I, the Sun

by Morris, Janet

  I was in Kurnanni, the holy city upon Kizzuwadna’s border, celebrating a festival, when the news of it came up. Now Ugarit, I have said, lies on the coast north of Amurru. She is possessed of a magnificent harbor which hosts a cosmopolitan traffic second only to Alashiya’s. Her palace, I had heard, stretched as far as the eye could see. She was more Egyptian a country than most of the ‘independents,’ bristling with animal-headed gods and steles. Her nobility was forgetful of its heritage and pretensions more suited to Egyptian society abounded on her shores. I am sure old Nimmuria Amenhotep found this as amusing as I. Still, it served me better than it served him: when one is looked upon as a servant by those in whose image one strives to appear, condescension in the eyes of the master is as sand in the servant’s bed.

  So, as we were doing in other upper plains countries, namely Ni’i and Mukis and Nuhasse which lay east of the river Orontes but east of the Egyptian-controlled coast, we began seeking partisans in Ugaritic society. Now, this is slow and painstaking work, best instigated by Hittite merchants and dwellers in foreign lands, but once it is started it paves a smooth path for conquest. As dissension is fomented, local supporters take a hand. The best of these I had already singled out in some places, was still undecided in others, but one thing was clear: those that were presently distinguishing themselves in my behalf among the southerners I would later reward for their loyalty. Empire buildeth itself from within.

  Within Ugarit, I had supporters who told me things. They told me of the new king, Niqmad, of his youth, of the delicacy of his constitution and his sensibilities, and of his preoccupation with the arts. Great plans were announced in that country for the elevation of the historian, the sculptor, the scribe.

  “What do you think, Kuwatna-ziti? Can they be as blind and .deaf and complacent as they profess, in the face of Amurrite hostility and the increasing disinterest Egypt shows in all but the War Between The Gods?”

  “They are too close, Tasmi. They see the Egyptians’ might all around them, and never think it might fail. Egypt is not yet giving up all appearances, only does she seem to be ignoring what in Egyptian eyes are labeled ‘princely’ disputes. Or some profess it thus, at any rate. My lord, I do not know. It cannot be as bad as we hear it is, in the City of the Horizon. Kings do not drive naked with Wives beside through the streets of their cities – do they? The young Pharaoh and his consort may be playing a shrewd game that we, with foreign eyes, cannot discern. Who knows the minds of The Beautiful Woman and the Horse-face? Not even their own mother and father, those royal parents whose reign seems about to be engulfed in the flood of strangeness that surrounds their children. That it should be, is to our favor. Why it is, I doubt we will ever understand. Sacrifice to the Storm God, my lord, and to the Sun Goddess, my lady. Give thanks and hope they live long, disastrous lives upon the gold-plated seats of their double thrones: and that the old Pharaoh Nimmuria Amenhotep does not become exceedingly well, but continues to ail, indeed, that he perishes of this new ailment. He has been king for thirty-five years. It is time for a change.”

  “I could not agree more heartily. What have you heard from Mitanni?”

  “Not enough, my lord, not enough. Only that Tushratta’s sister, who was wived to old Amenhotep, has died and that Tushratta is negotiating with Egypt in the matter of a replacement. He will send, so it is reported, his daughter Taduhepa to replace his dead sister as a royal wife. In fact, she might be there now, only we have not yet heard it. Do not look so glum, Tasmi.”

  “Why not? That is not good news, not at “

  “Ah, but the ailing Pharaoh has also asked that the Goddess Istar of Nineveh be sent down to him. She healed him before, twenty years ago. If he is so ill as to have to request a foreign goddess once more, then things are not that bad for us. Perhaps she will not be able to heal him; perhaps the statue will be stolen or damaged on its way to Egypt. Twenty days is a long journey. Perhaps the old king will die before the Goddess arrives; or die before the Mitannian princess arrives.”

  “Or not die at all. Or perhaps Istar of Nineveh will heal Old Pharaoh. Even if he be now dead, how is it better? The girl will marry the younger Amenhotep, and the alliance will be the stronger.”

  “Not Amenhotep: Naphuria Akhenaten. And not if he is anything like the person of whom we have heard so much. Would you like your daughter married to something with a pointed skull, the ears of an ass, the lips of a Nubian, the belly of a sow and the hips of a woman? Some say he is man and woman both, some say he is neither, but none say he is a normal man, with normal wants –”

  “Shepherd, you sound like Khinti. I care not about his sex life. Where a man wants to thrust himself is his own concern; I have known soldiers who co-habit in the field, and so have you. That is women’s talk.”

  “So you may think, Tasmi, so you may think. It matters not to you? It will matter to Tushratta, for it is his daughter. What if it were your daughter?”

