I, the Sun

by Morris, Janet

  Tightening a bandage on his arm with his teeth, Himuili strolled over to me, spit out the cloth’s end, and gave me his little boy grin: “Tabarna, my lord, Great King and all suitable appellations, don’t you think you should do something about that slice? Even a king can bleed to death.”

  “I will, I had forgotten.” I fingered it. It was high, almost under my collarbone, a clean slash, and stanching itself well enough: it was a sword cut, not an ax blow. So I did not see to it. I went to speak with my mother, who was being rather roughly told that she would have to wait where she was, with the other captives.

  “Tasmi! Explain to these men who I am! They will not let me go.”

  “They know who you are; that is why they will not let you go,” I said. Her hair was in disarray – the only time since the burning of Hattusas I had ever seen it so. “Do you understand?”

  Her beautiful eyes looked at me from a great distance. “What are you going to do?”

  “Send you into exile, on the isle of Alashiya, with the rest of your playmates.”

  She did not plead, nor scream, nor even pale. She looked at me with unutterable contempt, and stepped forward so commandingly that my men drew back. When she stood in clear view of all, and certain of their attention (close enough that I could see the pulse beat in her throat), she reached down ostentatiously, then drew up the hem of her robe while stepping back from me.

  That done, she whirled about and walked into the midst of the prisoners. I had been, before them all, disowned.

  Kuwatna-ziti chose that moment to put his arm around my shoulder and drag me off to have my wound tended.

  “I’ve just got to find a place to sit down; that’s all I need, just to sit.”

  “Tasmisarri, from now on you can sit wherever and whenever you want.”

  “Then I’ve got to make a blood sacrifice, lest I, too, enrage the Oath Gods.”

  “I think,” said Kuwatna-ziti, squinting, “that you have already done that.” I did not ask him whether he meant that I had enraged the gods or performed the sacrifice.

  The palace has a healer, if such those can be called. It was under his ministrations I winced, on the halentuwa-house steps, trying to get my mind to realize what my, eyes saw as the uncountable were counted, corpses laid neatly out by rank, and my adherents came up periodically to ask what to do about this or that. It might have been the subtle difference in Kuwatna-ziti, or the extra pace my men kept back from me, or the blanched, channeled face of the palace healer as he bowed his way from my sight, that made me feel the truth at last.

  “It is done… I have done it! What was in my heart the gods have fulfilled!” and my men took up my belated cheer, so that bedlam rang in the open hall.

  “Zida, weed out the rot in your Meshedi; Hatib, take ten and help the Gal Meshedi at his task; Himuili, I need you.”

  “My lord?”

  “You are from Hattusas. Send Lupakki and ten of your best to round up the families of those lords who have opposed me, and any not dead who should be, and their adherent’s. I want them all corpses or exiled. The details are yours to determine.”

  “My lord? It will be bloody.”

  “A little now, or a lot later. Do it. And one more thing, Himuili – you are now a chief of 1,000. Which thousand, I leave to you. Make me a list of what these dead lords had in their estates. I shall reward my men.”

  “My lord, Great King –

  “You know my name.”

  “Tasmisarri. About Takkuri – and many lords like him, those who would follow him – he fought with us…”

  “I’ll talk to him. Go on, go! Kuwatna-ziti –”

  I saw the Shepherd stroke his chin as if lamenting the vanquished beard; his shirt was in ribbons, his left eye socket turning purple; he made no reply. I gave him instructions: “Have the palace personnel assemble, and make final judgment in their cases; those who shall live to serve us, set them about it. I want a feast for our men, in the largest audience hall. Tell them to take what women they want from Tuthaliyas’ seraglio. I will start anew there…. What is it?”

  “My lord, I’m not –” Eyes slitted, he sat down on the steps beside me. “Tasmi, I’m not condoning all this killing. I’m not your man.”

  “You were not saying that when lord fought lord.”

  “I had to… Look you, I couldn’t let them hack you to ribbons. But I have not changed my position. I want no spoils from this slaughter. I’m going home to Arinna, back to the god’s service.”

  I leaned against the steps. “You’ll go where I tell you, and when.”

  “Yes, my lord,” he said, a voice like a knife.

