join in the pillage of Hatti…
„From beyond again the enemy from Azzi came and sacked all the Upper Lands and made
Samuha his frontier.‟
This is a strange geographical statement for a raid on Hatti. The land of Azzi was north of Samuha. It was
somewhere to the east of Hattusas towards Armenia. Oliver Gurney, in his book, „The Hittites‟, says Samuha
was either a Hittite name for Malatya or the name of a separate town in the vicinity of Malatya. One would
expect an attack from Azzi to establish a frontier to the west of Azzi between Azzi and Hattusas. Why would
the enemy come from Azzi and end up further South at Malatya?
The Urartians called the land north of Urartu, Aza and this may refer to the same general area as the Hittite
Azzi, stretching from north of Lake Van for about 150 miles to the west. In the early part of the seventh
century, Aza, and the land to the west of it, was under the control of Rusa II of Urartu, who had managed to
subdue the Cimmerians and use them as mercenaries. Rusa had succeeded his father Argishti II around 690
or 680 BC. He was the last major Urartian king and probably ruled for thirty years, in which time he built a
major new extension to the Urartian capital Tushpa and established major new cities in the East and North,
in particular the city of Teishebaini in the land of Aza…
The Hittite reference to the enemy, who came from Azzi, fits perfectly with the information on Rusa II of
Urartu. He attacked the Pontic region and further west, into the areas just east of Hattusas - the Upper
Lands. He then moved south and established his frontier close to Malatya, because this city controlled an
important Euphrates crossing and also it gave him control of the copper mines of Isuwa. Rusa controlled all
the lands east of the Euphrates from Malatya.
Hittite historians have assumed that the attacks from Azzi were instigated by Mitanni. We now know that
Mitanni was Urartu and the attacks were led by Rusa II…
The attack is recounted in other inscriptions of Sennacherib, but in each case only Til-garimmu is mentioned.
The campaign was specifically against Til-garimmu. With the Anatolian plateau being ravaged at that time by
the Cimmerians, the Assyrians were not prepared to go further into the land of Tabal.
The sacking of Tegarama, recorded in the Hittite text, finds its parallel in the inscription of Sennacherib about
the attack of 695 BC.
Immediately following the sentence on the sacking of Tegarama, the record of Hattusilis III relates an attack
on Cilicia/Kizzuwatna. This could be the attack of Sennacherib in 696 BC. The Assyrian inscriptions group
the two campaigns together. The Hittite scribe appears to have done the same.
In Hittite records, stretching over four centuries, only one enemy attack on Tegarama was recorded.
In Assyrian records, which cover many centuries of foreign campaigns, only one attack on Tegarama
was documented. These two events, unique in each history, are now seen to be the same single
event, which took place in the early years of the seventh century BC…
The stranglehold exercised on the Hittite states of Anatolia by Sargon had been broken by the Cimmerian
invasion; Assyrian grip on the north-west of its empire was slipping. In a list of Assyrian governors of 691 BC,
Tabal and Melid are conspicuous by their absence.
By the 680s, Rusa of Urartu would be in control of the area east of the Euphrates, which was the normal
launch pad for attacks into the northern parts of the land of Hatti. Esarhaddon‟s army would still be able to
march through Cilicia in 679 BC to halt the Kaska, but even the Assyrian king‟s tenuous hold on the south of
Anatolia would not outlive him…
Our reconstruction brought us to the end of the eighth century BC. The period of brief improvement
in Hittite fortunes under Thudkhaliyas II and his son Arnuwandas was recognised as the time of
Khulli and Ambaridu of Tabal. In both the Hittite records and the independent texts of Assyria, Urartu
and Greece, there followed a dark period for the Anatolian plateau. The civilised towns were over-run
by tribal hordes and in both cases these barbarians were called the Kaska. The extent of the
invasion, south of the Halys threatening North Cilicia, was the same in both versions of history.
38
In conventional chronology, the dark period of the Kaska invasion is dated to 1420 - 1385. We
recognised that this was the same as the Cimmerian invasion and the correct dates were 713 - 680
BC, a full seven hundred years later.
Other details of the dark period were also identical in the two versions. In particular, there were
striking similarities between the enemy attacks on the Upper Land and the campaign of Rusa II. The
frontier established by the enemy was the same as that set up by the Urartian king. Also the Assyrian
inscriptions, concerning the raids on Tegarama and Cilicia by the army of Sennacherib, confirmed
the Hittite text. There is limited illumination of the dark period from the Hittite sources or from the
seventh century sources, but what information does exist is in complete agreement…
The descendants of Arnuwandas had managed to survive the Kaska invasion and had taken refuge a
hundred miles to the east of the city of Hattusas, in an area the Hittites called the „Upper Lands‟. As
the name suggests, this was a mountainous district, rising a thousand metres above the Anatolian
plateau.
There were no large towns and therefore this area would offer little opportunity for pillage to the Kaska. The
refugees however were not immune from attack and as we have seen the „enemy from Azzi‟ had sacked the
lands before withdrawing to Samuha.
In the absence of Arnuwandas in Assyria, the line of succession had passed to his brother Hattusilis
and then on to Hattusilis‟ son Thudkhaliyas. A full generation had lived in the mountain retreat.
Tegarama was just south of the Upper Lands, on a tributary of the Euphrates, and would have been an
obvious focus for an attempt to break out and recover the cities lost to the Kaska. The attack by
Sennacherib‟s forces in 695 BC may have been a move by Assyria to nip a Hittite recovery in the bud. More
than a decade would pass before a further attempt was made. At the start of Mursilis‟ narrative, the eventual,
successful, break-out had commenced.
39
HITTITE NEW KINGDOM
Thudkhaliyas III (Revised Reign: 700 – 671 BC)
The Upper Lands remained the only completely safe area, being the retreat for Thudkhaliyas during bouts of
illness, but Samuha had been taken by the Hittites and was sufficiently secure to be used as a base for
further operations. Presumably Tegarama, between the Upper Lands and Samuha, was also in Hittite
hands…
The first recorded event appears to be a successful raid by someone called Kantuzzili into the land of
Hayasa, immediately east of the Upper Lands. The next fragments mention some-one called Tuttu and the
burning of the town of Sallapa by Thudkhaliyas. The name Tuttu is shown to be Kaskan in other texts, and
therefore the tablet appears to relate an attack on a Kaskan chief Tuttu in the town of Sallapa. The exact
location of Sallapa is not known; it is rarely mentioned in Hittite texts. It is clear from a later text (CTH68) that
Sallapa was not in the eastern part of the country and was a considerable way from the Upper Lands or
Samuha.
This text is a treaty between Mursilis II and Kupanta-Karunta, the ruler of the Land of Mira-Kuwaliya, one of
the Arzawa Lands. Mursilis relates that he set out to settle a matter with an errant vassal, who had caused
trouble in the land of Pitassa. When he arrived at Sallapa, he wrote to the vassal. This suggests Sallapa was
on the way from Hattusas to Pitassa and would therefore be South-West of Hattusas, at least one hundred
miles from Thudkhaliyas‟ bases in the Upper Land. In the Cambridge Ancient History, A Goetze places
Sallapa North of Tuwanuwa. It was a long way for the Hittites to march across hostile country, from Samuha
to Sallapa, to attack the Kaska. Elements of the Kaska would have been much nearer. To warrant the long
march west, there must have been some special significance in an attack on Tuttu at Sallapa.
The next three campaigns are described on the second tablet, where the sequence of events is sure. The
campaigns were also against the Kaska and were led by Thudkhaliyas‟ son. They were based on Samuha.
In the first two campaigns, many Kaska were killed and many prisoners were brought back to the city. The
third campaign would be the turning point of the war of liberation, fought by the father and son. The son
implored his father “Oh my lord, send me on that campaign! Then what is in my heart, the gods will fulfil”.
The ailing King granted the wish and his son set out from Samuha at the head of the Hittite army,
bound for Hattusas. The desolation brought by the Kaska is portrayed in the text. It speaks of „the
empty towns of the whole country, which had been emptied by the enemy‟. When he arrived at the
capital he found it in a terrible state, badly burnt by the marauders. He appears to have entered the
40
city without a fight, but was then brought word that the enemy were preparing for attack. They had
called upon nine tribal groups to constitute their army.
It is said that an army fights the hardest when fighting for its own land. The promise of spoil, when
conquering another‟s territory, is an incentive, but defence of the motherland is the greatest
motivation for soldiers. In the recent years, the Hittite army, under its inspirational leader, the crownprince, had been refined in battle against its unruly enemy and now the capital itself had been
recovered. The Kaska did not have the discipline to take on such a determined force in a pitched
battle and they quickly came to tha realisation. Mursilis relates the end:
„But when my father arrived with his force, the Kaskan enemy was afraid and in consequence
they put their weapons down‟.
The last major confrontation with the Kaska had been resolved without a fight. The Kaska had not
been completely cleared from the country, but the capital had been taken and the population started
to return to their towns. The royal family and other senior members of the Hittite aristocracy could
return to the capital, from the Upper Lands. Hattusas would be the base for further campaigns to free
Hatti from insurgents. For the first time in over sixty years, an independent Great King of Hatti, ruled
in Hattusas.
The regnal years of Thudkhaliyas are not recorded in the text and therefore it is not clear how many years it
took to defeat the Kaska and take Hattusas. Four distinct campaigns of Thudkhaliyas and his son against the
Kaska are described, culminating in the re-capture of the capital. Therefore it is likely that a minimum of four
years was required…
When Esarhaddon became king of Assyria, the politics of the Middle East were changing. In the north,
Urartu was asserting itself under Rusa II and Rusa‟s boundary in the west reached the banks of the
Euphrates. Further west, the Anatolian plateau was in the hands of the Cimmerians and they were
threatening Cilicia. Babylon had been subdued, but Babylon‟s long-term ally, Elam, at the head of the
Persian Gulf, continued to be a threat. Perhaps even more serious than any of these was the power and
influence of a resurgent Egypt.
Since the 740s, the Kushites (also called Nubians or Ethiopians) from the south had ruled part or all of
Egypt. The „Black Pharaohs‟ had oscillated between friendship and hostility to Assyria. Sargon had defeated
an Egyptian army and Sennacherib had also campaigned to the Egyptian border. Around 690 BC, Taharka
became pharaoh of both Upper and Lower Egypt and he began to foster links with dissident rulers in
Palestine and Syria, and in particular with Tyre and Sidon, the great ports of Phoenicia. The Assyrians often
had control of the land, but they were a land-locked country without a navy. It was always possible for Egypt
to maintain contacts by sea. Esarhaddon saw Egypt as his major problem and his war with Taharka was to
be the most time-consuming military activity of his reign.
In his major work on the history of Iraq, George Roux points out that by this time, the Assyrians no longer
seemed to have a coherent imperial policy. All its wars were reactive, simply responding to problems in
various parts of the Empire. A hot-spot of unrest would arise and the Assyrian king would either lead or
despatch an army to attempt to restore Assyrian control. Some of this approach comes over in the oracular
enquiries of Esarhaddon, where he asks his gods to tell him if various enemies would succeed in their
endeavours.
As we have already noted, an early trouble spot for Esarhaddon was Cilicia and the Cimmerian threat. An
army was despatched in 679 BC to halt a Cimmerian thrust southwards. The Cimmerians under Teushpa
were halted at Kubushna and driven back towards the Halys whence they had come. Kubushna (Kybistra of
classical times) was as far west as an Assyrian army had ever travelled. The Assyrians chased the retreating
Cimmerians northwards to the edge of Tabal. This is the only recorded battle between the Assyrians and the
Cimmerians, during the long period of three decades, when the tribesmen plundered Anatolia.
Assyrian kings seem to have been content to have the Anatolian plateau in the grip of the barbarians, but
they were not prepared to surrender Cilicia to them. Sargon had reinforced the north of Cilicia against the
invaders, and the country west beyond Tuwanuwa was probably the weakest point in the defences, being
outside of the area normally ruled by the Assyrian governors. The attack by Teushpa and his hordes marked
a new departure in the activities of the Cimmerians, and Esarhaddon responded decisively to halt their
advance. Many Cimmerians perished in the adventure. The Babylonian „Esarhaddon Chronicle‟ simply
records a ‟slaughter of the Gimmirai‟ for year two of Esarhaddon (679BC).
41
Unwittingly the Assyrians provided the impetus for Hittite revival. A retreating Cimmerian / Kaskan
army, severely mauled by the Assyrian troops, falling back from Kubushna towards the Halys, would
reach the town of Sallapa. This must have been the opportunity for Thudkhaliyas III to take
retribution on those who had wrested control of Hatti. His spies would have brought back news
about the Cimmerian retreat. The remnant of the Kaskan army, recovering from their defeat in
Sallapa, would be easy prey. Marching from the east, along the banks of the Halys, the Hittite troops
came to Sallapa and burned the town.
This is the explanation of why the Hittite army would travel so far from its base to attack the Kaska.
The enemy had been weakened by the Assyrians and the remnant of the Kaskan army could be
destroyed as they recouped at Sallapa. The name of the Kaskan leader, Tuttu, could be the Hittite
rendering of the name, written as Teushpa by the Assyrians. With this tie-up, we now have a fixed
date for the start of the activities of Thudkhaliyas III. His attack on Sallapa occurred in 679 BC (or
possibly 678 BC), after the Kaskans had retreated north, following the battle of Kubushna…
In the accounts of the Assyrian concerns over Mugallu, there is a wealth of information to confirm the Hittite
text.
First, we note that the kingship of Tabal had survived the Cimmerian invasion, just as the kingship of
Hatti was preserved in Thudkhaliyas III. Secondly, the name of Mursilis‟ grandfather is preserved in
the Assyrian entreaty to the sun-god. We recognised that the name Khulli in the annals of Tiglathpileser III had to be a shortened form of Thudkhaliyas, and there can be little doubt that the true
Hittite rendering of Ishkallu must also be Thudkhaliyas.
As Anatolia emerged from the Cimmerian period, Ishkallu was king of Tabal. As Anatolia emerged
from the period of Kaskan domination, Thudkhaliyas was king of Hatti. Ishkallu of the Assyrian text
was Thudkhaliyas III of Hatti. Once again our recognition that Tabal was the country of Hattusas has
been vindicated.
If Ishkallu were Thudkhaliyas III, then Mugallu must have been the son of the King of Hatti and this
leads to the third correlation, the capture of Melid / Samuha.
Gurney identified Samuha as either the same site as Malatya or another city close to it. It was definitely in
the country of Melid. The latter years of Thudkhaliyas III were the only period in Hittite history, in which
campaigns were based on Samuha.
The fourth similarity between the two histories is the role of Mugallu, sometimes on his own, sometimes with
Ishkallu. The ageing father suffered bouts of ill-health, when he delegated his authority to the crown-prince,
and therefore the Assyrian spies witnessed joint ventures but also forays by Mugallu alone.
Above, we dated the campaign to Sallapa to 679 BC. We can now date the following campaigns against the
Kaska. If the four campaigns were in successive years, then the two campaigns based on Samuha would
have taken place in 678 and 677 BC and the recovery of Hattusas would have occurred in 676 BC, but this
would not explain the march of the Assyrian army to Melid in 675. There would be no point in looking for
Mugallu at Melid if he had moved to Hattusas the previous year. The Assyrians had a network of spies
reporting back to the king. Many of their reports have been found in the excavations of the major Assyrian
cities.
Esarhaddon would have known if Mugallu was no longer in Melid. It appears that the Samuha campaigns
must be dated to 677 and 676 BC and the Hattusas campaign to 675 BC. The need to vacate Samuha would
have been prompted by the Assyrian attack on Sanduarri in 676 BC. It wouldn‟t take much deliberation by
the men of Hatti to see that after Sidon and Cilicia they would be next on Esarhaddon‟s hit-list. The Upper
Lands remained a safe area due to the difficult terrain, and Hattusas was likely to be too far from Assyria,
particularly with bands of the Kaska roaming the lands in between. The winter of 676/675 would have been a
time of intense strategic review for Thudkhaliyas, his son and their senior officers.
They took the bold decision to move north from Samuha, not into the refuge of the Upper Lands, but instead
to march on Hattusas and reclaim the capital. The Assyrian army proceeded to Melid in 675 BC and
encamped against the city, only to find that Mugallu and the Hittite army had left. The Assyrians had been
out-manoeuvred by one of the greatest military geniuses of their age or any other, the man who gave Hatti
back to the Hittites.
42
The son of Thudkhaliyas was probably well into his thirties by this time. He had been brought up in the Upper
Lands and had witnessed the low state of the land of Hatti. All his life the Hittites had been under the
oppression of the Kaska. He would have been told about Sargon of Assyria and how one-by-one he had
taken all the Hittite states in Anatolia and Northern Syria. He would have witnessed the attacks from the land
of Azzi, directed by the king of Mitanni.
As heir to the great kingship of Hatti, it is no wonder that he was dedicated to restoring Hittite possessions
and punishing those who had inflicted such grief on his homeland. When he eventually succeeded to the
throne of Hatti, Mugallu chose a throne name, which did not stress his military prowess, but reflected the
Hittite reverence for mountain springs and his concern to be the provider for his people. He was crowned
Suppiluliumas, which in Hittite means „a well of clear water‟…
Mursilis recognised the contribution of his father to the restoration of Hittite civilisation. He stresses his role of
restitution: „He brought the population back, everyone to his own town‟ and, referring to the Kaska: „And what
he held, that my father took away from him and give it back to the Hittites‟. Mursilis set down his father‟s
achievements in the tablets, which have already helped us to give precision to our reconstruction. He called
the document simply „The Deeds of Suppiluliumas‟.
We have seen that the first four campaigns of Mursilis‟ grandfather and father cover five years, 679 - 675
BC. This precise dating is possible because of the accurate Assyrian and Babylonian information, dated to
the regnal years of Esarhaddon. This first look at Mursilis‟ text confirms our assumption that most of the later
years of Thudkhaliyas III, and most of the early years of Suppiluliumas I, were included in the text and each
major report represents one year‟s campaigning…
Esarhaddon had failed in his attempt to capture Mugallu and he would be deprived of the opportunity to deal
with the Hittite prince. His focus would be on the south, not the north, for the rest of his reign. The Assyrians
campaigned to the border of Egypt in 679 BC, but no direct engagement with Egypt was recorded.
We get a very one-sided view of the situation from Esarhaddon‟s own inscriptions, but the Babylonian
chronicles relate the bad as well as the good. In 674 BC, the Egyptian army, under Taharka, defeated the
Assyrians in Egypt. The war against the Kushites had started in earnest and Assyria was on the back foot.
For the next two years Taharka was free to consolidate his links with Tyre and other towns in Phoenicia and
Palestine, and Egyptian troops were stationed in some of the major cities. There was widespread revolt
against Assyria. Yakilu, ruler of the Phoenician port of Arvad, was hostile to Assyria at this time, as was the
ruler of Tyre. Further South, Askalon in Philistia also rebelled.