  “Tushratta is a military man. I gave my sister over to Hugganas of Hayasa, though he wived his sisters and married a son to a daughter.”

  “I will not argue it. You will see.”

  “I hope so. Let us leave it, then. The Criminal of Amurru is beginning to plague Ribaddi, the Egyptian governor in Byblos, in earnest. The last time the sons of Abdi-asirta nibbled at the coast; Pharaoh sent in troops. If things are going as you say –”

  “As I suspect –”

  “As you suspect, then, and as I hope. If Egypt does not send troops to Ribaddi, then that will be a sign her interest is truly flagging. But the marriage-alliance, Shepherd: the marriage alliance belies all. What if the sphinx is simply waiting for us to drive between her paws she disguised as Tushratta?”

  “Even so, my lord, the road down which you are driving leads only one place.”

  “I am driving to Mitanni, Shepherd.”

  “With one eye on the coast.”

  “All the gods stand and hear my oath: ‘I want only Tushratta.’”

  “I understand that. But you must understand that whither goeth the servant, it is at his master’s behest. Touch the father-in-law of Pharaoh, and touch the hand that holds the crook and flail: Strike at the head that wears the plumed helm of Mitanni, and you are striking at the shaven pate that bears the Double Crown of Upper and Lower Egypt.”

  “Shepherd… are you afraid?”

  “Is the circling wolf a coward? Does the coiling of a snake betray fear? I am ready, Tasmi. It is you who are slow in sniffing things out.”

  “Perhaps, Shepherd, perhaps. But speaking of sniffing things out… when I was too weak to hold my head up in the palace, when I was spared from death, I swore I would have it out with the Storm God. I need your help.”

  He had been leaning back, sprawled. No longer: the Shepherd was straight as an arrow, his eyes attentive, his shaven, jaw outthrust. “What do you mean, Tasmi? You cannot have it out with a god. You do not say: Come, let us fight! Not to the Storm God.”

  So I began to tell him about my god-deafness, and about the blue-cloaked figure who dominated the landscape of my dreams.

  And when I had said all of that, he sat silent a time, running a stylus over his plump underlip, and at last replied: “I will ask a priestess I know who is free from prejudice to learn the truth by incubation. I will look at the matter in my dreams. Call no Old Women in on this – you have not?”

  “No, I have told only Khinti.”

  “Khinti. It cannot be helped.”

  “Shepherd!”

  “Your wife is a good Queen, Tasmi, so good that many are blinded in her favor with regards to things she does that in others would draw criticism.”

  “Let us not talk about my personal affairs.”

  “Then what shall we talk about?”

  “Finish about the God. Do you think if I went into the temple and talked to him about it, it would do any good?”

  “You have not done that?”

  “Not for a long time; and not as I would today. I have been busy. And I
would not want to do it in the Hattusas temple. Here, the gods seem clearer.”

  I got up, my irritation would not let me sit. “Shepherd, I am sorry I spoke of it. Let it be as if I had not.”

  “I am only a man, though you are forgetful of that when it suits you. You said it and I am not hard of hearing. I will let you know what I find out.”

  “It is beautiful country, is it not? Khinti wants to spend the winter here.” The king’s estate in the holy city was of finest rare woods and colored marble, and everywhere the austere grace of godliness was inscribed upon stone and modeled softly in carven wood. The laws of the field were depicted round the large L-shaped chamber in a frieze of cedar wolves who hunted and killed eternally, and all their prey fled them wide-mouthed, tongues flapping, racing over the lintel toward a pastoral pool they would never reach. Kumanni had survived a long time without being sacked: the gods protect their own. The country rolled and stretched like a dog before his master, all anxious to please.

  “What the queen wants,” growled the Shepherd, “is for you to put Telipinus in the high-priest’s place: king of Kumanni, he would just about be then.”

  “Telipinus? Priest of Kumanni? He is just barely manned. And if she wants it, what of it?”

  “That is for you to determine, my Sun.”

  “All right, what else have you? I do not want to pursue this.”

  “As you wish. Would you come here, my lord.” I went over to the desk at which he sat with spread writing materials. “Put your seal to this, and Lupakki is a general “

  “With pleasure, though I am not sure whence I will replace the thirty I am losing to ‘more important’ posts. Ah, kingship is bereft of choice.”

  “I wish you believed that. What about this message from Tushratta’s brother?”

  “Can you get me a volunteer to take an answer to him?”

  “His own messenger abides awaiting your reply.”

  “I would think on this. He may have a few days’ wait.”

  “Kingship is bereft of choice: did you not just say that?”

