The Kingdom of the Hittites

9 The Showdown with Egypt: The Reign of Muwattalli II (c.1295–1272) The Re-Emergence of Egypt On his death, Mursili left to his son and successor Muwattalli a relatively stable kingdom. In the west, the vassal network which Mursili had established appears to have remained submissive to Hittite overlordship during the last half of his reign. In the north, repeated campaigns in the Kaska region had provided temporary respite from the constant threat of Kaskan incursions, and the rebellious vassals had been firmly restored to their Hittite allegiance. In the south-east, control over the vassal kingdoms established by Suppiluliuma had been maintained, in spite of the increasing menace of Assyria. And after the crises in Mursili’s ninth year, precipitated by the deaths of the viceroys Telipinu and Sharri-Kushuh, the viceregal kingdoms of Carchemish and Aleppo remained securely under Hittite control. But further to the south a major new threat was building, in the land of the Nile. In the aftermath of the Amarna period and the end of the eighteenth Dynasty, there had been no serious challenge from Egypt to Hittite overlordship in Syria. Although still holding some territories in southern Syria, particularly military establishments in Palestine (for example, Beth-Shan), Egypt could no longer claim more than token influence in the region as a whole. But the tensions between Hatti and Egypt had persisted. They were now to take a turn for the worse. After some four years on the throne, Tutankhamun’s successor Ay died, and was replaced by Horemheb1 whose reign paved the way for the beginning of the nineteenth Dynasty. A powerful new era was dawning in Egyptian history. 222 The Showdown with Egypt Under Horemheb, Egyptian military activity had begun afresh in Syria when an expeditionary force was sent to the region to support the rebellion against Hittite rule in the Nuhashshi lands during Mursili’s ninth year. On this occasion, the invading force was repulsed. But the very fact of Egyptian intrusion into territory claimed by the Hittites made it clear that Egypt had by no means relinquished its political and military interests in Syria. It was only a matter of time before it would once more pursue these interests with determination and vigour. Contrary to popular opinion, Horemheb himself seems to have made little impact on the international scene.2 Rather, he devoted himself to a programme of reunification and reconstruction within his own kingdom, in the process rooting out the administrative corruption and abuse of bureaucratic power which had apparently become rife in Akhenaten’s reign.3 In so doing, he prepared the ground for the early rulers of the nineteenth Dynasty, when Egypt emerged as the Hittites’ most serious contender for political and military supremacy in Syria. Repopulation Programmes in the North Probably from the very beginning of his reign Muwattalli realized that he would soon be forced into a major contest with Egypt, particularly over the Syrian kingdoms which had formerly been subject to the pharaoh. Successful defence against a determined challenge from Egypt would necessitate a substantial concentration of Hittite military resources in Syria. The Syrian viceroys could not on their own be expected to muster sufficient resources to deal effectively with such a challenge. Yet Muwattalli knew all too well from the experience of his predecessors the dangers of diverting to Syria Hittite troops who would otherwise be used for the defence of the homeland, particularly against threats from the north. The series of campaigns which his father had conducted throughout his reign and particularly towards its end may have provided some temporary easing of the pressures on the homeland’s northern and eastern frontiers. But in their long-term effects, they were likely to prove no more conclusive than the campaigns Suppiluliuma, or indeed any of his predecessors, had conducted in the region. The Showdown with Egypt 223 The clear lesson to be learned from this experience was that no matter how frequently and how intensively the Hittites campaigned against the Kaska lands, they would never succeed in permanently subjugating these lands or in establishing any form of lasting control over them. The only alternative was to strengthen the outlying areas of the homeland which were most prone to enemy attack and occupation and provided a route to the very heart of the Hittite kingdom. As we have noted, the siting of the Hittite capital close to enemy territory to the north and north-east made it chronically vulnerable to attack from these regions. The major incursions into Hittite territory prior to Suppiluliuma’s reign had resulted in the loss of almost the entire region extending across the Marassantiya basin north and north-east of Hattusa, from the lower course of the Marassantiya in the west towards the Euphrates in the south-east (although