In 672 BC, Esarhaddon‟s main concern was to prevent the mayhem which had ensued at his succession to
the Assyrian throne. There was no campaign in this year, the major event being the swearing of oaths by
Assyrian dignitaries, promising that when the time came, they would support the succession of two of his
sons, Ashurbanipal and Shamash-shuma-ukin, as kings of Assyria and Babylonia, respectively.
The Assyrian had used the two years, since the defeat in Egypt, to prepare his response. In 671, the
Assyrians marched to Egypt, besieging Tyre on the way. This time they were successful and Taharka‟s army
was defeated and pushed south, beyond Memphis. Esarhaddon‟s inscriptions record the capture of some
members of Taharka‟s family including his heir, called Ushanahuru by the Assyrians.
The victory was commemorated on a monument set up at Zincirli in Northern Syria. Perhaps the choice of
this site, in an ancient city, on the fringes of Tabal, and presumably at the farthest north-western extent of
Esarhaddon‟s empire, was a deliberate action by the Assyrian King to demonstrate his power and send a
warning to those in Anatolia who had flouted his authority. The stele shows, in relief, the Assyrian King with
two figures, which are about one third the size of the carving of Esarhaddon. The two, one African, one
Syrian, are in shackles. It is normally assumed that they were Ushanahuru, the son of Taharka, and Baal,
the king of Tyre. The text of the stele was clearly meant to be reported back to Mugallu:
„I am all powerful, I am a hero, I am gigantic, I am colossal, I am honoured, I am magnified, I am
without an equal among all kings, the chosen one of Assur ... the unsparing weapon, which utterly
destroys the enemy‟s land, am I ... The King, powerful in combat and battle, destroyer of the
habitations of his foes, who kills his enemies, extirpates his opponents, brings into submission those
who were not submissive to him, who has brought under his sway the totality of all peoples.‟
Luckenbill II, 577/578…
With the rule of Thudkhaliyas III established in Hattusas, further campaigns could be planned to re-establish
the borders of Hatti. The capital was a suitable base for operations further west and the next campaign
43
recorded in „The Deeds‟ was in this direction, to drive out those who had encroached inside the land of Hatti.
Thudkhaliyas‟ health had improved and both father and son went to the lands of Massa and Kamalla to
punish those who had continued to attack Gassiya. Their absence in the west was an opportunity for the
Kaska to cause problems again, east of the capital. When the two leaders returned, Thudkhaliyas took
troops to quell the Kaskan activity. The eastern borders were the arena for the next campaign. Father and
son led the Hittite army in a pitched battle in the land of Kummukh against Lanni of Hayasa.
Once more Thudkhaliyas‟s health failed and he retired to the Upper Lands, leaving his son to deal with
further attacks from the Kaska. Again Mursilis stresses the clearance of the Kaska from the land and the
return of land and possessions to the Hittites.
It remained for one last enemy to be driven out of the land. This was the army of Arzawa, which was still
encroaching in the south-west, using Tuwana (Tuwanuwa in Hittite) as a base. Thudkhaliyas did not go on
this campaign and the last mention of the old king is at the start of the Arzawa episode. The Hittite army was
successful in a lengthy campaign against Anzapahaddu, of Arzawa. There is no mention of the death of
Thudkhaliyas, but it is generally assumed that it occurred at this time. If we assume that the four campaigns
recorded in the document, after the recovery of Hattusas in 675 BC, represent an elapsed time of four years,
then the death of Thudkhaliyas III, in the year of the Arzawan campaign, would be dated to 671 BC.
The Assyrian campaign to Memphis in Egypt in 671, one thousand kilometres from Nineveh, occupied most
of the military resources of Assyria. The King of Hatti would be watching Assyrian progress carefully. Having
evaded the Assyrian thrust to Melid, another attack from Esarhaddon would have been anticipated. A
protracted Hittite campaign against Arzawa, based on Tuwana would only be feasible if the Assyrians were
fully occupied elsewhere. Esarhaddon had shown at Kubushna in 679 BC that he could operate effectively in
the region of Tuwana. Our assumption that the Arzawa campaign took place in 671 seems to fit with the
Assyrian situation. With Esarhaddon‟s forces concentrated on Egypt for the campaign season, it would be
safe to assume that there would be no Assyrian response to a move on Tuwana. However, Esarhaddon
could not completely ignore the Hittites. After the Memphis campaign, he would not have the military
resources available to attack Tabal. His response was to demonstrate that he had dealt with the other major
adversaries, Tyre and Egypt, by setting up the stele on the border of Hatti at Zincerli.
The choice of 671 BC for the year when Thudkhaliyas died was based on the assumption that the „Deeds of
Suppiluliumas‟ describe campaigns in four consecutive years following the capture of Hattusas in 675 BC,
and when we examine the Assyrian records, this lines up with a suitable year for the Arzawa campaign. The
two years after 671 BC would not provide a similar opportunity for the Hittites. There were domestic
problems in Assyria and some senior officials were executed in 670 BC. In 669 BC, another march on Egypt
was attempted but had to be aborted, early in the campaign, when Esarhaddon was taken ill and died. In
either of these years, an Assyrian army could have been despatched to Cilicia to attack the Hittites at
Tuwana. The year 671 BC is the most likely time for the Hittite campaign to Tuwana, due to the absence of
the Assyrian army in Egypt.
The possibilities for advancing the Hittite cause, when the Assyrians were committed to a major campaign in
Egypt, would not be lost on the new Hittite King.
Suppiluliumas I (Revised Reign: 671 – 644 BC)
Suppiluliumas succeeded his father as King of Hatti in 671 BC. This is seven hundred years after the
normally accepted date of 1380 BC. At Nishan Tash, a rock cliff in Boghazkoy, there was a long but badly
weathered hieroglyphic inscription, which gave the genealogy of Suppiluliumas. His father was Thudkhaliyas,
grandfather Hattusilis and great grandfather Thudkhaliyas. The inscription played a part in the deciphering of
Hittite hieroglyphics. In the records of Esarhaddon, we recognised Mugallu as the name of the crown-prince
of Hatti.
At this time, Mugallu was based at Melid, and Ishkhallu was king of Tabal. If we were correct in this
identification, we would expect Mugallu to become King of Tabal and this is exactly the course of events
recounted in the Assyrian inscriptions. Esarhaddon died in 669 BC and his arrangements for the succession
went through smoothly. His son Ashurbanipal became king of Assyria and another son, Shamash-shumaukin, became king of Babylonia. The inscriptions of Ashurbanipal mention Mugallu and always refer to him
as „King of Tabal‟; Melid is never mentioned.
Various commentators have noted that Mugallu replaced his former ally Ishkhallu as king of Tabal
and have wondered how Mugallu took over Tabal. None have come to the obvious conclusion that
Mugallu was the son and heir of Ishkhallu, and he simply inherited Tabal on the death of his father.
44
We must be very careful in reconstructing the early years of Suppiluliumas I of Hatti. As we saw, when we
reviewed the Amarna correspondence, conventional history assumes that Suppiluliumas was the „King of
Hatti‟ mentioned in the letters. We questioned that assumption and now our analysis of the Old and Middle
Hittite Kingdoms has shown that Suppiluliumas lived in the seventh century and was a contemporary of
Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal. The information in the Amarna letters therefore has no relevance to the
reconstruction of the life of Suppiluliumas. In books on the Hittites it is said that he led an unsuccessful
campaign against Mitanni, which was repulsed with heavy losses. There is no evidence of this from Hittite
sources; the information comes only from the Amarna letters.
It can be argued of course that we would not expect a defeat to be mentioned, but there are counter
arguments to this approach. Firstly, Mursilis tended to be quite honest in his historical documents and no
reverse is recorded in the „Deeds of Suppiluliumas‟. Secondly, the historical records of the „Deeds‟ and of
Suppiluliumas himself suggest no early encounter with Mitanni. His treaty with Shattiwaza (CTH51), a later
king of Mitanni, recounts messages between Suppiluliumas and the King of Mitanni, where the Hurrian
threatened to cross over from the east bank of the Euphrates. In the „Deeds‟, the correspondence between
the two kings is also mentioned. Suppiluliumas wrote to the King of Mitanni “So come and fight”, but „he
stayed in Wassukanni, he did not answer and did not come to a battle, so my father went there after him‟…
It is likely that Suppiluliumas had his sights set on a campaign against Mitanni from the start of his reign. All
the insurgents had been driven from the land of Hatti. The one major enemy, which had not been punished,
was Mitanni. The King of Mitanni had instigated the attack on the Hittite refuge of the Upper Lands, smiting
the remnant of Hatti when their fortunes were at their lowest ebb. This would not be forgotten. With the
borders of Hatti restored and the population re-settled in the towns, the opportunity was there to exact
revenge on the Mitannian enemy. Also the new king of Hatti would want to send a clear message to Hatti‟s
enemies, that he would not tolerate action against his domain.
Suppiluliumas employed both military and diplomatic means as his first steps in the war with Mitanni. An
agreement was reached with the King of Hurri, which should remove him as a potential ally of Mitanni. Next
he moved to establish control over all the land west of the Euphrates, from Tegarama in the North to
Armatana, just north of the country of Carchemish. The Shattiwaza treaty (CTH51) recounts that this brought
an angry missive from the King of Mitanni:
„Why are you plundering the West Bank of the Euphrates? If you plunder the West Bank of the
Euphrates, then I too will plunder the West Bank of the Euphrates‟.
The response of Suppiluliumas was to pre-empt the Mitannian threat. He crossed to the East Bank of the
Euphrates and took Isuwa, which had been under Mitannian control for probably a decade since the attack
on the Upper Lands. The King of Mitanni refused the challenge to „come and fight‟, so the next campaign
would be against Wassukanni itself.
It is unlikely when Suppiluliumas embarked on the attack on the Mitannian homeland, that even he
envisaged what would be accomplished in that single year. He was focussed on revenge on Hatti‟s greatest
enemy and the army was prepared for a great battle. They crossed the Euphrates at Malatya and re-instated
authority over Isuwa. Moving east, the army took the city of Kutmar, which was situated on the borders of the
land of Alshi (called Alzi by the Assyrians and Urartians). To safeguard his passage though the country,
Suppiluliumas gave Kutmar as a present to Antaratli of Alshi. Further east, the Hittite forces reached the land
of Shuta, which they plundered. This must be the country called Shupria by the Assyrians, on the southwestern shores of Lake Van. Shupria had been included in the Assyrian empire in 673BC by Esarhaddon.
If there is still any doubt that Mitanni was Urartu, this must be dispelled by the route of Suppiluliumas‟
campaign. From Isuwa through Alzi to Shupria was a preferred route for an attack on Urartu. This approach,
up the valley of the Murat Su, a tributary of the Euphrates, had been taken by Shalmaneser III in his
campaigns against Urartu in 855 and 844 BC. It was also followed by both Tiglath-Pileser I and III of Assyria
in their campaigns against Urartu. (See Map 4 for the Hittite campaigns to Mitanni.)
From Shupria, already four hundred miles from Hattusas, it was just another fifty miles to the Eastern
shore of Lake Van and the Urartian capital. The king of Mitanni did not attack. He withdrew and
allowed his capital to be plundered. The expected clash with the army of Mitanni did not happen.
Instead the city was looted by the Hittites.
It is interesting to note that in his campaign against Urartu in 844 BC, Shalmaneser III also headed east from
„Ishua‟. He also failed to engage the Urartian king who withdrew to the safety of an impenetrable mountain.
45
The terrain around the Urartian capital afforded this option and it seems that the King of Mitanni took refuge
in the mountains, just as a predecessor had done at the approach of Shalmaneser.
Laden with spoil, but unbloodied by a major battle, the Hittite army returned eastwards. Despite the
long marches, the campaigning season was not over and the Hittite king decided on a bold strategy
to fulfil another ambition, to regain all the Hittite territory of Northern Syria that had been lost to
Assyria in the previous century.
Letters were despatched to the North Syrian rulers, but the land was not as pro-Hittite as it had been before
the mass deportations ordered by Tiglath-Pileser III and his successors. The Hittite states of the previous
century would have turned to Hatti from Assyrian domination with enthusiasm, but now some chose to resist
the Hittite advance. Aleppo and Alalakh were taken, but there was some resistance south of Aleppo. The
ancient Hittite territory of Hamath would probably have been Suppiluliumas‟ southernmost target, but the
king of Kinsa decided to attack.
Suppiluliumas considered this was Egyptian territory and would have left it alone, but after this provocation
he defeated the army of Kinsa and proceeded as far as Qatna on the Orontes. The forces of Apina in the
land of Damascus came forward for battle but they were also defeated.
These were spirited efforts of resistance by non-Hittite centres, but the armies of the small Syrian
states were no match for the Hittite legions. The Hittite King summed up his achievements:
„Because of the presumptuousness of King Tushratta (of Mitanni), I plundered all of these
lands in one year and brought them to Hatti. From Mount Lebanon and from the far bank of
the Euphrates I made them my territory.‟
In a single year, Suppiluliumas had recovered the ancient Hittite lands. In the same way that he had
given Hatti back to the Hittites, he had now recovered all the Hittite states which had been annexed
by Sargon - with one exception, Carchemish. The great fortress on the Euphrates had not
succumbed.
Aleppo was made the centre of Hittite administration in Syria. A Hittite garrison was stationed there and the
rule of Syria was entrusted to his son Telepinus who, presumably because of previous religious
responsibilities, was sometimes called „The Priest‟.
The time of Suppiluliumas‟ great campaign was a momentous year in Hittite history, but which year? We
have seen that the new king of Hatti came to the throne in 671 BC and that a few years must have elapsed
before he set out to attack Wassukanni. It seems that the capture of Northern Syria was opportunist. He did
not set out with this intention because he expected pitched battles against Mitanni. After the expected battle
with the Mittanian army failed to materialise, events elsewhere may have convinced him that he could attack
Northern Syria without encountering massive resistance. We must look at the events of the early years of his
reign to identify a year in which a campaign into Syria could be mounted.
Ashurbanipal, son of Esarhaddon, had become King of Assyria on the death of his father in 669 BC. He
inherited his father‟s war with Taharka, the Kushite King of Egypt. His father‟s death, en route to Egypt, had
stalled Assyria‟s plans, giving Taharka time to regroup. Memphis had been re-taken by the Kushite and
Taharka was liaising with the native Egyptian rulers of the Nile Delta, who had been installed by Esarhaddon.
From Ashurbanipal‟s viewpoint, all the success of his father against Egypt had been negated in the three
years since the victory of 671 BC. Not surprisingly, all Ashurbanipal‟s efforts in his early years were aimed at
restoring Assyrian power over Egypt. Two years after his father‟s death, the Assyrian army, strengthened by
contingents from Syria, marched south once more. An Egyptian force, sent out by Taharka, was defeated,
and on hearing of the defeat, the Egyptian King abandoned Memphis and retreated up-river towards Thebes.
The Assyrians found out about the complicity of the Nile rulers and stopped their pursuit of Taharka in order
to punish the conspirators, exacting vicious retribution on several Delta cities. Memphis and the Nile Delta
were once again put under Assyrian rule. Upper Egypt remained Kushite.
The events of 667 BC would afford the opportunity for Suppiluliumas to annexe Northern Syria. With
Assyrian and Syrian forces fully occupied in Egypt, there would be little resistance to an attack. He
would probably have been made aware of the Assyrian activities, while he was campaigning in the
land of Mitanni, and have realised that Northern Syria would have to rely on its own forces, without
the support of the Assyrians.
46
The Great Campaign must have taken place in 667 BC, year four of Suppiluliumas, when Assyrian
forces were concentrated on Egypt. This dating fits very well with the information from the „Deeds of
Suppiluliumas‟ and from the treaty between Suppiluliumas and Shattiwaza, which suggest that the
campaign was early in the reign of the Hittite King. He was not the only one in 667 BC to take
advantage of the absence of the major part of the Assyrian army. The Elamites chose the same year
to invade Babylonia, reaching Babylon itself. It was some time before the Assyrians could muster
enough troops to scare them off.
The campaign of 667 BC had been a major undertaking for the Hittite army, marching from Hattusas
to Wassukanni on the far shore of Lake Van, then returning westwards before striking deep into
Syria. Finally, most of the troops would return to Hatti, laden with spoil. The complete itinerary was
probably more than a thousand miles. It was approximately the same distance as the round trip from
Nineveh to Memphis and back, achieved by a different army, in the same year.
Wassukanni
In 667 BC, Suppiluliumas sacked the Mitannian capital city, Wassukanni. Archaeologists have never
discovered this important ancient centre of Hurrian culture. Many attempts to locate it have been made but
without success. In our reconstruction of ancient Hittite history, the time when Wassukanni flourished has
been moved from the second millennium to the first half of the seventh century BC. Before the time of
Suppiluliumas, Hittite references to Mitanni do not name the capital, so we can only state that the name of
the city was Wassukanni during the period, which starts with the reign of Suppiluliumas, i.e. from 671 BC
onwards.
We have already argued that Mitanni was actually the land of Urartu, and therefore Wassukanni had
to be the capital of Urartu, but there is no doubt that the capital of Urartu was called Tushpa! This
name is mentioned many times, both in Urartian and Assyrian inscriptions. How can this difference
of names be explained?
In 667 BC, when Suppiluliumas sacked Wassukanni, Rusa II was king of Urartu. He had already
reigned for several years, being mentioned by Esarhaddon in 673 BC. His father, Argishti II had
started an extension of the capital on the hill of Toprakkale. This was completed by Rusa and he
named his new residence Rusakina, the city of Rusa. The name Tushpa was retained for the old city,
but the new development became the home of the Kings of Urartu. Rusakina remained the residence
of the kings of Urartu for about a century, to the demise of Urartian independence.
We have previously noted that the Hittite syllable „wa‟ can be equivalent to the letter „r‟ and therefore „Wassu‟
was probably pronounced as „ursu‟, which is the same as the way the Assyrians wrote the name of Rusa.
There is a similar example in the treaty between Hattusilis III and Rameses II, which has extant copies in
both Hittite and Egyptian. The Egyptian version of the royal name of Rameses begins with „User‟, which in
the Hittite version of the treaty is written „Wassa‟.
Further search for the Mitannian capital Wassukanni will be fruitless. The famous city has already
been excavated. The remains of Wassukanni are on the hill of Toprakkale, by the modern city of Van
in Eastern Turkey. The site was first excavated in 1879 and has been regularly excavated since that
date. Many examples of Urartian art in the museums of the world come from the site of ancient
Rusakina. The throne unearthed at Toprakkale had features which are also found in Hittite art.
Wassukanni was Rusakina. Despite the similarities of the names, this conclusion has never been considered
by historians. How could they! Rusakina did not exist until the first half of the seventh century BC, seven
hundred years, supposedly, after Suppiluliumas sacked Wassukanni…
The newly conquered territories were quickly brought under Hittite rule by the signing of treaties, and several
of these documents were found by the excavators of Boghazkoy. In particular there was a treaty between
Suppiluliumas and Aziru of Amurru (CTH49). According to the treaty with Aziru, he „came up from the gate of
Egyptian territory and became a vassal of the King of Hatti‟, which might suggest he had previously been
one of the kings, which Esarhaddon accused of siding with Taharka. Aziru was praised for his loyalty to Hatti
and Hittite troops were stationed in Amurru to protect him…
In our original analysis of the life of Suppiluliumas I, we noted that the location of Amurru in the Amarna
letters was different to its location as derived from Hittite information. In the Amarna period it was located
around Damascus and Coele-Syria; in the time of Suppiluliumas I it was located further north, close to
Hamath. How can this be explained?...