  “It’s still Titai, isn’t it? And the fact that I foxed you, forced your hand. Well, do not worry, I was not going to offer you any reward. You saved your own neck, this day. It is no gift from me to you. But do you as I have commanded, and this: have the army’s lords, the palace officials, the Great Ones, and all the rest here tomorrow to swear to me before the Oath Gods. Now you perform these tasks allotted you!” In my planning, I had sought this early culmination of events so that I might take the lords’ oaths before court let out for the winter and they scattered to their estates. But I had not expected Kuwatna-ziti to balk. Watching him thread his way through the living and the dead, I thought that things would be different when he was under oath to me. I called after: “And one more thing: you’re not going to Arinna; you’ll deliver the exiles to Alashiya.”

  I summoned Mammali (who had not after all lost his sight) and had him bring before me the strange commander Takkuri; his curly hair was matted with blood, his bearing uncertain. I said to him, when Mammali had withdrawn, “You fought with us. Himuili says you will be content to continue to fight with us.” I motioned him to sit.

  His squat form matched his Luwian dialect, pure southern Hittite, judging by his dark craggy face and substantial bones. He searched obviously for composure, then for a suitable form of address.

  “Why are you so nervous? If I were going to kill you, you would already be dead.”

  “There are relatives of mine lying there, more on your list.

  “Keep your family’s estates; show mercy to women and children who mean something to you. More than that I cannot do. Find Himuili and tell him I have said it.”

  His eyes met mine for the first time. Slowly he nodded, pausing long to fluff his oily, full beard. Then: “My lord king, I can promise you joyous acceptance in the Lower Country, and what you need of my men to fill up your Meshedi – they would gladly serve you.”

  “But?”

  “But, my lord, a sister of mine was to be chosen for the palace women, and even now she is up there…”

  “Go bring her to me.”

  With a bound, he was gone. I decided that if she were comely, I would keep her, and a good hold on Takkuri therewith.

  She was and I did.

  When I got a count of Meshedi, I found that nearly half remained alive. I saw Zida’s softness in that, but said nothing, only reassigned my Sutu and part of my foot there to temporarily fill out the guard while I sought suitable replacements.

  I moved into the Great House, a fortress within a fortress within a fortress, and brought Titai out from hiding and my wife and sons down from Arinna. I invited my sister and all her handmaidens into the palace, and fattened up the lords’ ranks with my partisans, creating a new aristocracy of fighters.

  By the time the clouds came down into the streets Hattusas was functioning normally. But I stayed in the Great House, not moving to a southern estate for the winter, as Tuthaliyas so often had. I made sacrifices to the Storm God, my lord, and refurbished both his great temple and the smaller shrine in the king’s quarters. I had Tunnawi the Old Woman brought down from Arinna, and installed her in the palace to oversee its purification (so I told her). I spent ten days in the temple of the Sun Goddess of Arinna, reading tablets of bronze, wood, and clay, delineating treaties and other matters concerning kingship and queenship, over all of which she rei
gned.

  My wife fell to queenship with a will; she was born for it; the halls sparkled and smelled of sweet cedar and evergreen and harpist’s strains sounded soft in the night.

  On Hattu-ziti I laid all the details of managing the palace, and news that in the spring we would begin the refortressing of Hattusas as we had always dreamed her. “For that, my lord, we will need greater wealth,” Hattu-ziti cautioned; “levies of men, materials –”

  “I will get it,” I promised him. “You will have building namra and slaves beyond counting, and the finest of wood and stone, and money shall be no object.”

  “And how are we going to do that?”

  “You worry your tasks, and I’ll handle mine. Just make me lists of what you need.” He did. I levied men and contributions from the fat nobility such as had not been pried out of them since the old empire, but they were yet mourning near half their number, and none refused me.

  I overheard two Meshedi talking of how my heart was of good iron and how the people feared my wrath. “Any man who could exile his own mother, kill uncles and cousins like goats to be offered up to the god… watch yourself, is all, or you’ll end with nails in your wrists.”

  I marked their names, but I was pleased. I had strung up a pair of Meshedi, nailed them like omen-birds on the palace gates. They were dead beforehand, but it made a lasting impression.