much of this region may have been in enemy hands even earlier). Foreign invasion or encroachment had led to large num- bers of the Hittite subject populations dispersing or resettling in areas still under the protection of the Hittite king. However, Suppiluliuma’s campaigns against the Kaskans had succeeded in reducing the enemy presence in this region and forcing their evacuation of some of the settlements which they had occupied. In the wake of their retreat, Suppiluliuma instituted a policy of repopulating the settlements with their original inhabitants after fortifying these settlements against future enemy attack.4 Like his father, Mursili followed up his military successes with some attempts to repopulate settlements abandoned or partly abandoned as a result of the Kaskan incursions.5 But the military conquests and the sporadic repopulation programmes carried out by Suppiluliuma and Mursili failed to provide a lasting solution to the Kaska problem, and Muwattalli was again faced with Kaskan invasions in the territories to the north and north-east of Hattusa. Before he could commit to Syria the forces necessary to counter the resurgence of Egyptian military power in the region, he had first to put in place more effective arrange- ments for the protection of the homeland, and above all, the royal capital. What he did was to formulate and implement a plan of astonishing boldness—one totally without precedent in the history of the Hittite kingdom. We shall return to this below. But for the moment, we must once more turn our attention westwards. 224 The Showdown with Egypt Introducing Piyamaradu After almost two decades of relative peace, a dangerous situation was again beginning to develop in the west. This was due largely to a man who was to prove one of the most provocative, and one of the most elusive, of the Hittites’ enemies—a man of uncertain origins called Piyamaradu; he may have been a renegade Hittite of high birth or a rebellious Arzawan prince.6 Piyamaradu had apparently fallen out of favour with the Hittite king, presumably for nurturing ambitions beyond his station in life. He began building his own power base amongst the Hittites’ western subject territories—probably with the support of, perhaps in alliance with, the king of Ahhiyawa. He consoli- dated his links with Ahhiyawa by marrying his daughter to Atpa, the Ahhiyawan vassal ruler of the Land of Milawata (Millawanda). We have noted that Milawata had previously belonged to Hatti, and that in the third year of Mursili II’s reign Hittite control had been re- established over it when it had attempted to form an alliance with Ahhiyawa. But subsequently, perhaps during Muwattalli’s reign, Mila- wata had become subject to Ahhiyawa. It is possible that Muwattalli had agreed to relinquish the vassal kingdom, which had by now assumed a predominantly Mycenaean character, in the hope that this would satisfy Ahhiyawan territorial ambitions on the Anatolian mainland, and in return, perhaps, for a guarantee from the Ahhiyawan king of co- operation in maintaining general stability within the region. This was particularly important now that the Hittites needed to focus their attention increasingly on developments in Syria. The ceding of Milawata to Ahhiyawa may have occurred within the context of a more general agreement reflected in a fragmentary text which lists a number of Anatolian states and their boundaries.7 The surviving portion of the text refers to Tarhuntassa, Mira, and Ahhiyawa. Since the text indicates boundaries, it probably defined the limits of Ahhiyawan- controlled territory in Anatolia. This suggests some form of pact or understanding, if not a formal treaty, between the Hittite king and his Ahhiyawan counterpart.8 At all events, relations between Ahhiyawa and Hatti seem for a time to have been peaceful, even amicable.9 We know frustratingly little about the career of Piyamaradu, one of the most notorious ‘villains’ of Hittite history, since the majority of texts The Showdown with Egypt 225 which refer to him are fragmentary and open to different interpret- ations. But from what we can piece together, it appears that he sought to create a kingdom of his own out of the Hittites’ vassal states in the west. In the early years of Muwattalli’s reign he may have gained temporary control of the Land of Wilusa, which lay in the north-west of Anatolia, in the region later known as the Troad (see Ch. 14). We do not know whether his activities in the region had the support of the people of Wilusa;10 the fact that Muwattalli subsequently referred to Wilusa as one of the most consistently loyal of the Hittites’ western vassal states suggests he did not—if we can accept Muwattalli’s statement at face value. At all events, it seems that the only opposition he encountered at this time was from the veteran Manapa-Tarhunda, vassal ruler since the beginning of Mursili’s reign of the nearby Seha River Land.

Load more