47
At the start of Sargon‟s reign, Hamath, the Hittite kingdom on the middle Orontes, led a rebellion. The rebels
fought the Assyrians at Karkar in 720 BC and were defeated. Sargon continued his predecessor‟s policy,
removing many of the inhabitants of Hamath.
In the reign of Sargon, the Assyrian texts used the term „Amurru‟ for the whole of Syria and
Palestine. Sargon recorded that he resettled Mannean rebels (from the land south of Lake Urmia) in
„Hatti of Amurru‟, which must mean the land of Hamath, the portion of Amurru occupied by Hittites.
We have here the explanation for the new location of Amurru in the time of Suppiluliumas. As Esarhaddon
and Ashurbanipal concentrated their efforts on Egypt, their hold on Northern Syria waned. „Hatti of Amurru‟
became an independent kingdom, located in the area of Hamath, but now populated by Arameans,
Manneans and no doubt a Hittite remnant…
Using the „Deeds of Suppiluliumas‟, we have reconstructed thirteen years of Hittite history. The attack on
Sallapa was dated to 679 BC; the campaigns from Samuha, to the years 677-675 BC. We then tentatively
dated the Arzawa campaign to 671 BC and the Great Campaign to Wassukanni to 667 BC, on the grounds
that these were years when the Assyrian forces were occupied in Egypt and could not interfere with the
Hittite advances…
The next portion of the document will not allow any margin of error. „Fragment 28' is not really a fragment,
being the largest single intact section of the „Deeds‟… This part of our work is particularly important because
fragment 28 covers the siege of Carchemish, a pivotal point in research into ancient chronology, and one
which Velikovsky re-defined. It provides a crucial link between Hittite and Egyptian history. Velikovsky used
information from the story of the siege of Carchemish to show that Suppiluliumas lived in the first half of the
seventh century.
We have already reconstructed over two hundred years of Hittite history and the most recent years with
significant precision. It is clear that we have already come to a similar conclusion as Velikovsky, by
independent means, but we have developed a much more precise dating for the early years of
Suppiluliumas. We are now in a position to put one of Velikovsky‟s assertions to a very stringent test…
The „Deeds of Suppiluliumas‟ continue the story of the King‟s early years. After the Great Campaign, the
major concern was fortification of the lands which had been taken. Building work was started in two towns,
called Athulissa and Tuhupurpuna, and then another town, Almina, was next on the list. Unfortunately in
Almina, a plague broke out in the army. The Kaska saw an opportunity and attacked, but the Hittite
commanders in the various towns prevailed. After further rebuilding work in Tummana, Suppiluliumas
returned to Hattusas for the winter. The next year was spent in Istahara, which had been held by the Kaska.
Again, he came back to Hattusas for the winter.
Initial events of the third year after the Great Campaign focus on Telepinus, who from his base at Aleppo
was in charge of the new Hittite holdings in Syria. He had to defeat some troops who had attacked his army
at night. The victory seemed to have consolidated his position in Northern Syria, but he could not change the
stance of Carchemish, which continued to resist him.
He decided that the Carchemish issue required a review of strategy. He left a sizeable army in the land of
Carchemish, at a town called Murmuriga; under a general, called Lupakki, were six hundred men and
chariots. „The Priest‟ travelled towards Hattusas to discuss the situation with his father. They met in the town
of Uda, where the King was performing a religious festival, but events were moving quickly further south. In
Telepinus‟ absence, a superior force of Hurrians surrounded Lupakki and his men at Murmuriga. News of
this setback was brought to the King and his son, and their response was swift.
Hittite troops were mustered and Suppiluliumas reviewed them in Tegarama. He sent his son
Arnuwandas on ahead, with a contingent of troops, to engage the Hurrians. When Suppiluliumas
arrived with the main force, the enemy had already been defeated and had scattered. The way was
now open to re-take Carchemish, which, if our reconstruction is correct, had been lost to the
Assyrians half a century before, when Pisiris, the Hittite king of the great city, had surrendered to
Sargon in 717 BC.
The Hittite army marched to the fortress on the banks of the Euphrates, and surrounded it. The text at this
point is damaged, but it mentions the river and ships, so it appears that steps were taken to prevent escape
by water. No sooner had the Hittite army settled in for a lengthy siege when an Egyptian messenger arrived
and asked for an audience with the Great King. He had brought a letter from the Queen of Egypt.
48
The Queen of Egypt
When Suppiluliumas read the letter he was astonished:
„My husband has died. I have no son, but they say you have many sons. If you would give me a son
of yours, he would become my husband. Never shall I pick out one of my servants and make him my
husband..... I am afraid!‟
Mursilis relates that her name was Dahamunzu (pronounced Dakhamunzu) and the dead pharaoh was
called Nibhururiya (pronounced Nibkhururiya). Suppiluliumas was not convinced by the letter and decided to
check things out. He sent Hattusa-ziti, one of his senior officials, to Egypt to find out the truth.
In the mean-time, Suppiluliumas took Carchemish after a tremendous battle on the eighth day of the siege.
On the citadel, the King paid his respects to the Hittite gods of the City. Another son, Sharre-Kushukh, was
installed as king of Carchemish. Over three thousand prisoners, plus much silver and gold, were taken back
to Hattusas. In the following spring, Hattusa-ziti returned from Egypt with another letter:
„Why did you say “they deceive me”? If I had a son, would I have written about my own and my
country‟s shame to a foreign land? He who was my husband has died. A son I have not! Never shall
I take a servant of mine and make him my husband. I have written to no other country, only to you.
They say your sons are many, so give me one. He will be my husband, but in Egypt he will be king.‟
This time Suppiluliumas was persuaded and agreed to send a son to become pharaoh.
Velikovsky identified Dahamunzu as Duk-hat-amen, the wife of Taharka, the Kushite pharaoh. This
name was unique among Egyptian queens. He also pointed out that the royal name of Taharka ended
with „khu-ra‟ (the full name was actually Nefertum-khu-ra). We can now check if these assertions are
feasible.
49
We have described events from the „Deeds of Suppiluliumas‟, spanning four years. In the document,
the description of these four years follows immediately after the description of the Great Campaign.
If we assume that these years follow on immediately from 667 BC, the year of the Great Campaign,
the dates are as follows:
666 BC, Fortification of Almina and Tummana
665 BC, Fortification of Istahara
664 BC, Siege of Carchemish, death of the pharaoh
663 BC, Return of Hattusa-ziti from Egypt with the second letter.
After the battles against Assyria in 667 BC, Taharka retreated up the Nile towards the southern
capital Thebes. The Assyrians appointed one of the Delta rulers, called Nekau...No more is heard of
Taharka. It is generally assumed that he died in 664 BC, the year before his nephew regained full, but
brief, control of the whole of Egypt.
Our detailed reconstruction, using the Hittite texts and the Assyrian records of Esarhaddon and
Ashurbanipal, has confirmed Velikovsky‟s identification of Dahamunzu. We have dated the siege of
Carchemish to 664 BC and this is the accepted date for the death of the Kushite pharaoh, Taharka
Nefertum-khu-ra. We have used the Assyrian texts from the first part of the seventh century BC to
provide accurate dates for the deeds of the Hittite King, Suppiluliumas. We have shown that the most
likely year for the death of Dahamunzu‟s husband was 664 BC and this was the year of the death of
Duk-hat-amen‟s husband…
Perhaps the most convincing argument in favour of a wife of Taharka was the political situation in
664 BC. The Kushite rule over Egypt was severely threatened by the Assyrians who had completed
two major invasions of Lower Egypt. To whom could she turn for military support? Only one man
had stood against the Assyrians in the last decade. He had eluded Esarhaddon at Melid and had now
taken Northern Syria. An alliance by marriage, with the only country strong enough to defy Assyria,
was her best chance to turn the tide against her enemy. The situation that faced the Kushites was
perilous, and therefore they sought an alliance with the Hittite king. Duk-hat-amen wrote to
Suppiluliumas, and only to him.
The efforts to form an alliance were in vain. Suppiluliumas despatched his son, Zananza, to marry the Queen
of Egypt, but the young man was murdered on his way to Egypt, presumably by Assyrians or native
Egyptians. Despite the setback, Tandamane, a nephew of Taharka, marched north from Thebes in 663 BC
and retook Memphis after a bloody battle against the Assyrian garrison. The Delta rulers, preferring the
Kushites to the Assyrians, also turned to his side and for a brief moment both Upper and Lower Egypt were
back under Kushite rule. The Assyrian riposte was swift, cruel and complete. They not only took the Delta,
but this time marched south to Thebes, inflicting a crushing assault, which etched itself in the memories of
many. The greatest city of its day, called No-Amen, the residence of the supreme Egyptian deity, felt the full
wrath of the Assyrian king. Years later the Hebrew prophet, Nahum, recalled the carnage:
„Will you fare better than No-Amon? - she that lay by the streams of the Nile,
surrounded by water, whose rampart was the Nile, waters her wall;
Cush and Egypt were her strength, and it was boundless,
Put and the Lybians brought her help.
She too became an exile and went into captivity,
her infants were dashed to the ground at every street corner,
her nobles were shared out by lot, all her great men were thrown into chains.‟
Duk-hat-amen‟s attempt to form an alliance with Hatti had failed. Perhaps if Suppiluliumas had not
treated her first letter with incredulity and had acted immediately, the extra months may have made
the difference. As it was, the Kushites retreated to the South and Nekau, the Assyrian nominee,
became pharaoh.
Not only does our reconstruction confirm precisely the date of the letter from the Egyptian Queen, we also
find a much more convincing context for her approach to the Great King of Hatti…
50
Carchemish was to become the seat of the „Viceroy of Syria‟, the representative of the Great King of
Hatti in the southern part of what had now become a Hittite Empire. The administration of Syria
would be the responsibility of the King of Carchemish. This post was entrusted to another son,
Sharre-Kushukh. We saw that Mugallu had assumed a „throne name‟ of Suppiluliumas and there is
evidence that each Hittite king from then on was given a new name on his accession. This also
happened to Sharre-Kushukh, when he was appointed as King of Carchemish. He was given the
name Piyasilis.
By the end of 664 BC, Suppiluliumas had restored all Hittite territory. The great fortress on the
Euphrates had been the last piece in the Hittite jig-saw. In just fifteen years, he and his father,
Thudkhaliyas, had restored Hittite power and had emulated their greatly-revered ancestor Labarnas,
who had ruled most of the Hittite lands. The ravages of Sargon of Assyria, who had ended Hittite rule
of so many of their ancestral cities, had been overturned. Hatti had been restored to the Hittites and
the ancient shrines of the Hittite gods were restored to their earthly representatives.
The significance of this restoration was not lost on the Great King. As we will see below, he was mindful of
the need to re-establish the old order. What better way to mark the restoration of Carchemish to Hittite
ownership, than to crown his son, Sharre-Kushukh, with the name of the last Hittite king of Carchemish.
Pisiris, as the Assyrians wrote the name, had been King of Carchemish for over twenty years before he was
removed by Sargon. He is first mentioned in a list of kings of 738 BC, by Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria. History
knows of only one earlier king of Carchemish, Sangara, who ruled in the middle of the ninth century BC, so
we do not know if the name Pisiris / Piyasilis was the name of other kings of the city. What we do know is
that Pisiris was the last in a Hittite line stretching back to Sangara. When Carchemish was reclaimed for the
Hittites, the new king was given the same name, to signify the restoration of Hittite rule.
In conventional chronology, the name Piyasilis has no special import. Piyasilis, six hundred years before
Pisiris means nothing. In our revised chronology, the choice of the name given to Sharre-Kushukh has
special relevance. Piyasilis as the Hittite successor to Pisiris is highly significant…
So far through our reconstruction of Hittite history, we have shown that the Kingdoms of Hattusas
did not exist in the second millennium, but were actually the same as the Kingdom of Tabal, one of
the so-called Neo-Hittite states of the first millennium. The Kingdoms of Hattusas did not pre-date the
Neo-Hittite kingdoms; they existed at the same time. Hittite civilisation consisted of a single
integrated experience, beginning at the start of the ninth century BC and continuing down into the
seventh century, at least…
The Neo-Hittite culture was not influenced by memories and relics of a distant golden age. The Hittite
culture of Cilicia and Northern Syria in the first millennium was simply the provincial version of the
contemporary, definitive Hittite culture based north of the Halys.
Among the sculpture attributed to Suhis are lions, which guarded the approach to the Great Staircase,
leading to the citadel. The lions reproduce, in considerable detail, the lions carved on the portals of one of
the main entrances to Hattusas, the Lion Gate.
The lion, a symbol of power, was always a common subject for ancient sculpture, and a host of examples
have been unearthed by archaeologists, but of all the examples from Hittite, Syrian and Mesopotamian sites,
no two examples are as similar as those from Hattusas and Carchemish. They have the same shape head
with a circular mane, open mouths and downward pointing tongue, the same details of the nose, lips and eye
sockets and most distinctive of all, they have the same semi-circular, upright ears.
Identical lions were also carved on a monument of the god Atarluhas, from the same Suhis / Katuwas
collection. James Mellaart, an expert on Anatolian art ascribed the reconstruction of Hattusas to
Suppiluliumas:
„It was probably Suppiluliumas who conceived the grandiose reconstruction and the huge
fortifications surrounding the upper city, which was eventually to cover 168 hectares, the largest
bronze age site in Turkey ... the upper city had five gates; three of them decorated with monumental
sculptures - the King‟s Gate, Lion Gate and Sphinx Gate.‟
This conclusion was well-founded. Several times the „Deeds‟ mentions the fortifications built on the
instructions of the King, and it would be imperative to strengthen the defences of the capital following their
breach by the Kaska. The lion sculptures confirm our assumption.
51
Suhis was „Country Lord‟ of Carchemish at the time of Suppiluliumas. Woolley and Sams dated the
Suhis/Katuwas sculpture to the seventh century on artistic grounds. Independently we have dated
Suppiluliumas to the seventh century.
The lions of Hattusas were carved in the time of Suppiluliumas and they are virtually identical to the
lions of Carchemish from the time of Suhis. Suhis did not live in the tenth century; he was a senior
official at Carchemish in the middle of the seventh century, after the city had been retaken by the
King of Hatti.
This conclusion has major implications for the understanding of the development of Neo-Hittite art. There are
many other examples of Hittite art from other cities, which show similarities to the Suhis / Katuwas group. All
these must also be re-dated to the seventh century…
An inscription of Suhis II mentions a „Great King Thudkhaliyas‟. In conventional chronology, Suhis
lived around 900 BC, over three hundred years after the last Great King of Hatti called Thudkhaliyas.
We now know that Suhis II was at Carchemish just a few years after the death of Thudkhaliyas III in
671 BC…
After the successes of the previous years, Suppiluliumas ruled all the lands in Northern Syria, west of the
Euphrates. Now we have placed him in the seventh century, his Syrian Empire abutted the lands ruled by
Ashurbanipal of Assyria.
The last city, Carchemish, had been taken from occupiers who did not revere the Hittite gods, requiring the
temple of Kubaba to be restored by Suhis and his son. Later, in the time of Suppiluliumas‟ successor, the
Hittites had to defend Carchemish from the Assyrians. It is therefore safe to assume that the city had been
taken from the Assyrians. An Assyrian governor was recorded for Carchemish in 691 BC. The Assyrian
tenure of Carchemish lasted until 664 BC, when Suppiluliumas‟ troops stormed the city. The Hittites now
faced the Assyrians across the Euphrates. With all the ancestral homeland of the Hittites under his control
and Mitanni punished, Suppiluliumas had no desire for further conquest in the south and east. It was time to
regularise relations with the Assyrians and in so doing stabilise his new borders.
Dynastic Marriages
Around 662 BC or a little later, Ashurbanipal besieged Tyre, the great port on the Mediterranean. The port
was on an island offshore and always proved difficult to assault. The city was not taken, but its king, Baal,
surrendered, and the Assyrians claimed much booty. In his inscriptions, Ashurbanipal, follows the account of
the siege with information about approaches from two Anatolian kings, Mugallu of Tabal and Sandasarme of
Khilakku. In typical fashion he makes more of these contacts than was warranted:
„Mugallu, king of Tabal, who had addressed words of enmity to the kings, my fathers, brought a
daughter, the offspring of his loins, with a large dowry to Nineveh, to serve as my concubine, and he
kissed my feet. On Mugallu, I laid a yearly tribute of large horses.
Sandasarme, king of Hilakku, who had not submitted to the kings, my fathers, who did not bear their
yoke, brought a daughter, the offspring of his loins, with a large dowry to Nineveh, to serve as my
concubine, and he kissed my feet.‟
Luckenbill II, 781/782
Whether these two kings actually came in person to Nineveh, should not be assumed from the bombastic
Assyrian account. We saw from the records of Shalmaneser III, that the term „kissed my feet‟ should not be
taken literally.
Large horses look more like a gift from an equal than the tribute of a vassal. There was no reason for the two
kings to submit to Ashurbanipal, given that they had resisted his more powerful father Esarhaddon. It seems
that Ashurbanipal was now being offered friendship, whereas previously Mugallu, in particular, had been
anything but friendly…
We see that a few years after taking Carchemish, Suppiluliumas made peace with the Assyrian King. The gift
of a daughter was the most tangible means of confirming that he had no desire to attack Assyria. Clearly any
move in that direction would endanger her life. The Hittite King appeared to be satisfied with his conquests
and was ready to use dynastic marriage as a way of cementing peaceful relations with Assyria.
52
In terms of our reconstruction, the timing of the entente cordiale with Assyria is very important. We
have dated Suppiluliumas‟ conquests to the years preceding the gift of his daughter to the Assyrian
king. If the marriage had happened just a few years earlier it would have called into question all our
dating of the Hittite advances. Coming as it does, no earlier than 662 BC, two years after the last
attack on Assyrian holdings; it is completely consistent with our timing of events.
It is inconceivable that the Hittite king would offer his daughter in marriage whilst he was engaged in
conquering Northern Syria, but to do so shortly after the end of his campaigning is exactly what we
would expect, from a king who used dynastic marriage as a political expedient.
Suppiluliumas also gave a daughter to Huqqana of Hayasa, to the east of Hattusas, to help relations with
that land…. Through various marriages, both his own and his daughters‟, Suppiluliumas sought to stabilise
the political situation. This is stated in the Hittite texts, which record marriages arranged with Babylon and
Hayasa. The Assyrian texts demonstrate this same approach to international relations by the king of Tabal,
in the same period, showing us that Suppiluliumas also arranged a marriage for his daughter to
Ashurbanipal. It is likely that each of these marriages took place within a few years of each other, around
660 BC.
After the siege of Carchemish and the correspondence with the Egyptian Queen, the „Deeds of
Suppiluliumas‟ record only two major campaigns, one against the Kaska and one against Hurri, although the
second was mainly entrusted to the King‟s sons… Suppiluliumas had been involved in conflicts in nearly
every year from 679 BC to 664 BC, by which time he was probably approaching his fifties. We would expect
his military activities to slow down, due to his age and also the lack of major problems within his realm.