  The Great Queen, the Tawananna, my wife, was pregnant once more. She languished happily in her wing with her dawn sickness and my sons, and bothered me not about filling the seraglio, nor about the commander Takkuri’s sister, nor about Titai.

  But I was bothered about Titai, and when the Old Woman Tunnawi had seen to the king’s purity and the inviolability of the palace to evil demons, I had her brought before me to begin the task for which I had truly called her down from Arinna.

  “Ah, favorite of the Storm God. How is the Sun, my lord, today?” she wheezed, in that feeble display I had learned was only a disarming ploy.

  “I am fine. But my concubine, Titai, is not.”

  “I saw her just yesterday, and she seemed well enough,” said the Old Woman, easing herself down by me. We were at the offering pool – a room sided with pillars and open to the sky that lies between the king’s residence and the gods’ temples, in the midst of a five-room complex containing the royal library and implements of the gods. I had been through that whole library without finding a way to raise a foreign, untitled girl any higher than chief concubine.

  Left to me was only one alternative: “I have had her nearly five years, and she has not conceived,” I said.

  “My lord, if a woman does not conceive, then that is the man’s fault.”

  “You jest.”

  “Does the Sun, my lord, want his concubine to conceive, or not?”

  “Old Woman –”

  “Does the Sun, my lord, harbor any uncleanliness in his parts?”

  “I do not,” I growled, leaning back on my elbow and rubbing the sword cut, healed but still itching, on my breastbone. “And I have certainly proved that I can produce children, so it is not that.”

  “That is what it must be, my lord, if you are cohabiting with her in the normal way and she is not bearing.”

  I argued with her about it, to no avail. And it was incumbent upon me to take her advice, since I had asked it; thus I underwent a long and demeaning ceremony involving being bathed by a virgin and a eunuch, and various goings-in and comings-out through gates made singularly magical with wool and libations.

  When all that was done, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that I was capable of sustaining an erection, or of spending three days meekly carrying mirrors and distaffs around in the countryside. I was feeling like a horse in training by the second day, and when she gave me the bow and arrows, saying the while: “See! I have taken womanliness away from thee and given thee manliness. Thou has cast off the ways of a woman, now show the ways of a man,” in the antiquated, formulaic Hittite which the ritual demands, I balked. But after showing the wrath of a man I continued, getting through the last day of it, and we went down again into the city.

  Despite the spell, Titai was not improved, though Takkuri’s sister missed her moon-flow, so I called the Old Woman again. “I am like Serris the Great Bull with her, and still she will not bear. I have spent more time with her than with all the others combined. What say you now, Tunnawi?” We were in my own apartments. Two Sutu sat, in a corner whetting their blades.

  “I say,” said she, “that I must perform upon her the ceremony for uncleanliness in her parts.”

  When she had done that, the Old Woman came back to me, and her brow was like a field at planting time. “That girl,” hissed Tunnawi, “is a sorceress. She is accursed by all the gods.”

  My surprise that she had divined this was not feigned. “What has given you that idea?”

  “When she proved clean, I cast omens, my lord, both for you and for your house. I am telling you, there is a demon in her which eats your seed as it enters her body. And I will tell you something else, my lord, if you allow it.”

  “Speak.” My two Sutu lounged at the window, enjoying a spectacular king’s view of the countryside.

  “Try not your strength against Egypt, or the land will perish thereby.”

  “Egypt? Are you not a little premature? I cannot even get down off the plateau!” I shouted instantly, faking rage to hide my relief. Still loud-voiced, I had the Sutu take the Old Woman out and dispatch her, though I could not meet her eyes. Nor could I fail to shiver at the curses she laid upon me as they dragged her away.

  I had no choice. It was the Old Woman, or Titai. But I slept badly, encountering in my dreams the Old Woman Tunnawi’s rheumy eyes.

  *

  When Daduhepa bore me a third son, we called him Telipinus, after the god of that name. She was late with him, and labored as badly as she had carried. When we saw the size of him we knew why.

  Poor Titai looked upon the baby with longing eyes, her cheek pressed against my arm. But Daduhepa was jealous of her children; vengeful toward the little concubine, she would not even let her hold him.