Suppiluliumas summarised his reign as twenty years of war against the Kaska and six years of conflict in the
Hurri lands. If these remarks are to be taken to mean that the „Hurri War‟ followed the Kaska wars, then this
final major conflict of his reign took place in the late 650s and early 640s BC…
The King of Mitanni, called Tushratta in the treaties, was assassinated. The King of Hurri, Shuttarna, son of
Artatama, was implicated in the murder. He was the puppet of the king of Assyria and gave many of the
treasures of Wassukanni to the Assyrian King. He returned a door of silver and gold, which a previous King
of Mitanni had taken from Assyria. He also gave gifts to the King of Alshi. Mitannian noblemen were
extradited to Assyria and many were executed in the city Taite. One of Tushratta‟s sons, named Shattiwaza,
along with another senior member of the ruling class, Aki-teshub, managed to escape the mayhem.
The two, accompanied by a force of two hundred chariots, fled to Babylonia, but this did not turn out to be a
solution to their predicament. The King of Babylon was not sympathetic and confiscated the chariot force and
the men‟s possessions. Shattiwaza was once again in danger of being killed. He managed to escape the
clutches of the King of Babylon and fled once more, this time with only two Hurrian warriors, two other
attendants, three chariots, and the clothes he was wearing. Babylon, as a neutral in the Mitannian troubles,
had looked like the best chance to find help, but that plan had failed. In desperation, Shattiwaza decided that
he would throw himself at the mercy of his father‟s enemy, the Great King of Hatti, Suppiluliumas.
The small band made the long journey from Babylon to Hatti and found the royal entourage, south of
Hattusas, by the Halys River. Shattiwaza threw himself at the feet of the Great King. We do not know if
Suppiluliumas was truly sympathetic to Shattiwaza‟s plight or whether he simply recognised an opportunity.
Whatever the Great King‟s motives, the fugitive prince was welcomed and fully de-briefed on the Mitannian
situation. The treaty goes on to say that Suppiluliumas promised that if the Great King defeated Shuttarna,
he would install Shattiwaza as King of Mitanni.
The Mitannian prince was treated as one of the King‟s own sons and given many gifts. Marriage to one of the
Hittite princesses followed. If Shattiwaza could be installed as King of Mitanni, Suppiluliumas‟ daughter
would be Queen of Mitanni and the land would become a Hittite protectorate. There remained the small
matter of the defeat of the King of Hurri, Shuttarna, who might be able to call on help from his sponsor, the
King of Assyria…
The „Deeds‟ document tells of an initial battle at Harran, one hundred kilometres east of Carchemish. Harran,
where the Hebrew patriarch Abraham had lived over a thousand years earlier, had featured little in
international politics in the previous centuries, but it was to be involved regularly in the major conflicts of the
next hundred years. The resistance from this forward outpost of Shuttarna was quickly destroyed, and the
march continued to Irrite. Here the major battle took place in front of the city. Troops and chariotry came out
from the city to meet the Hittites in pitched battle. A fragment of the „Deeds‟ talks of the superior numbers of
the Hurri chariotry, but the gods helped the two princes. The Hurrian army was captured and destroyed.
Having witnessed the Hittite victory, the people of Irrite pleaded for peace terms.
53
An Assyrian army had come to assist Shuttarna. While the princes had taken Irrite, the Assyrians had
marched to Wassukanni, the Mitannian capital. A messenger came to Irrite to say that the Assyrians were
coming for battle. The main Hurrian force had been defeated, but direct conflict with Assyria was now likely.
The Hittite army advanced towards Wassukanni. As they marched through the land of Mitanni, they were
welcomed by the population as liberators. The city of Pakarippa came over to their side. The Assyrians had
been refused entry to Wassukanni and with the advance of the Hittite army, swelled by Mittanians, they
withdrew without a battle…
Shuttarna, King of Hurri had sought to take over the land of Mitanni, to make it tributary to Assyria, but
Piyasilis had defeated the Hurri army, driven off the Assyrians and put Shattiwaza on the throne of his father
in Wassukanni…
In 639 BC, a different king of Urartu, Sarduri, sent emissaries to Ashurbanipal. This king, called Sarduri III by
historians, is also known from a few administrative tablets found in Urartu. Sarduri III replaced Rusa II
between 654 and 639 BC. This time frame, provided by Assyrian records, is the same as that deduced
above from the Hittite records. From the texts of Suppiluliumas, we concluded that the six year Hurri War
probably spanned the years 651 to 646 BC. Shattiwaza must have been Sarduri III of Urartu. Is the name
Shattiwaza the Hittite equivalent of the Urartian Sarduri?
The cuneiform name Shattiwaza begins with the sign, which we met before in the name Madduwattas. The
sign can be vocalised as any one of kur, shad, shat, mat or mad. Over the years historians have called the
Mitannian prince, Kurtiwaza, Mattiwaza and eventually, from the 1990s onwards after comparison with other
usages, Shattiwaza. We have already seen examples where the syllable „wa‟ in Hittite becomes „r‟ in other
languages. Shattiwaza could therefore be pronounced as Sadirza or Saduriz. In Assyrian records, the
Urartian name Sarduri, the name of three or four Urartian kings, was written various ways as: Siduri,
Sarduari and even Ishtar-duri. The form of the name in Hieroglyphic Hittite is Sasturas. This name was found
on a monument in Northern Syria and for years was thought to refer to Sarduri II of Urartu, but further
analysis showed Sasturas to be a servant of the ruler of Carchemish. Shattiwaza was Sarduri III of Urartu…
Much more exact is the reference by Shattiwaza to his great-great grandfather, who took a door of silver and
gold by force from the land of Assyria. His name is given as Saushtatar, which must be another attempt at
Sarduri (it is virtually identical to the version Ishtar-duri).
This gives us two pieces of information, which must be valid for Urartu, if we have been correct up to now.
Firstly, the great-great grandfather of Sarduri III must also have been a king of Urartu and been named
Sarduri. Secondly, the earlier Sarduri must have been powerful enough to raid Assyria. When we examine
the list of Urartian kings, we find that the same Urartian royal family ruled for many generations, son
succeeding father, down to Rusa II.
Working backwards from Rusa II, the kings were Argishti II, Rusa I and Sarduri II, who was the great
grandfather of Rusa II. Sarduri III was the son of Rusa II, so his great-great grandfather was also a Sarduri.
Sarduri II was the Urartian king who was eventually defeated by Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria. Sarduri II, and
his father Argishti I, were the only two Urartian kings who claimed power over Assyria. Sarduri II recorded
successful wars against Assyria on one of two steles set up in two large niches on the southern slopes of
Tushpa, the Urartian capital. We have already met this king in the records of Niqmepa of Alalakh.
The information in the Shattiwaza treaty agrees exactly with the history of Urartu. In both the Hittite
record and Urartian history, a Sarduri was the great-great grandfather of another Sarduri, and the
earlier king dominated Assyria…
When Mitanni controlled the land east of the Euphrates, in the early years of Suppiluliumas, the King of Hurri
also had interests in the West, concluding an agreement with Shunashura I of Kizzuwatna, no doubt to
provide a trade outlet to the Mediterranean. Harran, east of Carchemish, was under the control of the King of
Hurri, providing initial resistance to the eastward march of Piyasilis and Shattiwaza. Hurri, like Mitanni, was
ethnically a Hurrian kingdom, speaking the Hurrian language.
If Mitanni were Urartu, then the Land of Hurri must have been to the south of Urartu, nearer Assyria.
In the first millennium, there was a Hurrian kingdom that generally maintained its independence from
Urartu, spoke a dialect of Urartian, was south of Urartu, and was at times a vassal of Assyria. This
was the land of Musasir…
54
The use of seals by the Hittites splits between
stamp seals in the period of domination by
Hattusas, and cylinder seals in the Neo-Hittite
period. In the conventional dating of the two
Hittite periods, where the Kingdoms of Hattusas
were followed centuries later by the Neo-Hittite
civilisation, the use of stamp seals is followed by
the use of cylinder seals.
This is the opposite to the shift apparent in
Assyria and Babylonia of the first millennium.
Cylinder seals were used in the ninth and eighth
centuries and these were replaced by stamp
seals in the seventh century. Now we have redated the Empire period to the seventh century,
we find that the use of seals by the Hittites
parallels exactly the use in Assyria.
Hittite cylinder seals are found in the Neo-Hittite settlements and date from the ninth and eighth centuries
and Hittite stamp seals from the time of Suppiluliumas, Mursilis and Muwatallis are from the seventh century.
The development of glyptic art, and in particular the shift from cylinder to stamp seals, is shown to be
consistent across the major countries of the Middle East…
We are no longer constrained by the Amarna evidence, so we can agree with Bryce without difficulty. We will
therefore set the death of Suppiluliumas around 644 BC.
It is recorded that he died of a plague, brought to Hatti by troops returning from the South. Arnuwandas, the
hero of Mummuriga and for many years the crown-prince, succeeded his father but died of the same disease
within a year…With the death of Arnuwandas, the rules of succession, implemented by King Telepinus, were
invoked.
Mursilis II (Revised Reign: 643 – 608 BC)
The successor had to be the son of the chief wife of Suppiluliumas, the Babylonian princess. Having married
Suppiluliumas about twenty years earlier, her eldest son was a young man, probably in his late teens or early
twenties. Other important sons of Suppiluliumas, such as Piyasilis and Telepinus could not be considered,
although they were much older and much more experienced. The young man ascended the throne of the
Great King of Hatti, taking the name Mursilis. In his annals he recorded the consternation that his accession
provoked:
„The surrounding enemy lands spoke as follows: His father who was a Great King of Hatti before
him: he was an heroic king, he had conquered enemy lands. He has become a god; and his son,
who sat on his father‟s throne after him, before he also was a warrior. Now it has afflicted him and he
has become a god. But now he who sat on his father‟s throne, he is a child. The borders of Hatti
Land, and the land of Hatti he will not save‟
From the Lower Lands, south-west of Hattusas, a letter came:
„You are just a child. You know nothing. You do not scare me.... My troops are more than your
troops, my horses more than your horses...‟
In the whole of history it is difficult to think of any other situation where so many could have been so wrong! It
is a matter of continued debate as to whether the Hittite New Kingdom warrants the term „Empire‟. Maybe
this is too grand a description of the Hittite conquests and rule, but if the appellation „Emperor‟ is valid for the
kings of the New Kingdom, it fits Mursilis II better than any other.
In ten years he would re-establish Hittite control over all the lands inherited from his father and in
addition he would significantly increase Hittite control and influence in the West of Anatolia. Later in
his reign, he would also play a major role in the eclipse of Assyria.
The sceptical attitude of all the surrounding lands to the accession of Mursilis may confirm our date for the
commencement of his reign. In 643 BC, Sarduri III of Urartu sent envoys to Ashurbanipal, attempting to
cement peaceful relations with Assyria. It could have been that he too was concerned about the future of
55
Hatti under the young Mursilis. With the death of his powerful father-in-law and also the death of the first in
line to the throne, Sarduri would have been worried about receiving continued protection from Hattusas. It
would be politic to ensure good relations with the potential enemy to the south.
Mursilis was particularly pious and was continually concerned to appease the gods. His first move as king
was to celebrate the religious feasts, neglected by his father. Satisfied that the gods were on his side, he
made sure that he could rely on the support of his older brothers, who had given such valuable support to
their father. Mursilis confirmed Piyasilis as King of Carchemish, making him and his descendants second
only to the Great King. The edict of Mursilis concerning the King of Carchemish (CTH57) was found in the
archive of Hattusas:
„I have made this treaty for Piyassili, my dear brother, for his elevation and for his sons and
grandsons in the future ... whoever is his majesty‟s crown-prince, only he shall be greater than the
king of the land of Carchemish.‟
Before the accession of Mursilis, the Assyrians had attacked Carchemish. Mursilis recognised the danger
and despatched an army under a general called Nuwansas to Carchemish, with the following orders:
„If the man of Assur does come, fight him! If he does not come, be about in the land. Keep the land
protected‟.
In his annals, Mursilis comments: „But as the man of Assur heard abroad: ”Hittite troops and horse have
come”, he therefore did not come‟…
Assured of support from both heaven and earth, he assessed the situation. Piyasilis could be trusted to
continue to hold Northern Syria and resist the Assyrians. The Kaska were always a problem, but the greatest
threat came from the West, where Uhha-zitis, the ruler of Arzawa, had been building an alliance against Hatti
in recent years. Mursilis had studied his father‟s strategies and therefore he did not rush to quell the unrest in
Arzawa.
In his first two years he concentrated on the Kaska. These campaigns would not only keep the unruly
tribesmen in check, but he would bolster his army with contingents of the tribesmen. He knew that
the belligerent nature of the Kaska could be harnessed, particularly for an attack on a neighbouring
country, where there was a promise of booty. Defensive duties would not inspire them, but the
chance to plunder the riches of Arzawa was a compelling incentive.
Mursilis attacked the Kaska lands, north and east of Hatti. Deportees, cattle and sheep were brought
back to Hattusas. Mursilis records more than once that after an area had been subdued „They made
troops for me‟. The Kaska had witnessed the power of the new King of Hatti and had provided large
numbers of extra soldiers. Now Mursilis could concentrate on Arzawa…
At the end of his second year, Mursilis wintered in Ankuwa, to the West of Hattusas, in preparation for the
campaign in the following spring. The ancient town of Ankuwa would survive the centuries to become the
capital of modern Turkey. Mursilis despatched a letter to Uhha-zitis asking for various troops to be returned
to him. It appears that these were mercenaries normally supplied to Hatti, and that Uhha-zitis had chosen to
break the agreement. Troops of three places were listed: „the troops of Attarimma, the troops of
Huwarsanassa, the troops of Saruda‟.
The King of Arzawa refused to comply with the request. There could only be one outcome. Mursilis wrote
again: „you have called me a child: it belittled me. Now come, let us to battle. Let Tarhundas, my lord, judge!‟
This was the standard Hittite approach. If the dispute could not be resolved, then war must follow, and
Tarhundas, the weather god, would give the victory to the man who was in the right.
The Hittite army with its Kaskan mercenaries moved westwards. When they reached the River Sekhiriya,
they witnessed a thunderbolt in the West over Arzawa, a clear sign that the Weather God was on their side.
Besides his own army, Mursilis had organised further battalions. He had written to his brother at Carchemish,
and Piyasilis had brought troops to Sallapa. Mursilis reviewed the troops there. A third army, from the land of
Mira, south-east of Arzawa, had also come in support of Mursilis. The three armies converged on Arzawa.
When Mursilis met with the ruler of Mira, Mashuiluwas („little mouse‟), he was told that the thunderbolt had
struck Uhha-zitis while he was in the town of Apasas and he had been taken ill. The Arzawan King had
formed an alliance with the land of Millawanda and with the king of Ahhiya. The ailing king had delegated his
son Piyama-Kurundas to engage the Hittites.
56
A battle was fought at Walma, by the river Astarpa, in the east of Arzawa. Mursilis was victorious and
pressed on to Apasas, but at the approach of the Hittites, Uhha-zitis and other members of the Arzawan
royal family fled Apasas and sailed to the Aegean islands to escape. A large contingent of Arzawan troops,
deserted by their leaders at Apasas, had fled to a mountain, which Mursilis called Arinnandas. His annals
describe Mount Arinnandas as inaccessible, high and rugged, and jutting out into the sea. It is clear from the
Hittite record, that the armies had traversed the land of Arzawa and reached the shores of the Aegean Sea,
in pursuit of Uhha-zitis. Mursilis led an army on foot up the mountain. The enemy held the highest ridges,
and as it would be difficult to storm the heights, the Hittites starved them out. Thousands of troops
surrendered. By now it was autumn, so Mursilis withdrew to the Astarpa River for the winter.
During the winter, Uhha-zitish died in his island retreat. One of his sons, Tapalazunaulish organised
resistance and the Arzawans gathered at the city Purandas, in Arzawa. In the spring of Mursilis‟ fourth year,
a battle was joined in the fields below the city. The Hittites prevailed and then besieged the citadel of
Purandas. Tapalazunaulish escaped under the cover of darkness, and soon after, Purandas fell. Tens of
thousands of prisoners were taken and led away to Hattusas, to become troops and labourers. The text is
not completely clear but it appears that the Arzawan royal family had taken refuge in Ahhiya. The king of
Ahhiya agreed to give up the refugees, and a ship was sent to bring Piyama-Kurundas and his followers
back to the mainland, to be deported to Hattusas.
In two years Mursilis had conquered Arzawa. A willing son of Uhha-zitis was installed as king of the defeated
land. The lands immediately east of Arzawa, which had always been considered part of the „Arzawa Lands‟,
were organised as vassal states, providing a buffer against further Arzawan aggression. To the south,
Mashuiluwas was confirmed as ruler of Mira. In the North, Manapa-Tarhundas was confirmed as ruler of the
Seha River Land (which we recognised earlier as Phrygia). In between these two, the land of Hapalla was
given to some-one called Targanallis. Each of the Arzawa Lands, including Arzawa proper, was put under
treaty with the obligation to supply troops for the Hittite army.
In just four years, Mursilis had strengthened his borders, quelled the rebellion of Uhha-zitis, transferred extra
wealth and manpower to the capital, and set up treaties, which would provide extra troops to garrison the
conquered lands and provide mercenaries for further campaigns.
If our reconstruction of Hittite history is valid, then Mursilis came to the throne of Hatti around 643
BC and therefore his campaign to Arzawa must have occurred in 640 BC. We have already tentatively
identified Arzawa as the country of Lydia, ruled at this time by Gyges. One of the latest Assyrian
inscriptions of Ashurbanipal‟s reign (668-627 BC) recorded the end of Gyges. Lydia was attacked by
the son of Mugallu, and the Cimmerians led by Tug-damme.
Strabo the Greek author, quoting an earlier authority, said that Lycians also took part in the attack on Gyges.
The Assyrian Rassam cylinder, which is the definitive copy of Ashurbanipal‟s annals and was probably
written no later than 636 BC, records the attack against Gyges and an emissary from Ardys, his son and
successor, relating the disaster, which had befallen Lydia.
Here we have complete confirmation of the annals of Mursilis. The son of Mugallu / Suppiluliumas,
aided by the Cimmerians / Kaska under Tarqu-dimme, attacked Lydia / Arzawa; they were aided by
troops from south-western Anatolia. Lycia was immediately south of Mira, so there could have been
Lycians in the army of Mashuiluwas. The timing of the assault agrees precisely with our dating.
If we assume the new Lydian king sent his messenger to Ashurbanipal in his first year, we can propose
precise dates for the events:
644 BC Death of Suppiluliumas I
643 BC Death of Arnuwandas II, first year of Mursilis II
642 BC Second year of Mursilis
641 BC Third year of Mursilis, defeat of Piyama-Kurundas and taking of Mount Arinnandas
640 BC Fourth year of Mursilis; death of Gyges; battle of Purandas
639 BC First year of Ardys; Lydian emissary to Assyria.
Historians have noted the names of some of the places in the story of the campaign of Mursilis. Apasas, on
the Aegean coast, whence Gyges sailed to Ahhiya, must be Ephesus, the well-known Greek Ionian
settlement on the west coast of Anatolia. Millawanda, which elsewhere in the records of Mursilis was spelt
Millawata, has to be Miletus, another major Greek settlement, south of Ephesus…
57
The capital of Lydia was Sardis. In his letter to Uhha-zitis, Mursilis requests the extradition of the
troops of Saruda. The „Sardan‟ were mercenaries in the Egyptian army in the time of the Hittite New
Kingdom. Historians suggest Sardinia or Sardis for the home of these soldiers, though Sardis in the
second millennium could be a problem.
Now there can be no doubt about the Sardan. Mursilis marched towards Sardis in the latter part of
the seventh century BC, with the aim of recovering the Saruda troops. The Sardan / Saruda were
from Sardis, capital of Lydia. We noted earlier that Ashurbanipal was aware that Gyges had sent
troops to help the King of Egypt. (Velikovsky came to this same conclusion that the Sardan were
from Sardis, but without using the text from the annals of Mursilis) …
After his success in the West, Mursilis turned eastwards to bring the Kaska, Hayasa and Aruwanna into line.
In his seventh year there were problems in Syria. The land of Nuhasse, south of Carchemish, had revolted
and had the backing of the King of Egypt. The Hittite general Kantuzzilis was sent to Carchemish to help
Piyasilis. This sorted out the situation; the Egyptian troops were driven from Nuhasse.
For decades, Assyria had been the main threat to Hittite holdings in Syria, but now Egypt was also moving
up from the South and operating on the fringes of the Empire. Also in his seventh year, Mursilis joined forces
with Piyasilis to quell unrest in Hayasa…
In year nine, the King of Carchemish joined his younger brother at Kummanni to celebrate a religious
festival, but while he was there he was taken ill and died. Whether the loss of his brother took Mursilis‟ mind
away from affairs of state we do not know. However the enemy saw the opportunity and Carchemish was
taken, possibly by the Egyptians, but probably by the Assyrians. The emperor was not distracted for long. He
marched at the head of the Imperial army to Syria. This in itself seems to have been sufficient to cause the
enemy to withdraw. The son of Piyasilis, Sahurunuwa, was installed as the new King of Carchemish. He
would have to continue his illustrious father‟s work of ruling Northern Syria and resisting Assyria. Telepinus
also appears to have died around this time. His son, Talmi-sharrumma, was installed by Mursilis as ruler of
Aleppo.
In the same year, Mursilis crossed the Euphrates at Carchemish for the first time. The army marched to
Harran. This is the strongest indication that Assyria was the main enemy. A move on Harran could be an
attempt to push the Assyrians away from the eastern banks of the Euphrates. It was a provocative act and
sent a clear message that the Hittite King was prepared to take on the Assyrians in their own territory. With
the emperor in Syria, a Hittite general was entrusted with a campaign to Hayasa.
With year nine of Mursilis, we have reached 634 BC. These were the last years of Ashurbanipal of Assyria.
The Assyrian records say that after the son of Mugallu had taken Lydia, he and his Cimmerian ally made a
move towards Assyria, but they were checked by the Assyrians. This would appear to confirm Mursilis‟ move
on Harran. The Assyrian account relates that a fire broke out in the camp of the king of Tabal and some were
severely burnt, much to the pleasure of the Assyrians.
Carchemish continues to feature strongly in the history of the Hittite New Kingdom. As the main
fortress on the Euphrates, it was seen by both the Hittites and the Assyrians as the key to the control
of Northern Syria. The Egyptians also recognised this fact and as we have seen were operating not
far south of the city. Not only did Carchemish overlook the Euphrates crossing, it could control the
riverine trade.
Carchemish is no less important today, in the
understanding of the chronology of the Hittites. We
have already used the archaeological finds at
Carchemish to show the contemporaneity of
Suppiluliumas I and Suhis, and of Mursilis II and
Katuwas. The work of Sir Leonard Woolley and
others points to the heyday of the city being in the
seventh century BC. Our revision of the dating of the
great Hittite fortress has been achieved without
reference to the most convincing piece of evidence,
which has been cited by all who attempt to revise
ancient chronology - the „Gold Tomb of
Carchemish‟!...
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The tomb was dated without doubt by Woolley to the last part of seventh century. He had clearly
discovered the burial of a king of Carchemish. The tomb had all the attributes of a Hittite cremation
for a dignitary of the highest rank.
What has attracted the attention of historians over many years is the set of thirty-nine figures. These
were immediately recognisable. They reproduce in miniature the most famous carvings of the Hittite
New Kingdom of Hattusas. The image of a Hittite king and images of Hittite deities make up the thirtynine items, and the images are identical to those carved in relief on the rock wall of the Yazilikaya
complex, which is within walking distance from the site of Hattusas.
Yazilikaya (inscribed rock) was a sanctuary built during the New Kingdom. The main chamber
contains carvings of a Hittite king and of many of the gods worshipped by the Hittites. Yazilikaya is
conventionally dated to the thirteenth century BC, at the height of the Hittite New Kingdom.
Velikovsky and many others have remarked on the existence, in a tomb of the late seventh century,
of articles which must have been produced seven hundred years before.
It is assumed by historians that the Carchemish figurines were an heirloom kept for hundreds of years before
they were eventually entombed with the remains of a ruler of Carchemish. It is most likely that the figures
came from Hattusas, where the identical figures were carved in stone in the Yazilikaya sanctuary. Perhaps
they were brought to Carchemish by Hittites fleeing the destruction of Hattusas at the end of the thirteenth
century. Why they were then kept for six hundred years, before being deposited in a tomb is not explained.
The revisionist Peter James cites the Carchemish figures as evidence for a later dating of the Hittite
New Kingdom, but James is only prepared to reduce Egyptian (and hence Hittite) history by two
hundred and fifty years. This would mean the figures were still kept for four hundred and fifty years,
before being put in their final resting place.
David Rohl goes further than James, reducing Egyptian history by three hundred and seventy years,
but this still means that the figures outlived the end of Hattusas by over two hundred and fifty years.
Of all the possible times when the figures could have existed, they turn up in the latter part of the
seventh century BC, exactly in the middle of the Hittite New Kingdom as dated by Velikovsky!...
In 634 BC, the King of Carchemish died. He had been a great warrior. He had ruled Carchemish for
three decades. He had taken on the Assyrians, the most powerful nation of those times, and reestablished the throne of Urartu. He had supported the Emperor, his younger brother, in the defeat of
Arzawa. Eventually, probably in his sixties, he had died at Kummana, north of the city, which had
been given to his family, to rule forever. Piyasilis warranted the full funeral rights, becoming his
status as the „elder statesman‟ of Hatti…
What we do know is that Mursilis‟ health was far from good. He appears to have suffered a stroke, which
impaired his speech. In the second decade of his reign he was still a young man; his sons Muwatallis and
Hattusilis had not reached their teens…
In 627 BC, after a reign of forty years, Ashurbanipal died. In the same year, Kandalanu, his puppet king of
Babylon, also died. Kandalanu is such a shadowy figure that it has been suggested that this may have been
another name for Ashurbanipal. The death of the Assyrian king was the signal for revolt in Babylon. Initially
Ashurbanipal‟s son Sin-sharra-ishkun took control of Babylon and proclaimed himself king, but a Babylonian,
called Nabopolassar, provoked his countrymen to resist further Assyrian rule.
In 626 BC, the year of Sin-shar-ishkun‟s accession, Nabopolassar took the city of Nippur. An Assyrian army
forced him to withdraw from Nippur and pursued him to Uruk, but the Babylonians were now in revolt. After
battles in the streets of Babylon, Sin-shar-ishkun fled to Nineveh. An Assyrian army attacked Babylon, but
was driven off. In the next month Nabopolassar became king.
Velikovsky argued that Nabopolassar of Babylon was the same person as Mursilis II, King of Hatti.
This assumption led him to equate the descendents of Mursilis with the descendents of
Nabopolassar, but this synchronism only worked if the order of succession of the kings of Babylon
were rearranged. Mursilis was half Babylonian of course, being the son of Suppiluliumas and a
Babylonian princess, but, along with other commentators, we cannot agree with Velikovsky on this
equation. The words of Nabopolassar himself disagree with the assumption. He calls himself „the son
of a nobody‟.
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He goes on to say:
„My attention was directed to justice and equity. Shazu, the lord who understands the hearts of the
gods of heaven and the underworld, who constantly observes the deeds of humanity, perceived my
inner thoughts and raised me, the client who was anonymous among the people, to a high status in
the country of my birth. He called me to the sovereignty over the land and the people‟
None of this applies to Mursilis. He was the son of the Great King of Hatti. Nabopolassar was a native
Babylonian, who came from humble origins to lead his people to freedom from Assyrian oppression...
If the Babylonian kings were not the Hittite kings of the later New Kingdom, as proposed by
Velikovsky, then the Hittite Empire must have existed independently of the so-called Neo-Babylonian
Empire ruled by Nabopolassar and his descendants. There must be room in the history of the sixth
century BC for both the Hittite and Babylonian kingdoms.
By 623 BC, Nabopolassar controlled north-central Babylonia. War continued with the new Assyrian king,
Ashur-etel-ilani and his successor, Sin-sharra-ishkun. The cities of Nippur and Uruk remained in Assyrian
hands, but they were eventually taken by Nabopolassar in 626 and 616 BC respectively. With the capture of
Uruk, he now held the whole of Babylonia. The next phase of the war with Assyria could commence.
Information on the war with Assyria comes into much better focus from the year 616 BC, because a
Babylonian chronicle (number 3) starts with this year, which it terms „the tenth year of Nabopolassar‟.
In 616 BC, the Babylonians attacked the western outskirts of Assyria. Nabopolassar took his army up the
Euphrates. They captured the city of Gablini from the Assyrians and moved on north up the Balikh River
towards Harran. This was a bold undertaking far from home. Harran was over three hundred miles from
Babylon. It would not have been difficult for the Assyrians to have cut off their retreat. The action of
Nabopolassar, the first time as far as we know beyond the confines of Babylon, is difficult to understand
strategically. A march towards Harran was foolhardy unless he had help from the West. If the Assyrians had
moved in behind him they could have blocked his return to Babylon. It would have been bad tactics to risk
this unless the Babylonian was confident of assistance from the lands to the west. Of course, Carchemish
was to the west of Harran. If Mursilis had promised help and maybe reinforcements, the Babylonian march
would have been safeguarded. It may even have been a joint effort between Babylon and the Hittites to
„soften up‟ the area around Harran in preparation for a concerted attack on Assyria…
The chronicle records that three armies assembled in 612 BC for the attack on Nineveh, the Assyrian
capital. An army of the Umman Manda marched to join the Babylonians and these two were joined,
somewhere south of Nineveh, by the Medes. The combined force marched along the banks of the
Tigris to Nineveh, which they besieged. After three months the city fell. Nabonidus (556 – 539 BC), a
later king of Babylon, wrote: „The king of the Umman Manda, the fearless, ruined the temples of
Assyria, all of them.‟ After the city was taken, the Medes returned to Media.
Assyria was not quite finished after the destruction of Nineveh, which brought with it the death of
Sin-sharra-ishkun. Ashuruballit, who may have been the crown prince, fled to Harran and established
government there, but his tenure of office was to be short-lived.
In 610 BC, the Umman Manda once again joined forces with Nabopolassar‟s troops and they
marched on Harran. Ashuruballit, and the Egyptian troops who had been sent to help him,
abandoned the city. The Babylonians installed a garrison. Eventually in 609 BC the main Egyptian
army arrived and tried to recover Harran, but the Babylonian garrison held out.
The Egyptians had been delayed by Josiah, king of Judah, who had recognised the changing political scene
and had attempted to halt the Egyptians. Josiah‟s forces were no match for the full Egyptian army and the
king died valiantly in the plain of Megiddo.
No more is heard of Ashuruballit. Assyria had been destroyed, but Egypt would try to fill the vacuum left by
the eclipse of its ally…
We have seen that Nabopolassar could probably rely on support from the west side of the Euphrates and
that the Umman Manda could operate effectively around Harran and Assyria. Mursilis‟ poor health, which
plagued him through his later years, would have prevented his direct involvement. Also his sons were quite
young and inexperienced.
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It seems that he contributed an army, consisting mainly of tribesmen under Sandakshatru or another
Kaskan / Cimmerian leader. When Mursilis was preparing for a major campaign, such as that against
Arzawa, he would attack the Kaska and raise troops from them. We know little of his activities in his
later years but he did record campaigns against the Kaska in years 19, 24, 25 and 26. These would be
the years 623, 618, 617 and 616 BC. Were these forays arranged for the purpose of acquiring troops
for the attacks on Assyria? The last three years lead up to the final phase of the allied conflict with
Assyria.
Several commentators have wondered about the sudden rise of Babylonian military power. Babylon rarely
had an army with sufficient strength to operate outside its own borders…
Within ten years Nabopolassar had constructed an army, which could operate in the region of Harran
and compete with major Assyrian forces. This was an outstanding feat if it were accomplished
without outside help.
A defensive army needs troops with weapons, but to fight pitched battles or to lay siege to cities
requires chariot forces and siege engines; and in each case of course, skilled men are required. The
major Babylonian successes came when they were allied to the Umman Manda and the Medes. The
Medes seem to have operated in an independent manner, only making a pact with Nabopolassar after
they had taken the city of Ashur.
The Babylonians had undoubtedly made considerable strides militarily, but it is likely that the leaders of the
Umman Manda provided significant assistance in the creation and strengthening of the Babylonian forces.
The Babylonian chronicle talks of two independent armies – the Umman Manda and the forces of
Nabopolassar - coming together, to fight on equal terms, against the Assyrians. Nabonidus, although a king
of Babylon, gave the Umman Manda pride of place in the actions to destroy Assyria…
Mursilis inherited conflict with Assyria. He recorded skirmishes with the Assyrians around
Carchemish and Harran in the first decade of his reign. He was half Babylonian and when his
kinsmen fought to free themselves from Assyrian rule, he would have been keen to help. It appears
that he sent troops of the Umman Manda to the aid of the Babylonian King, and together the two
armies, aided by the Medes, defeated Assyria. Mursilis had moved on Harran in his ninth year. The
war with Assyria would end with a further march to Harran in his thirty-third year. By this time he was
over fifty years of age and ailing badly, but he did live to see the demise of his enemy…
It says a great deal about the strength of character of Mursilis that he assumed the role of Great King of Hatti
without difficulty, at a young age. He was immediately despised by the surrounding countries and had to
handle the awkward situation of being commander-in-chief of his older and much more experienced
brothers. The texts from Hattusas show him to be full of the superstitious piety, so common among the
ancient kings, seeing the hand of the gods in every good or bad event. This attitude created a strange
humility where each success was the gift of the gods rather than the results of his own political and military
skill.
Given this reliance on the whim of the gods, he had no reason to emulate the bombastic records of the
Assyrians and Egyptians, but instead dictated annals of great honesty and clarity, even recording his
incapacity, when though a stroke he lost the power of speech. He was capable of compassion, shown in the
instance when his army approached the Seha River Land. The king of the Land sent his own mother to beg
for mercy: „Because a woman came before me and knelt down at my feet, I gave way to the woman and did
not go into the Seha River Land‟. He had high morale standards and even banished his own Babylonian
mother, following her practice of black magic. His military genius is not only testified by the many successes
on the battlefield, but also by several accounts of stratagems to confuse the enemy, by unexpected
manoeuvres and feinged retreat…
The dating of the death of Mursilis is crucial in our attempt to vindicate Velikovsky. Shortly after his
father‟s death, Muwatallis fought the Egyptians in one of the great military engagements of ancient
times – the Battle of Kadesh.
The synchronisation of this conflict with the Biblical battle of Carchemish, recorded in the book of
Jeremiah, was the crux of Velikovsky‟s re-dating of Rameses II of Egypt. All our work up to this point,
re-writing three hundred years of Hittite history without the direct use of any of Velikovsky‟s work,
has brought us to within a few years of that momentous clash in Syria. Our aim in our acid test of
Velikovsky was to prove his dating of Rameses II by completely separate means.
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No-one would dare to argue that Rameses II and his Egyptian armies did not fight the forces of Muwatallis in
the great battle. The evidence from Hittite and Egyptian sources is totally conclusive. The bone of contention
is the date of the battle. Conventional Ancient History says 1275 BC (give or take a few years). Velikovsky
said 605 BC precisely – nearly seven hundred years later!
If Mursilis died before 605 BC, our target has been reached. With the aid of the Assyrian and Babylonian
texts we have given accurate dating to much of the lives of Suppiluliumas and his son. Our arrow has been
homing in on the target for some time, but it could veer off course if Mursilis were still alive in 605 BC… Our
work gave us a date for Mursilis‟ accession to the throne. This was probably 643 BC.
Based on the Hittite texts from Mursilis‟ reign, Hittitologists allocate Mursilis a tenure of 25 – 30 years. Thirty
years (the value preferred by Gurney) would give his death in 612 BC. This concurs with the evidence for
Pittacus, which requires the King to still be alive in 612 BC, the earliest date for the start of the tyranny of
„Pot-belly‟. The episode with Alyattes must have taken place between 610 and 605 BC, if the estimates of
historians for the commencement of his reign are accurate. This would suggest that Mursilis lived beyond
610 BC. There is no Hittite evidence to extend the reign of Mursilis much beyond thirty years and therefore
the most likely conclusion is that his death occurred not later than 608 BC.
Muwatallis was the Hittite emperor in 605 BC, just as Velikovsky suggested. This conclusion has
been reached, following the detailed reconstruction of the three hundred years leading up to the
reign of Muwatallis. All the evidence presented, from the reign of Labarnas onwards, much of it in
considerable detail and based on both written and archaeological testimony, bears witness to the
validity of Velikovsky‟s version of history. Muwatallis assumed power in the last years of the seventh
century BC and his adversary was Rameses II of Egypt…
Muwatallis II (Revised Reign: 608 – 596 BC)
There are no annals from the time of Muwatallis. Information comes mainly from his treaties with Wilusa
(Troy) and Amurru in Syria, and later references by his successors. We know that the mother of his brother,
Hattusilis died in the ninth year of their father, Mursilis. When Muwatallis came to the throne his younger
brother was therefore at least in his early twenties. Muwatallis was probably about thirty years old. The two
brothers worked closely together. Hattusilis later recorded events of these early years:
„My brother sat on the throne of his father, and I became before his face the commander of the army.‟
The Kaska lands rebelled… My brother sent me, giving me but a small number of troops and charioteers… I
met the foe… and gave him battle… this was the first act in the prime of manhood.‟
In the later years of Mursilis, there is no information concerning Egypt, but in the reign of Muwatallis Egypt
was the main enemy. Assyria was no longer mentioned as a threat to Hatti.