  I let it be known .among my men that I would take a suitable orphan baby if any heard of one, and kept trying to settle a child on my barren girl.

  On Arnuwandas’ fifth birthday, I made him tuhkanti, and set Hatib the task of teaching him how to draw a bow and sneak around like a Sutu. Piyassilis, a season younger, waxed wrathful, so that I had to discipline him myself. It seemed like the only time I ever saw my second son was to welt his behind, until Titai softly observed that he, of the three, was the most like his father, and begged me to lighten my hand on him, or at least to give him some good memories to mix with the bad. So I took to carrying him with me when Titai and I went out, and the starved look in her winter-sky eyes slowly faded. But when the weather began to break and war loomed once more, Daduhepa was less busy with little Telipinus, and took Piyassilis back under her skirts, and my concubine cried herself to sleep at night.

  I was impatient to get out and fight, though rumblings from Mitanni and Hurri – countries which had long lain quiescent despite Tuthaliyas’ prognostications – were finally heard in the land.

  So before I went out on campaign, I wrote to Artatama of Hurri, and to Tushratta of Mitanni, and to all the foreign lands with which we had relations, announcing that I, the Sun Suppiluliumas, Great King, Favorite of the Storm God, the Valiant, ruled in Hatti.

  For that was whom I had become. My mother had disowned me, and so I disowned the label she had put on me, throwing off the Hurrian stigma with which my name had tagged me. Suppiluliumas: “pure spring.” It was a fitting name for a king to enter in the king-lists; the “Sun,” .a reference to kingship, in heaven – to the winged disk that is the Tabarna’s – was how the old empire kings styled themselves. Since I was intending to restore Hatti to the greatness of the old empire, I felt entitled to so call myself.

  In Egypt, in Amurru, in Ugarit, in Babylon and Byblos, my
new name was being sounded out by scribes, then secretaries, then kings. In Hatti, I myself had trouble adjusting to it. I had been “Tasmisarri” too long. But it was as “the Sun, Suppiluliumas” all would come to know me, and from the isle of Alashiya to Assyria men would soon be whispering it over their wine, and over their dead, and over their fear.

  CHAPTER 10

  So it was that I began to concern myself with the matter of fortifying Hattusas, and in that context I made my efforts the subject of an oracle, for my exercises in kingship had brought to my mind the curse laid upon the land by Anittas, the king to whom all kings of Hatti owe Hattusas. Said Anittas of his sack of Hattusas: “…and during the night I took it by assault. But in its place I sowed weeds. Him who will be king after me and plant Hattusas again, the Storm God of Hatti shall smite!”

  And the oracle was favorable; but the bird omens were not. Furthermore, since the curse was an echo of the one laid upon my head by the Old Woman, I made it the subject of an incubation – I slept in the palace with the matter written on a tablet beneath my head. But all that came to me therein was the blue-cloaked lord, him with the long braid. He was walking the crenellated walls of Hattusas, and they were whole, unbreachable.

  Satisfied, I caused new clothes of gold and silver to be made for the Storm God, and for his Wife, and turned my attention elsewhere, leaving Hattu-ziti a free hand to make us walls as I had seen in my dream.

  There were, in truth, more places to turn my attention than I might have wished. Kingship is heaviest in the cold months; nor is it greatly lightened in the warming of New Year, for then the king and queen must perform many duties for the gods, going with them upon tours and officiating at festivals. These things, which Daduhepa found wondrous and fulfilling, were odious for me from the first. I, who had led point into battle while still in my teens, grew dry-mouthed and dimwitted when concerned with leading people in their worship of the gods. The memorization of form and formula was as swamp tundra, so that however cautiously I tried to cross it, I would sink in the mire. I was forever losing my place and my poise with it, and seeking hard for some scheme by which I might place the religious burden of kingship on some other’s shoulders. That, however, I was not able to do, and fell exhausted into my bed, all those grey days long, from my efforts to get close enough to the Storm God’s chariot to at least offer myself in service. However I tried, my heart stayed empty and my performance of rituals likewise; and while thus engaged, I would find myself sniffing out the hearts of my lords and communing with my agents in the different towns, so that my heart ached for an end to all mummery and a pair of reins in my hands.