The King of Egypt had taken Amurru in Syria, which had been loyal to Hatti from the time when Aziru
became a vassal of Suppiluliumas. Benteshina, the current king of Amurru had submitted to the king of
Egypt. North of Amurru, the country was still under Hittite control. Suhurunuwa, the son of Piyasilis was still
King of Carchemish in the time of Muwatallis.
The King of Hatti rose to the Egyptian challenge. Again Hattusilis records the events:
„It came to pass that my brother made war with Egypt… And I led for my brother the army and the
charioteers against the land of Egypt.‟
„At the time when king Muwatalli made war against the king of Egypt, when he defeated the king of
Egypt, the Egyptian king went back to the country of Aba. But then king Muwatalli defeated the
country of Aba, then he marched back to the country of Hatti, but I remained in the country of Aba.‟
The Egyptian army was vanquished and Muwatallis advanced south as far as Aba (Abina) near Damascus.
He removed Benteshina from the kingship of Amurru, because he had submitted to the Egyptian king, and
appointed Shapili to replace him. Hattusilis remained in Syria, presumably to help the new King of Amurru
and guard against any Egyptian counter attack.
From the information provided by Hattusilis it appears that one single, decisive battle settled the war with
Egypt, although after the reign of Muwatallis, hostilities started again, at which time Hattusilis sought the help
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of the king of Babylon. He remembered this in a letter to Kadashman–Enlil, the son of the Babylonian king,
reminding him of his father‟s willingness to help Hatti against Egypt:
“„When your father and I established friendly relations and became brothers, we spoke as follows: “We are
brothers. To the enemy of one another we will be hostile and with the friend of one another we will be
friendly”. And when the king of Egypt and I became angry with one another, I wrote to your father,
Kadashman –Turgu: “The king of Egypt has become hostile to me”. And your father wrote to me as follows:
“If your troops go against Egypt, then I will go with you. If you go against Egypt, I will send you such infantry
and chariotry as I have available to go.” (CTH172)
The close relations with Babylon, evident in the letter of Hattusilis III to Kadashman–Enlil, stretched back to
the time of Muwatallis, who received a physician from Babylon. This is the only period in Hittite history, where
close relations with Babylon are stated, although Suppiluliumas obviously had good relations, but there is no
information available on relations with Babylon after the marriage of Suppiluliumas until the time of
Muwatallis.
Muwatallis decided that Hattusas was too close to the northern border of Hatti and he moved the
capital to the south-west to Tarhuntassa. Although his main concern was with Egypt in the south,
Muwatallis did not neglect the western parts of the Empire. He cemented close relations with the
Seha River Land, making Masturi, the King, his brother in-law, giving him his sister Massanuzzi in
marriage.
The treaty with Alaksandus of Wilusa says that Muwatallis attacked Masa (Mysia), the land to the east of the
Troad, in support of Wilusa after Arzawa had attacked it. The subsequent treaty required that Wilusa would
provide military help to Hatti, when needed.
Nebuchadnezzar II
The Babylonian chronicles provide the facts concerning the last days of Nabopolassar and the accession of
his son, Nebuchadnezzar, to the throne of Babylon. The biblical book of Jeremiah also provides some of the
history of Nebuchadnezzar, who was to become the bane of Judah. The chronicles state the regnal years of
the kings and each year during this period is included, enabling historians to obtain an accurate view of the
events.
In the later part of 607 BC, Nabopolassar marched up the eastern bank of the Euphrates, crossed the river
and attacked the town of Kimuhu, and stationed a Babylonian garrison there. This gave him a foothold in the
land south of Carchemish. The Jewish historian Josephus wrote that at this time all Syria was under the
control of Necho, the Egyptian pharaoh. By his action, Nabopolassar was confronting the Egyptians, who
had now replaced Assyria as the main threat.
In the next year the Egyptian army marched against Kimuhu, besieged the town and took it after four
months. Nabopolassar marched up the Euphrates to Quramatu, some distance south of Kimuhu, and
crossed the Euphrates, presumably in an attempt to draw the Egyptians away from the siege and down the
western bank of the river. The Egyptians crossed to the east side of the Euphrates and headed towards
Quramatu. This seems to have surprised the Babylonians, who withdrew without engaging the Egyptian
army. 606 BC ended with the Egyptians fully in control of Amurru. The moves by Nabopolassar had been to
no avail. He had not seriously threatened the Egyptian hold of the land west of the Euphrates.
605 BC saw a complete reversal of fortunes. Suddenly in this year the Babylonians were
unstoppable. The events are related by a different Babylonian chronicle (number 5). Nabopolassar
was taken ill and was not able to travel. The crown prince led the Babylonian army once more up the
eastern side of the Euphrates. They crossed the great river to the immediate south of Carchemish
and attacked the army of Egypt on the plain south of the city. Chapter 46 of Jeremiah also recorded
the battle:
„Concerning the army of pharaoh Necho king of Egypt at Carchemish on the river Euphrates, which
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon defeated in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of
Judah.‟
The victory was overwhelming; the victors pressed south to the land of Hamath, in pursuit of the
Egyptians. While he was in Syria, news was brought to Nebuchadnezzar that his father had died. The
crown prince left his army and headed straight to Babylon. It was imperative that he was in the city to
ensure that the succession was handled smoothly. The new king of Babylon set his sights on the
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riches of Palestine and Phoenicia. With the Egyptians severely weakened, the wealth of the great
cities was his for the taking.
The chronicle records regular campaigns in the next few years, but there is little detail. In 604 BC, he was
probably in Philistia; he sacked a city, which is tentatively read as Ascalon, although the tablet is damaged.
He probably went this far south in each year; in 601 BC, the chronicle says that he marched towards Egypt,
where he was met by the pharaoh‟s forces. The battle is recorded as a stalemate, with both sides suffering
severe losses, sufficient for the Babylonians to spend the next year re-fitting their army. After this, the Arabs
were the target and then in 597 BC he advanced to Judah, and Jerusalem was taken.
Jehoiachin, king of Judah, was removed to prison in Babylon and Zedekiah appointed to replace him. In the
next year Nebuchadnezzar spent a month in Carchemish; no campaigning is recorded for this year.
Unfortunately the bottom part of the tablet is missing and the last available part of the chronicle ends with the
tenth year of Nebuchadnezzar. Jewish sources provide some further information about the later years.
The new king of Judah was convinced that the king of Egypt would come to his aid, but his confidence was
misplaced. Zedekiah rebelled against Babylon and paid the ultimate price. The Babylonians sacked
Jerusalem in 586 BC and Zedekiah was captured, mutilated and imprisoned at Riblah, Nebuchadnezzar‟s
base in Syria. Thousands of Jerusalem‟s inhabitants were deported to Babylon.
At this time Nebuchadnezzar also began a siege of Tyre. Josephus wrote that the siege lasted for thirteen
years. A land-based army such as the Babylonians would have difficulty controlling Tyre, which was an
island of the coast and could survive a prolonged siege, unless a navy could be used to blockade the
seaward approaches.
The history of Syria in the last years of the seventh century has several parallels with the Hittite
history of Muwatallis. The king of Egypt had taken Syria / Amurru, the Egyptians were defeated in a
pitched battle and were pursued through Northern Syria. The history of the Hittite New Kingdom
continues to fit with the happenings of the seventh century.
We will come in due course to the work of Velikovsky concerning the Egyptian account of the battle, but first
we will continue our approach of comparing the Hittite history with information which is undoubtedly dated to
the end of the seventh and beginning of the sixth centuries – the Babylonian chronicles and the Biblical
books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
We have to conclude that the battle waged in front of the walls of Carchemish was the same as the battle
recounted by Hattusilis. Once more the Hittites and Babylonians joined forces to defeat their enemy.
In the conflict against Assyria and the initial skirmishes with Egypt, the Babylonian king had been the senior
member of the alliance between Babylon and the Umman Manda. The Hittite Great King Mursilis had been
unable to take the field through ill health and therefore the other Great King, Nabopolassar, would have
taken overall control of operations.
In 605 BC, Nabopolassar was too ill to accompany the Babylonian army, which was entrusted to his
son. Mursilis had died a few years before and the new Great King of Hatti, Muwatallis, was able to
take command of the Hittite armies, aided by his younger brother.
Etiquette would have required that the Great King of Hatti should now assume overall leadership in
the absence of the Great King of Babylon. The battle of Carchemish and subsequent operations in
Syria in 605 BC were under the overall control of Muwatallis. Both the great warriors, Mursilis and
Nabopolassar had died, and it was left to the three „young guns‟ to finish what their fathers had
started.
The Hittite involvement in 605 BC explains the change of fortunes of the Babylonians. In the previous
two years, working alone, they had failed to gain any advantage over Egypt. It would require a larger
force to dislodge the Egyptians from Syria, so the allies once more planned a joint effort. The
combined forces of Muwatallis and Nebuchadnezzar proved to be too much for the Egyptian army. In
612 BC against Nineveh, and 609 BC against Harran, the allied forces had won the day. So it was in
605 BC at Carchemish.
The Babylonian chronicle relates that the Egyptians were pursued to the land of Hamath. This is important
because Hamath was in Amurru, the country contended by Egypt and Hatti. The Hittite record talks of
Muwatallis pressing on towards Damascus, which would clear the Egyptians from a buffer area south of
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Hamath. Riblah, the town which would become Nebuchadnezzar‟s base in future years, was immediately
south of the land of Hamath, in the area cleared by Muwatallis.
The Hittites would have no interest in the rest of Syria, or Palestine or Phoenicia. Riblah would be the
perfect base for the Babylonians to plunder these lands. It was beyond the land of Hamath, so would
be under their control, but all the lands further north belonged to their ally the Great King of Hatti.
Riblah would be safe under a small garrison when the Babylonian pursued his interests further
south.
The Babylonian chronicle, which covers the first ten years of Nebuchadnezzar called all the land of
Southern Syria and Palestine by the name Hattu. It did not mention any places in the normal area of
Hatti, only places in Phoenicia, Philistia and Palestine. This has puzzled historians, because no-one
else ever applied the name Hatti to these regions. Hatti was always Northern Syria and Eastern
Anatolia, the homeland of Hittite culture. It seems that the Babylonians renamed the whole of the
land between Northern Syria and Egypt, Hatti, in honour of the Great King, who had freed these lands
from Egyptian domination.
The only place mentioned by the chronicle, which was actually within the normal bounds of Hatti, was the
city of Carchemish itself. Besides being the scene of the great battle with the Egyptians, Nebuchadnezzar
also visited it for a month in 596 BC.
Jeremiah attributed the victory at Carchemish solely to Nebuchadnezzar, but he had a specific reason for
focussing on the Babylonian king. He preached that Nebuchadnezzar was the agent of God, sent to punish
Judah for its wickedness, and in due course the Babylonian destroyed Jerusalem. Jeremiah‟s Judean
contemporary, Ezekiel, was fully aware of the powerful ally of Babylon.
Ezekiel
Ezekiel was a priest who was taken to Babylon in the first wave of deportations from Judah, when
Nebuchadnezzar attacked Jerusalem and removed king Jehoiachin, the son of Josiah. The Book of Ezekiel
starts in the fifth year of Jehoiachin‟s exile in Babylon and was written over a period of more than twenty
years. The book was probably copied and tidied in the post-exilic period, so the version now available
probably dates from the fifth century or a little later.
The later chapters of Ezekiel contain a series of prophecies against foreign nations; chapter 25 was written
against Judah‟s eastern and southern neighbours, Ammon, Moab, Edom and the Philistines. In chapters 26,
27 and 28, dated to the eleventh year of exile, he turned his attention to Tyre. He listed those who traded
with Tyre and included a sweep of Anatolia – Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Togormah.
These biblical names are well known and there is no argument about the identification of the places
listed. Javan is Ionia, Tubal is of course Tabal. Meshech is the same as the Assyrian Mushki, a name
for Phrygia, Togormah is the Hittite Tegarama.
Chapters 29 to 32 foretold the downfall of Egypt, which was singled out because Judah had trusted it to
protect them against the Babylonians, but when the time came, pharaoh did not stand in the way of
Nebuchadnezzar. In chapter 29 Ezekiel mentioned the Babylonian‟s lengthy siege of Tyre. He asks Egypt to
consider the fate of Assyria:
„A splendid great tree‟, but „Strangers from the most ruthless of nations hewed it down and flung it away‟.
He pictured the warriors of Egypt slain and buried with the slain of other powerful nations, first Assyria, then
Elam, then Meshech and Tubal. Very similar words are used for all three groups of warriors: „men who once
struck terror into the land of the living‟. The power of Assyria in the eighth and seventh century is well known.
The power of Elam, often the ally of Babylon in the same period, is also well documented. Elam resisted
Assyria for decades before Ashurbanipal eventually crushed it. History knows little or nothing about the
power of Meshech and Tabal. Why did Ezekiel group them with the other powers of recent years?
The historical content of Ezekiel appears to be accurate. He was aware of recent history, such as the
downfall of Assyria. He was also familiar with the activities of Nebuchadnezzar. His geographical knowledge
is testified in his review of the trading of Tyre, which besides his references to the Anatolian states, also
mentioned many of the important trading cities and countries of the period, including Rhodes, Arvad, Sidon,
Damascus and Harran.
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In his diatribe against Egypt, he demonstrated that he was familiar with all the major Egyptian cities – Zoan
(Tanis), Noph (Memphis), No (Thebes), Tahpenes (Daphnae) and On (Heliopolis). He was clearly very
knowledgeable on current geography and political issues and yet he gave Meshech and Tabal a much
higher position than that normally assumed by modern historians. In chapter 38, he reserved his final
onslaught for those nations of the North:
„These were the words of the Lord to me. Man, look towards Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, in
the land of Magog, and prophesy against him, say, these are the words of the Lord… I will lead you out, you
and your whole army, horses and horsemen, all fully equipped, a great host with shield and buckler, every
man wielding a sword…Gomer with all its squadrons, Beth-Togormah with its squadrons from the far
recesses of the North.‟
Gomer is the biblical equivalent of the Assyrian Gimirrai, the Cimmerians.
We have to conclude that Ezekiel was correct when he spoke of the military power of Tabal. This power was
apparently still current when he penned the quoted verses around 580 BC.
Over the centuries many ludicrous interpretations of Gog and Magog have been proposed, but there is no
reason to see anything more in the writings of the prophet than an outpouring of anger against a
contemporary power. Why should the words for the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal be any different to
those aimed at the prince of Tyre or the pharaoh of Egypt?
The chief prince of Meshech and Tubal must have been the Great King of Hatti. The reference to the
Cimmerians is pertinent, as it confirms the use by Hatti of battalions of Cimmerians / Kaska in all
their major conflicts. Tegarama only features in the Old Testament in the quotes above from Ezekiel.
Tegarama in the land of Malatya had been an integral part of the land of Hatti, from the time when
Suppiluliuma had used it as his base.
Why would Ezekiel be angry with the princes of Tabal; what had they done to incur the wrath of Judah?
There is no information from the Bible or other contemporary sources to answer these questions, but when
the reign of Muwatallis is re-dated to the end of the seventh century, the answers are clear.
The Hittites were allies of Babylon, and their victory at Carchemish paved the way for Nebuchadnezzar to
raid further south, and compete with Egypt for the tribute of Judah and other states in Palestine and
Phoenicia. The Hittites had no interest in Judah, but through their victory over Egypt they provided the
opportunity for the Babylonians to plunder the land south of the Hittite areas without serious hindrance.
In the book of Ezekiel, Tabal is grouped with Meshech / Phrygia. A close relationship had existed between
the two neighbouring countries from the days when Mursilis took the Seha River Land, but the integration of
the two lands had become even closer when the ruler of Phrygia married into the family of Muwatallis.
The book of Ezekiel describes the situation in the early part of the sixth century, as defined by our
reconstruction of Hittite history. Tabal, closely linked with Phrygia, was a major power in the Middle East,
relying in part on its squadrons of Cimmerians…
Jeremiah and the Babylonian chronicle both confirm the battle in 605 BC was at Carchemish. The Egyptian
accounts of Rameses‟ battle are less specific about the city. Rameses had descriptions of the battle,
including drawings of the city, carved on several temples in Egypt. In all the inscriptions Rameses called the
city Kadesh. This does not help much in locating the city. Kadesh simply means „holy‟, a term applied to
many cities, including Carchemish.
The texts extol the courage of the pharaoh, but are less complimentary about the forces under his command.
Reading between the lines it seems that Rameses probably was very brave, but was lacking in tactical skills.
The course of the battle has been described many times, but we will discuss it briefly here as it gives some
pointers to our reconstruction.
Having only the Egyptian details of the battle to work with, historians have concluded that the site of the
battle was on the River Orontes, about one hundred miles south of Carchemish. Velikovsky demonstrated
that the topography of the Orontes site, at Tell Nebi-mend, does not agree with the layout of the site as
recorded by Rameses‟ sculptors; only the topography of Carchemish fits the picture.
The Egyptian account recalls the difficulty Rameses had in locating the opposing forces. Two Hittite spies
were captured, but they lied, saying that the Hittites were at Aleppo. It is usually assumed that Rameses
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acted on this information by camping at Tell Nebi-mend, confident that his enemy was at least sixty miles
further north at Aleppo, but the enemy was actually in the location and attacked immediately. It is clear that
the Egyptians were seeking out the Hittites and therefore giving the Hittite king the opportunity to decide the
location of the battlefield.
The normal interpretation has some problems. Why would the Hittite king choose to engage the
Egyptians so far south, well beyond his major bases at Aleppo and Carchemish. Either of these cities
would give him a means of retreat if the battle did not go well.
The Hittite sources make it clear that Amurru was held by the Egyptians at this time and Egyptian garrisons
would have been stationed in the major cities of Amurru. An elite Egyptian force had been left behind in
Amurru after the campaign of the previous year.
Leading experts (Goetze, Beckman, Moran) locate Amurru north of Tell Nebi-mend. To move as far
south as Tell Nebi-mend, the Hittite forces would have had to march through Amurru and such a
large force could not have gone unnoticed by the Egyptian outposts. In these circumstances it would
be very unlikely that some Egyptian troops had not contacted the pharaoh on his march north, to
warn him. We have to conclude that Rameses was further north than Tell Nebi-Mend, well into the
land of Amurru, when he was told that his enemy was at Aleppo.
It seems that Rameses marched towards Aleppo, but realising that the enemy was not there, pressed on
towards Carchemish. Velikovsky pointed out that the Egyptian narrative places army divisions around
Aronama and Baw, some miles south of the pharaoh and his lead division. These places were probably
Arima and Bab, two towns between Aleppo and Carchemish…
Severely mauled and recognising that the Hittite king had many fresh infantry on the eastern bank that he
had not yet deployed, the Egyptians realised that they were outnumbered and further engagement would be
fruitless (the Egyptian records stated that the army opposing them consisted of 2500 chariots and 37000
infantry). Rameses and his stricken army camped on the battlefield on the western side of the river and
withdrew the following day.
The Egyptian record states that the king of Hatti sent a letter to Rameses praising his bravery and
asking for peace. There is a ring of truth in this; Muwatallis‟ father and grandfather had always tried
to prevent bloodshed by sending letters. The fact that even Rameses recorded that his army
marched home suggests that the letter from Muwatallis pointed out the futility of continuing the
battle when the Hittites still had thousands of fresh troops. Although Rameses suggests it was the
other way round, his subsequent withdrawal clearly surrendered Syria to the Hittites…
Muwatallis had chosen the battlefield wisely. The city of Carchemish, on the waterfront of the Euphrates
dominated the surrounding land, providing a hiding place for his considerable forces. He probably had more
troops within the city if required. Rameses‟ inability to locate his enemy and his failure to keep his four
divisions in close order, provided the opportunity for Muwatallis to pick off the Pre and Amon divisions, using
only his chariot forces.
The use of the river was an important tactic. It would provide a barrier if the Egyptians took the initiative and
attacked; it would provide safety if a retreat were needed. The difficulty with this strategy would be the need
to establish a bridgehead across the river to mount an offensive. Rameses‟ decision to encamp the Amon
division away from the river provided the opportunity to move pontoon bridges downstream and transport the
chariotry to the western side.
The initial manoeuvre across the river and the subsequent attack on the Egyptian camp was the
decisive action of the battle. This is captured precisely in the words of the Babylonian chronicle,
which describes the battle of Carchemish:
„He (Nebuchadnezzar) crossed the river to encounter the army of Egypt, which was encamped at
Carchemish‟.
In the two years before the battle of Carchemish in 605 BC, the Babylonians had marched up the eastern
side of the Euphrates, but not as far as Carchemish. The eastern bank of the river behind the city would be
an obvious meeting point for the Hittite army and their major ally…
The lists of the allies of „the chief of Kheta‟ vary in the order that some countries are given, but
always at the top of the list is Naharin.
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We must be very clear about the identification of this most important of allies. We mentioned much
earlier that the name means „the rivers‟ and was similar to the modern term „Mesopotamia‟, which is
derived from Greek and means „between the rivers‟. In this case these are the two major rivers of the
Middle East, the Tigris and the Euphrates…Naharin included the lands immediately east of the
Euphrates and to the north of Babylonia. In the time of the battle of Carchemish, the land of Naharin
was ruled by the Babylonians.
On several occasions, and particularly in the two preceding years, the king of Babylon had campaigned in
Aram Naharaim, against the Arameans or Egyptian forces.
Naharin was the chief ally of Hatti, and this concurs with our view of the battle of Carchemish, where
Nebuchadnezzar, son of the ruler of the whole of Naharin, brought his army to fight the Egyptians...High on
Rameses‟ lists are the Keshkesh, which of course are the Kaska, the Umman Manda of the Babylonian
chronicles.
The allies of the „King of the Kheta‟ listed by the texts of Rameses II confirm the conclusions we had already
reached, that the battle of Carchemish was the third in a series of joint ventures by the Hittites, including
contingents of Kaska, and the Babylonians. They had destroyed Assyrian might and had now severely
weakened the Egyptians.
The Hittite empire was not the same as the Neo-Babylonian Empire, as Velikovsky asserted. The two
major powers were contemporaries and were allies in the conflicts against the Assyrian – Egyptian
axis. One only has to read the pages of Ezekiel to understand that at the start of the sixth century BC,
three powers, Tabal, Babylon and Egypt, dominated the Middle East.
After the victory at Carchemish, Nebuchadnezzar had set his sights on the countries of Southern Syria,
Phoenicia, Palestine and even Philistia on the border of Egypt – all the countries previously dominated by
the Assyrians. With the eclipse of Assyria these countries had turned to Egypt, but Egypt was now on the
retreat. The Babylonian king saw the opportunity to plunder the wealth of this large area. However, Egypt
was weakened after Carchemish but not defeated. The following years would see a prolonged struggle for
domination of this part of the Assyrian empire…
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The pharaoh stormed Ascalon in his 6 or 7 year. Rameses also had a picture of the attack carved at
Thebes. With the battle of Carchemish in 605 BC, in his fifth year, the taking of Ascalon must have been in
604 or 603 BC, a swift retaliation for the Philistine capitulation to Babylon.
In 603 and 602 BC, the Babylonian chronicle tells us that Nebuchadnezzar was active in the West, but no
names are given. Rameses was re-asserting his influence and this is testified by the Old Testament book of
Kings, which related that after three years of vassalage to Nebuchadnezzar, Jehoiakim, the king of Judah
rebelled. Rameses attacked Palestine and Syria in his eighth year; this would be 602 BC, three years after
the battle of Kadesh.
Nebuchadnezzar responded strongly to the Egyptian interference and in 601 BC he sought the first direct
confrontation, since the great battle at Carchemish four years earlier. The battle was fought in „chariot
country‟, the open plain of Philistia. The Babylonian chronicle insists the contest was undecided, but the
Babylonians withdrew and did not enter the field in the following year. Fighting so far from friendly territory
and their major bases, a stalemate would have been the equivalent of defeat, because no ground had been
taken and withdrawal to a safe haven would mean at least as far as Riblah in Syria.
In 600 BC, with no Babylonian military activity, the pharaoh again moved north. A second stele was raised at
Nahr-el-Kelb, near Beirut on the Phoenician coast, to accompany the inscribed stone erected in year 4. The
Babylonian chronicle continued for a few more years and covers one more Babylonian foray in the West, the
capture of Jerusalem in 597 BC.
The pharaoh had not fully relinquished Palestine to Nebuchadnezzar. He continued to vie with the
Babylonian for control of the area. In his eighteenth year, 592 BC, Rameses once again campaigned in
Palestine, and a stele was erected in the garrison town of Beth-shan.The Books of Kings and Chronicles
recount the continuing attempts by the kings of Judah to shake off the Babylonian yoke. Zedekiah rebelled
and turned towards Egypt, no doubt promted by Rameses‟ show of force. Finally, Nebuchadnezzar
destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC, despite the continued threat of Egyptian support for Judah.
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The records of Rameses II dovetail into the information from both the Babylonian chronicle and the
Old Testament for the years following the battle of Carchemish, with the book of Jeremiah confirming
the assault of Ascalon. No information is available from Hittite sources to further illuminate this
period. It appears that the Hittites were content for the Babylonian king to pursue his interests, but to
maintain good relations, evidenced by Nebuchadnezzar‟s visit to Carchemish in 596 BC…
With the capital and the centre of administration at Tarhuntassa, the northern lands were less safe. Hattusas
was attacked by the Kaska who carried off some of the inhabitants. Hattusilis attacked the enemy and
recovered the captives. He also recaptured the holy city of Nerik, which had been held by the Kaska for
some time. Following these successes, Hattusilis ruled the north-eastern part of the empire for his brother,
and seems to have had the full support of the Emperor, but then, at the height of his power, Muwatallis died.
Mursilis III (Revised Reign: 596 – 590 BC)
There was no son of the first rank to succeed Muwatallis as Hittite emperor. The succession law of Telepinus
had to be invoked and Urhi-teshub, son of a concubine, became the Great King.
One of his seals, found by archaeologists at Ras Shamra, the site of ancient Ugarit, shows that Urhiteshub took the throne name of Mursilis, after his illustrious grandfather. During his short reign of
seven years he moved the capital from Tarhuntassa, back to Hattusas.
There are few texts from the reign of Urhi-teshub; all the information on his reign comes from the texts of his
uncle Hattusilis, and these are probably biased against the young king. Mursilis III, concerned about the
power of his uncle, started to reduce Hattusilis‟ domains. After seven years, Hattusilis revolted and the senior
officials, not satisfied with the rule of the young king, sided with the older man. Urhi-teshub fled the capital,
but was captured in Samuha. His uncle was lenient and exiled him to Nuhasse in Syria.
Hattusilis III (Revised Reign: 590 – 560 BC)
Hattusilis, now about forty years of age, was crowned as the Great King of Hatti. A lengthy document exists
in which Hattusilis relates these events and tries to justify his seizure of the throne, citing the general
dissatisfaction with the manner in which Mursilis III had conducted the affairs of state. Hattusilis makes it
clear that once he had taken the throne he established sovereignty over the whole empire and from the
evidence available it seems that his was a long, mostly peaceful and prosperous reign. There are a large
number of administrative and religious decrees from this period. Hattusilis reaped the rewards of his
brother‟s victories.
While residing in Nuhasse, Urhi-teshub was found to be intriguing with the Babylonians. He was sent „aside
to the sea‟, which possibly meant the island of Cyprus. Eventually he fled to Egypt to the court of Rameses.
Peace with Egypt
One of the first acts of Hattusilis, after he became king, was the stabilisation of relations with Egypt.
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A peace treaty was concluded with Rameses II in the pharaoh‟s 21 year, sixteen years after the
Battle of Kadesh. The Egyptian version of the treaty has been visible for centuries on the wall of the
temple of Amon at Karnak, the site of the ancient city of Thebes in Upper Egypt.
The discovery of a Hittite copy of the treaty at Boghazkoy, early in the twentieth century, has become
the cornerstone of Hittite chronology, linking Hittite history firmly to that of Rameses II. The Hittite
version, written in the Akkadian language on a clay tablet, is a draft, the formal copy having been
engraved on a silver plaque. The treaty discussed friendship, mutual military aid and exchange of
fugitives.
The need for Hattusilis to secure his hold on the throne of Hatti and to safeguard the succession is evident in
the treaty with Rameses. The pharaoh committed to defending Hattusilis against foreign enemies, but also
against his own subjects. Rameses also agreed to ensure the succession of a son of Hattusilis; no reciprocal
arrangement was required by Rameses. This is evidence for the treaty being concluded early in Hattusilis‟s
reign, soon after the removal of Urhi-Teshub. Twelve years after the treaty was ratified, at the time when
preparations had commenced for a daughter of Hattusilis to marry Rameses, Urhi-Teshub was still in Egypt.
No statement on the mutual borders of Hatti and Egypt was included in the treaty, though Amurru was
confirmed as a Hittite vassal state.
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The conclusion of the treaty was just the first step in a close relationship between the two royal families.
Several letters exchanged between Hatti and Egypt were found at Boghazkoy; not only the kings exchanged
letters, but the two queens also wrote to each other. When Rameses married Hattusilis‟ daughter, the King of
Hatti wrote:
„Greater will be her dowry than that of the king of Babylon.... this year, I will send my daughter, who will bring
servants, cattle, sheep and horses.‟
Rameses wrote back impatiently and Queen Pudukhepa of Hatti replied:
„Now you my brother wrote to me as follows: „My sister wrote to me “I will send you a daughter” yet you hold
back from me unkindly, still. Why have you not given her to me?‟ You should not distrust us, but believe us. I
would have sent you the daughter by now, but... burnt is the palace. What was left over Urhi-teshub gave to
the great gods. As Urhi-teshub is there with you, ask him now whether this is so or not...‟
The Hittite prince Hishmi-sharruma, paid a lengthy visit to Egypt, and also Rameses recorded that a second
daughter was sent:
„The great ruler of Hatti, sent the rich and massive spoils of Hatti... to the King of the South and North
Egypt... and likewise many droves of horses, many herd of cattle, many flocks of goats, and many droves of
game, before his other daughter whom he sent to the King... on what was the second such occasion”.
The correspondence shows a close, but not entirely trusting, relationship being built up over several years.
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The dating of the treaty to the 21 year of Rameses provided historians with an approximate date for the
death of Muwatallis and the end of the reign of Mursilis III.
Sixteen years after the Great Battle, Hattusilis was the king of Hatti. These sixteen years must include the
last years of Muwatallis and the seven years of Mursilis. We need to relate these facts to the sixth century
BC, where we now place these reigns.
The Battle of Carchemish took place in 605 BC and therefore the treaty was concluded in 589 BC.
Muwatallis succeeded his father around 608 BC. Urhi-teshub / Mursilis III reigned for seven years,
and this can be no later than 596 to 590 BC, if Hattusilis has to succeed him to conclude the treaty in
589. We arrive at approximate dates for Muwatallis of 608 - 596 and 596 -590 for Mursilis III.
The dates for Mursilis III could be a little earlier, but we wonder if the visit of Nebuchadnezzar to Carchemish
in 596 BC was in connection with the accession of the new king. Carchemish, the nearest Hattian town to
Babylon would be a good meeting place for the new king and the senior ally of Hatti. Nebuchadnezzar was in
Carchemish for a month, which would provide ample time for discussions of the continued alliance and no
doubt feasts to celebrate the accession of Great King Mursilis.
The letter quoted earlier, from Hattusilis to the King of Babylon mentioned possible joint military activity
against Egypt. Also we have the reference to the dowry of the king of Babylon in the letter above from
Hattusilis to Rameses. These serve to confirm our view that there were three major powers in the days of
Hattusilis III: Hatti, Babylon and Egypt. This is the same as the picture of Middle Eastern politics in the early
decades of the sixth century BC given to us by Ezekiel.
The original lines from Ezekiel about Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, were penned in the 580s
or 570s BC, in the reign of Hattusilis III. Ezekiel does not give a date for the particular chapter, but chapters
before and after are dated to year twelve and twenty-five respectively of the captivity of Jehoiachin (585 and
572 BC).
It is a minor point as far as our reconstruction goes, but we may have here, after centuries of ardent enquiry,
an answer to the question, „who was Gog?‟ Commentators have noted the similarity between the name of
Gog and that of Gyges, the king of Lydia. We noted earlier that it has also been suggested that Gugu was
the Luwian name for grandfather, huha. Such a nickname would have applied to Hattusilis III, who reigned
until he was about seventy years old. Perhaps Ezekiel had Hattusilis in mind, when he wrote about Gog,
chief prince of Tabal.
The treaty between Hattusilis and Rameses makes no mention of the border between the two
countries. Normally a treaty would state very clearly which towns belonged to which country.
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Why did the two Great Kings miss this opportunity to define the line of demarcation between them?
The political situation in 589 BC furnishes the answer: there was no border between Hatti and Egypt!
The land of Hatti extended into Northern Syria and included the land of Amurru (the Hittite ownership
of Amurru is stated in the treaty). The land between the Hittite domain and Egypt was being
contested by Rameses and Nebuchadnezzar and therefore there was no statement in the treaty about
the borders of Hatti and Egypt.
The date of the treaty is significant in relation to the continuing conflict between Egypt and Babylon, and in
particular to the fate of Jerusalem. The mutual defensive alliance of the treaty calls on the King of Hatti to
come to the aid of Rameses in the event that Egypt was attacked. A reciprocal arrangement also applied to
attacks on Hatti. This gave Hattusilis a position of neutrality in the Egypt-Babylon conflict, because the land
of Egypt was no longer under threat from Nebuchadnezzar‟s forces; he was concentrating on Jerusalem and
Tyre.
In 588 BC, Nebuchadnezzar moved against Jerusalem. The siege lasted for eighteen months. At one stage,
the Babylonians withdrew for a period, when it was reported that the Egyptian army was marching to relieve
the city, but the pharaoh did not come to the aid of Judah. Jerusalem was sacked and the Temple of
Solomon was razed to the ground. Rameses had achieved peaceful relations with Hatti and presumably did
not consider further conflict with Babylon worthwhile. The exact timing of the Egyptian march, reported in the
book of Jeremiah, is not clear, but if this was during the eighteen month siege of the Judean capital, as
implied by the wording, then this is a further piece of evidence against Velikovsky‟s theory that
Nebuchadnezzar was Hattusilis III of Hatti.
Egypt would not march against Hatti, a year or two after they had concluded a peace treaty. It is possible
that a separate treaty or other arrangement was concluded between Egypt and Babylon, if not during the
siege of Jerusalem then later. Nabonidus, a later king of Babylon (556 – 539 BC), claimed Egypt as an ally
and there is some evidence of inter-marriage between Babylon and Egypt at that time…
At this juncture we must mention the history of Herodotus (Book I, 72) and his statement that the Medes
ruled an empire which included Anatolia east of the Halys. There is no indication from the texts of Hattusilis
III that Hatti had been annexed by the Medes, who had been the allies of Hatti in the final destruction of
Assyria. The statement of Herodotus is at variance with our view of Anatolia in the early decades of the sixth
century BC, where we have shown that this area, and the lands further south, were part of the domain of
Hattusilis III. Herodotus, writing about one hundred and fifty years after the events, told the story of some
Scythians who escaped from Cyaxares the king of Media and fled to Alyattes , king of Lydia. Cyaxares
sought their extradition but Alyattes refused. This sparked off five years of conflict between the two states…
Against the tradition recorded by Herodotus, we can cite contemporary sources, which do not suggest the
existence of a Median empire stretching into Anatolia. Ezekiel wrote of Tabal as an independent state.
When Jeremiah predicted the end of Babylon, he looked for the potential source of its downfall and listed the
lands that would rise against the oppressor. His list might imply that some lands were under Median
domination, but no lands west of Urartu are included:
„Hallow the nations for war against her,
summon the kingdoms of Ararat (Urartu), Minni (Mannai) and Ashkenaz (Scythia),
appoint a commander-in-chief against her,
the king of the Medes, his viceroys and governors,
and all the lands of his realm.‟ (Jeremiah 51, v 27, 28)
The Mannai occupied the area between Urartu and Media. The Scythians had also been in this area for
several decades.
Tabal would not be included in such a list. The King of Tabal was the ally of Babylon… We also have
the words of Cyrus himself, who after his victory over the Medes declared he was „King of Media,
Anshan, Parsua and Elam „. There is no indication that he had inherited a wider realm from the
Medes… Herodotus may have been correct about the conflict between Lydia and Media, but if the
Medes operated in Anatolia it would have been with the agreement and possible assistance of their
ally the King of Hatti…
Hattusilis probably reigned for approximately thirty years, being around seventy years old when he died.
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The reign of Hattusilis was relatively peaceful. The three Great Kings, Hattusilis, Nebuchadnezzar
and Rameses grew old together. The military exploits of their youth gave way to more peaceful
pursuits. Trade blossomed in the stable international conditions and the three kings used their
wealth to develop their cities.
Hattusas was extended in the time of Hattusilis, Babylon was transformed in the reign of
Nebuchadnezzar, who commissioned the hanging gardens, one of the seven wonders of the ancient
world, but even the splendours of Babylon were dwarfed by the grandiose schemes of Rameses, who
adorned the land of Egypt with many new temples and monuments…
Thudkhaliyas IV (Revised Reign: 560 – 550 BC)
Hattusilis was succeeded by his crown prince Himshi-Sharruma, who took the throne name of Thudkhaliyas.
His brother Nerikkaili had been crown-prince for many years but was removed by Hattusilis in favour of
Himshi-Sharruma. At one time, historians attributed several texts to Thudkhaliyas IV, which were later shown
to be written in the Middle Kingdom. When these were re-attributed, the actual amount which was really
known about this king was quite limited.
Some letters and edicts from Hattusas were the work of Thudkhaliyas IV, but they contain little detail on the
events of his reign. There are no war annals, but it is clear from the texts that Thudkhaliyas was at war with
Assyria and had also campaigned in Western Anatolia and Cyprus. His treaty with Shaushga-muwa, son of
Benteshina of Amurru, mentions the war, and prohibits trade, with Assyria. An edict of the king absolved the
King of Ugarit from providing troops for the war.
The Assyrians had caused problems in the reign of Hattusilis; their harassing of Babylonian merchants was
mentioned in the letter to Kadashman-Enlil. In that letter, Hattusilis pointed out that the army of Babylon was
far superior to the forces of Assyria. It is reasonable to conclude that the army of Hatti would have had little
trouble in subduing the Assyrians and this seems to be borne out by the concession of Thudkhaliyas to the
king of Ugarit.
Thudkhaliyas IV seems to have inherited a peaceful empire from his father. Outlying lands such as Amurru
remained loyal… After a very long reign of fifty years, Alyattes of Lydia died in 560 BC and was replaced by
his son, Croesus, who quickly set about subduing the Ionian and Aeolian cities, from Miletus to Troy…
The ancient port of Ugarit was ideally placed on the Mediterranean Sea in North Syria. It could trade with all
the ports of the eastern Mediterranean, from Egypt in the south to Anatolia in the north, and also with Greece
and its colonies in the west. Easy access inland towards the River Euphrates made it ideally placed to
provide an outlet for Assyrian and Babylonian trade. The port was based on a natural harbour. The modern
name of the site is Ras Shamra which means „Fennel Cove‟. The city was destroyed when at the height of its
development and was never re-occupied. With the lack of subsequent habitation, the site has been of great
archaeological value; unlike so many ancient cities which are hidden below modern buildings. Archaeologists
worked on the site of Ugarit for most of the twentieth century. The leader of the major excavations, M
Schaeffer, attributed its final end to a series of earthquakes, which could be dated to the final part of the
Hittite Empire. The population appeared to have had time to flee the city, but in haste. No bodies were found
in the ruins and many items of work were left unfinished. The city was consumed by fire…
Its society was very literate for the time and many cuneiform clay tablets were uncovered in the remains,
written in Akkadian and Hurrian and also in Ugarit‟s own language, which had some similarities to ancient
Hebrew, and just like the Hebrews of the first millennium, the Ugaritians used an alphabet. The alphabet died
with the city and yet it contains all the letters of the Hebrew / Phoenician alphabet of the ninth century, which
were also listed in the same order! The Ugaritian alphabet includes a few extra letters to cover sounds not
required by Hebrew.
The Ugaritian alphabet was used extensively in the city in its last two hundred years, and has also been
found in a small number of examples from Syria and ancient Israel (the latter as far south as Beth-Shemesh,
west of Jerusalem). It remains a complete enigma – a unique achievement, which failed to have any effect
on contemporary scripts, and died out three hundred years before it came back to life, in identical form and
sequence, in the neighbouring land of Phoenicia…
Ammurapi was the king of Ugarit at the time of the destruction of the city. Suppiluliumas II, son of
Thudkhaliyas IV was the last Hittite emperor.
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Conventional chronology allocates sixty-five years to the reigns of Thudkhaliyas IV and his two sons,
Arnuwandas III and Suppiluliumas II, although there is little evidence to suggest any of the three reigns were
that long. The reason for the allocation is to bring the end of the Hittite Empire down to 1200 BC to enable
the argument that the Empire was destroyed by the „Peoples of the Sea‟, who were the enemies of the
Egyptian pharaoh Rameses III. Rameses‟ wars against the invaders are dated to the early years of the
twelfth century. This allocation forces a series of lengthy reigns in Carchemish. In Carchemish, at least one
hundred and fifty years must span the four generations: Piyasilis, Sahurunuwa, Ini-teshub, Talmi-teshub.
Thudkhaliyas IV was a prince of Hatti for decades. He was probably around fifty years old when he came to
the throne. He is allocated a reign of thirty years, but there is a limited number of texts from his reign. There
are no texts from the reign of his son Arnuwandas III and yet he is allocated twenty years as Hittite emperor.
Arnuwandas had no son to succeed him, which suggests he died when quite young. In our revised
chronology there are no „Peoples of the Sea‟ at the end of the sixth century BC (Velikovsky dated Rameses
III to the fourth century). We must look elsewhere for the causes of the end of the Hittite Empire and we will
not be surprised if the last period, after Hattusilis III, is shorter than that allocated in the history books.
Indications of the date of the last phase of Ugarit are given by Velikovsky in his review of the Amarna letters.
He was at pains to show the existence of Ugarit in the ninth century BC, where he placed Amenhotep III and
his immediate successors. Much of the evidence he presented actually shows that Ugarit existed beyond the
ninth century. There were tombs at Ugarit similar to those in Cyprus of the eighth and seventh centuries.
Cyprus is just across the water from Ugarit and the letters from the port show significant intercourse between
the two.
The alphabetic writing of Ugarit employed short strokes to delineate the words, a practice used in Cyprus in
the sixth century. There were parallels with items mentioned in the book of Isaiah, which was written in the
first part of the seventh century. Distinct similarities with the work of Hosea have also been identified; Hosea
wrote in the latter part of the eighth century. A catalogue of ships was similar to the one in Homer‟s Iliad,
which was probably written in the seventh century.
There are references to Jamanu – Ionians, a real anachronism if Ugarit was destroyed around 1200 BC!
Also the city of Didyme in Ionia is mentioned. Antiquities from the site of Didyme are dated to the eighth
century. The name Sosenk was found at Ugarit. There was no pharaoh of Egypt with this name before the
tenth century (actually not before the end of the ninth in the Velikovsky chronology)…
A further letter found at Ugarit is probably from the same time. The letter was found in the archives of
Rapanu, an official who served under the last four kings of Ugarit... The content of the letter seems to fit with
the claims of Ammurapi that the enemy had plundered his coasts. Forces were guarding the beaches
expecting an attack from the sea. In case the enemy landed further south, half the chariot force was facing
that direction. No other conflict is recorded in the time of Rapanu other than the war in the reign of
Ammurapi, so the letter is likely to relate to that war. At this time the Egyptian pharaoh was Merneptah, son
of Rameses II, and as we will see he was involved in providing assistance to Ugarit and Hatti in their efforts
to quell the uprising in Southern Anatolia.
Famine in Anatolia was prompting the inhabitants to raid Northern Syria, which still had abundant crops…
The records from Hattusas, Ugarit and Egypt give a picture of famine in southern Anatolia, prompting the
population to rise up and attack Northern Syria and Egypt. Gifts of corn failed to relieve the problem. The
situation in Cyprus seems to have been particularly grave. The king of Cyprus pleaded for help to his friend
the king of Ugarit, but his neighbour across the sea was hard pressed.
It appears that Cyprus was taken by the enemy, because the Kings of Hatti mounted attacks against the
island. They would not have attacked the friend of the King of Ugarit, so it is safe to assume that the Hittite
raids on the island were carried out after the removal of King Pagan and therefore after the destruction of
Ugarit. The port of Ura, located at the centre of the unrest, between the Teresh and the Luka, was heavily
involved in the conflict. Maybe some dissent had festered from the constraints imposed by Hattusilis III on
Ura‟s mercantile activities at Ugarit. The Sardan of Arzawa were involved in the fighting, suggesting that the
King of Arzawa, long term enemy of Hatti, gave support to the rebels.
Ugarit was destroyed, maybe not by enemy forces but cruelly by forces of nature in the midst of the human
conflict. In the reign of Suppiluliumas II, the end came for Hattusas. The site of the Hittite capital shows much
evidence of the brutal sack of the city. Egypt resisted the invasion, but the Hittite empire fell, when its capital
was overrun…
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The similarities between the Hittite history, now re-dated by our work to the 550s BC, and the Babylonian
history, of 557 to 553 BC, are striking. Northern Syria was threatened by forces from Cilicia. Ura and
Pityussa were major players in the conflict. At one time the war was focussed on Hamath / Amurru and then
in the Amanus range. There were battles on land and naval operations. Lydia / Arzawa was implicated in the
rebellion. In both the Hittite and Babylonian versions, there was severe famine.
The letter from Hattusilis III to the Babylonian king quoted earlier complained of a breakdown in the longestablished good relations between Hatti and Babylon. Nergilissar seized the throne of Babylon to restore
good government, which probably included reaffirmation of the links to Hatti. Nergilissar may have joined
forces with Hatti out of loyalty to their alliance or it may simply have been that the threat to Ugarit was a
direct threat to Babylonian trade. The Hattusilis letter mentions merchants of Babylon in the country of
Ugarit.
The chronicle of Nergilissar provides the answer to one of the great imponderables of Ancient History – who
were the Akawasha? In the text of Merneptah, the Akawasha were the leaders of the enemy coalition. In the
Babylonian text, Appuwashu was the leader of the enemy. The Akawasha were not Mycenaean Greeks, they
were the followers of Appuwashu…Of the five peoples who attacked Egypt in the time of Merneptah we now
have a strong Anatolian equivalent for four of them. „Akawasha, Teresh, Luka, Sherden‟ were respectively
the followers of Appuwasha, inhabitants of Tarsus, Lycians, and soldiers from Sardis…
In 553 BC, we reach the last year of Ugarit. Thudkhaliyas IV led the Hittite army deep into
Tarhuntassa, supported by the Ugaritian fleet, „off the Lukka lands‟. The Ugaritian army, bolstered by
the Babylonian chariotry, engaged the enemy in the Amanus. There were mixed fortunes for the
allies. The land engagements were successful, but Cyprus fell and tragically Ugarit succumbed to an
earthquake.
With Ugarit gone, but control of Syria re-established, the Babylonian involvement ended. Nabonidus
withdrew. Having done all he could to ensure Mediterranean outlets for Babylonian goods and with unrest at
home because of the deepening famine, he moved to Arabia, to safeguard the Babylonian spice trade.
With Southern Anatolia back in Hittite hands, a base was available for an attack on Cyprus and in the
following year or soon after, Thudkhaliyas IV raided the island, probably using the Ugaritian fleet which had
been at sea when its home port had been destroyed.
Vanquished by the combined forces of Hatti, Babylon and Syria, the Southern Anatolians sought new
pastures in Lybia in Africa, where they came into conflict with the pharaoh. Cyprus remained their one major
foothold in the Northern Mediterranean…
Arnuwandas III and Suppiluliumas II (Revised Reigns: 550 – 547 BC)
Thudkhaliyas died and the throne passed to his son Arnuwandas, and then to his second son Suppiluliumas
II. He followed his father‟s strategy and attacked Cyprus, but his record of the campaign shows that it was no
more than a punitive raid. There were three naval engagements, before the Hittites landed, and then a battle
on the island followed. Booty and captives were taken back to Hattusas, but there is no mention of a
subsequent Hittite administration. The island was not taken; Hittite sovereignty was not restored…
After reporting the king‟s move to Arabia, the „Nabonidus chronicle‟ recorded the most significant event of the
sixth century. In the sixth year of the Babylonian king, 550 BC, Cyrus the Persian seized his Median
overlord, Astyages, and became ruler of Persia and Media. This was the beginning of events, which would
change the whole picture in the Middle East in the following decades…
The Akawasha War had stretched military resources to the limit. For a few years a relative calm
ensued, but the Lydian king was biding his time. Lydian soldiers had fought in the war, but the
Lydian army itself had not been engaged. Croesus continued to build up his forces and in 547 BC he
delivered the „coup de grace‟. Marching eastwards from Sardis, the Lydian army followed the road
through Phrygia, passed Gavurkalesi, and then crossed the Halys.
The attack was aimed directly at Hattusas. The text of Herodotus, quoted earlier, tells of a
devastating assault; crops were destroyed, the city captured and the inhabitants killed or enslaved.
Throughout Hittite history, Hattusas was only attacked a few times, but each time it fell to the
invader. Argishti of Urartu had sacked the city of Tuatte; the Kaska had taken the city, when it was
ruled by Sargon‟s daughter, and they probably took it again in the days of Muwatallis.
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Now, after over three hundred years as the capital of the Hittite kingdoms, the city had fallen once
more and this time it would not recover its former glory.
The Lydian success was ephemeral. By his action against one of the three major powers of the last
fifty years, Croesus had declared his intention to be a major player in Middle Eastern politics. Within
a year, Cyrus had marched across Assyria and Anatolia to confront the Lydian menace. Croesus was
defeated. In 539 BC, Babylon fell to the Persian, and Egypt followed suit in 525 BC.
In twenty-five years, Cyrus had created an empire which included all the lands, which had been part
of Egyptian, Assyrian, Hittite or Babylonian dominions. Hittite culture withered without the
sponsorship of powerful kings. Small pockets lingered in Anatolia for a few centuries in provinces
ruled by Persian satraps. Hattusas recovered in a small way and its citadel area survived into the fifth
century.
After a second, but unsuccessful, campaign against Lybia, Merneptah (Apries of Herodotus) was removed
by Amasis, one of his officers, who became pharaoh. Amasis ruled Egypt for two decades and managed to
capture Cyprus. He died shortly before the Persian invasion of 525 BC…
Three hundred and fifty years of Hittite history have been fitted into the histories of Assyria, Babylon, Urartu
and Israel, from the start of the ninth century BC to the middle of the sixth century. The two separated pieces
of Hittite history – the Kingdoms of Hattusas and the so-called Neo-Hittite period - have been merged into
one integrated history. The written evidence has been used to construct the dates of Hittite history, often to
individual years, and this has delivered harmony in the archaeological record.
All the anachronisms and anomalies of the schizophrenic history of the Hatti lands have been swept away to
produce a single consistent view. The strained arguments of „archaising or archaic‟ can be discarded. All the
schisms, which conventional Hittite history causes in the panorama of cultural development, have been
repaired. The progression of religion, art, language, writing and metallurgy are now free of aberration.
Examples of similar art, thought to be many centuries apart, have been shown to be contemporary. The
understanding of the development and spread of Indo-European languages can be simplified, now the Hittite
languages are seven hundred years later. The development of the alphabet is a steady sequence of
enhancements, with the Ugaritian cuneiform version taking its rightful place in the middle of the first
millennium BC. The Hittite skills in ironwork are firmly placed in the Iron Age.
Out of the reconstruction of Hittite history comes the correct placement of Rameses II. Velikovsky dated the
pharaoh by comparison with pharaoh Necho II. Now the complete history of the Hittites demands that
Rameses lived at the same time as Necho.
Besides the confirmation of Rameses II as the Egyptian leader at the battle of Carchemish, we were
also able to confirm Velikovsky‟s identification of the Egyptian queen Dahamunzu and to give
precise dating to her correspondence with Suppiluliumas I. Our revised Hittite history revealed the
exact year for the siege of Carchemish and this was the year of the death of Dahamunzu‟s husband,
Taharka.
Velikovsky‟s basic tenets have been confirmed, but in validating his work we have found that he made
several mistakes, errors for which a pioneer can be forgiven. He failed to identify the correct land of Mitanni
and was denied the story of the flight and subsequent victory of Sarduri III of Urartu. By equating the Hittite
New Kingdom with the Neo-Babylonian Empire, he failed to uncover the role of Nergilissar and Nabonidus in
the „Akawasha War‟.
We also found that we could not agree with Velikovsky‟s dating of the Trojan War. The archaeological
evidence points to the late ninth century as the most likely time for the siege and this concurred with the new
Hittite history. For the first time, a substantiated historical character, Great King Telepinus of Hatti, has been
identified in Homer‟s narrative.
Fundamental to the whole reconstruction has been the abandoning of the link between Suppiluliumas I and
the Amarna pharaohs, and the creation of a new link between Amarna and the Hittite Old Kingdom. This shift
of two hundred years between Egyptian and Hittite histories enabled the synchronisation of Telepinus and
Homer‟s Telephus, because it is not just an Egyptian-Hittite shift; Myceaean history is fixed by Egyptian
history. The shift answers a question, which historians have posed about the lack of contact between the
Hittite New Kingdom and the Mycenaean Greeks:
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„The Hittites exhibit a curious lack of information on the Mycenaeans… Why at the height of their power and
influence did the Mycenaeans appear to be unknown to the Hittites? (Wood).
The solution to this conundrum is now clear. Mycenaean civilisation has been moved by two hundred years
in relation to Hittite civilisation. It ended around 700 BC, before the start of the Hittite New Kingdom…
Firmly planted in the first millennium BC, the geography of the Hittite lands and their neighbours has been
fully defined. Through the decades of the twentieth century, arguments continued about the location of many
countries mentioned in the Hittite texts. Now all the major states have been located. This has not been done
simply by superimposing the Hittite lands onto a map of the first millennium. In each case the first millennium
country has been shown to have participated in Hittite history in a manner consistent with the Hittite record.
Many of the equations have been suggested before by scholars, but now they are confirmed:
Mitanni was Urartu / Matienne
Kizzuwatna / Adaniya was Eastern Cilicia / Adana
The Lukka Lands were Lycia
Karkisa was Caria
Arzawa / Luwiya was Lydia
The Seha River Land was Phrygia, on the River Sangarius
Ahhiya was Chios
Laspas was Lesbos
Wilusa was the Troad, the land of Wilios
Nuhasse was Bit-Agusi
Amurru was originally Aram, but was later reconstituted further north in the land of Hamath: „Hatti of Amurru‟.
The identities of several major cities have also been clarified:
Troisa was Troy
Apasas was Ephesus
Milawata was Miletus
Wassukanni was Rusakinni
Irrite was Musasir / Arda…
Not one of the many Hittite sites that have been excavated over the years – Boghazkoy, Alaca Huyuk,
Sapinuwa, Masat, Sarissa, Mersin, Ugarit, Alalakh, Carchemish, Karatepe, Sakca Gozu, Zincerli,
Malatya, Kara Huyuk, Kululu, Sultanhan, Tyana, Tarsus, Maras, Ain Dara, Hamath – demonstrates
continuous habitation through both the early and late periods.
Each site is allocated to only one of the periods. This simple fact in itself must call into question the
existence of two separate periods.
Some sites give very clear evidence for our reconstruction. There are sites such as Gordium, where
the Phrygian pottery is mixed with Hittite Imperial ceramics in the same levels. Then there are the two
religious sites of the Empire, Yazilikaya and Gavurkalesi, where the evidence points clearly to the
seventh and sixth centuries. This is backed up by the Gold Tomb of Carchemish, so clearly from the
Empire period, but securely dated to the latter part of the seventh century.
The Hittite capital itself confounds the archaeologists, having a Middle Kingdom gate in a design,
which is only found elsewhere in first millennium cities. Also, Boghazkoy shares the same problem
as Hissarlik, showing no signs of long abandonment, yet forced by conventional chronology to be
uninhabited for several centuries.
Many of the ancient sites, including those of the cities Sarissa, Tarsus and Mersin, also appear to have been
abandoned for five or six hundred years. The sites of the two major cities of Northern Syria, Ugarit and
Alalakh, which were abandoned at the end of the Hittite New Kingdom and never re-inhabited, contained
artefacts of the seventh and sixth centuries BC.
Hittite archaeology provides a single message: the two periods of Hittite history were contemporary,
and the final phase of Hittite history was the Empire of the New Kingdom in the seventh and sixth
centuries BC.
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