  “Kuwatna-ziti, I like this not at all. He may be the rightful ruler of Mitanni, ousted by Tushratta the usurper. What is that to me? If I do help him, how might I explain it to the people? When the old king of Mitanni died, I was but a youth, but I remember what you said in that meeting about hating Hurrians. And although I agree that, as Hurrians go, this other brother might be preferable to Tushratta, what is the difference what color a tiger is if it is tearing out your throat? The kingdom of Mitanni and the kingdom of Hurri are now two separate entities in the eyes of the two brothers who rule them. To me they look the same: Hurrian.”

  “Tasmi, you misremember what I said then. I argued that we must support the Hurrian Artatama, just as Egypt supports Mitanni.”

  “Shepherd: what difference does it make? If I put Artatama of Hurri on the Mitannian throne and he unites the land, I have done myself a great disservice…”

  I trailed off. The Shepherd tried to hide his smile behind clasped hands, but I saw him.

  “I hate it when you watch me think!”

  “But?” teased the Shepherd.

  “But, old wolf, if I should aid Artatama of Hurri just a little, just enough to keep Tushratta looking to his rear, and if war broke out on his eastern borders, and if he weakened himself and exhausted his troops fighting; and if indeed neither one of them won it, but they just kept gnawing at each other, then I could see it… but that is four large ‘ifs’ and the last of them is possessed of a deadly stinger.”

  “But, it is something to think about.”

  “All I will do is offer Artatama what I would offer any vassal-king; he may not like that.”

  “My assessment of the situation is this: if you draft an agreement that is no further below him than his feet, he will stoop to pick it up. But Tasmi, he will not dig for it in the sand.”

  The folk always turn out when the army passes, and the folk of Kumauni were no exception. They lined the meandering route by the riverbank and cheered and sang. Noblewomen throwing garlands stood in wagons from whose standards trained birds sang in copper cages; priests and Old Women moved at measured pace beneath their awnings; children ran in among the cars begging rides; their hands and faces sticky with honey. It is said that the way the folk line up for the armies is the truest measure of their feelings. If so, we were better loved in Kumanni than anywhere but Hattusas.

  I stood with Khinti in the elaborate state chariot, my horses plumed and glittering, while the chariotry passed in review. They were on their way past to Ishuwa, with Piyassilis among the officers in newly-generaled Lupakki’s command. In Ishuwa, as on the Arzawaean frontier, there was always trouble. But Gasga was quiet, so I had plenty of men to spare: so peaceful were the tribal folk of Gasga that my eldest son had come down from Samuha to meet us for the occasion.

  As the drums beat and the auxiliaries passed before, I strove to make out my second son behind Lupakki, somewhere in the flare of the column’s point.

  “There,” I pointed, and Khinti grasped my arm and pressed her cheek against my shoulder and spoke motherly judgments upon the princely bearing of the long-haired youth, spear-straight, who drove his greys in exact synchrony with the teams on his left and right.

  We had made our private farewells the evening before, a stiff and formal affair tinged awkward by Khinti’s inability to see men in her boys. I had spent the meal in delicate arbitration between queen and princes, for Arnuwandas was sporting his first few battle-scratches, of which more was made than was needful by all concerned.

  Piyassilis looked at me over the heads of my wife and boastful eldest, and shook his head like an old campaigner. Of the arrow that pinned his foot to the car, and of the head wound he summarily sustained in our defeat in Mitanni, he spoke not one word. Of his horses, he could not talk enough. He had shaved off his beard and revealed what I had suspected: he was in my image. His high forehead, thick, straight hair and wide-set, narrow eyes had portended it. The arrogant, unbending sweep of his nose had announced it. But not until he shaved did I see the prominence of his chin, the flaring angularity of his jaw, the firm, sardonic mouth whose lower lip curled downward. Already, at eighteen, shadows were beginning to form around it, like defensive walls whose upper boundaries were his flaring nostrils, but whose southernmost frontiers were yet in doubt.

  Himuili was supping with us then; he was in the royal retinue on the following day.

  If I were he, I would have been bitter; I myself itched for reins of plain leather. I would have gladly traded my golden, snub-horned king’s helmet with its long flowing crest and graven cone for the simple bronze one of a field commander. But Himuili wielded the staff of his infirmity like a dignity and dispensed the troops of Hatti with such brilliance that none could doubt his commitment to the task.

  He was to Khinti like a second head, so she said. Without him, she affirmed, she would never have been able to control the inner lands while I campaigned so long in the outer reaches.

  Looking at him, amid the inescapable crowd of ladies that materialized wherever he might choose to linger, I wondered just what it was about him that attracted them so. He had greenish eyes, which may or may not be a sign of heavenly favor, but he no longer had a manly stride, nor was his stance full of vigor, and whereas before he had his yearly quota of heroic deeds to commend him to the ladies, now all he did was administrative work, necessary detail that few could do as well as himself, it is true, but hardly glamorous or intriguing. Still, he wore his fine mantle as proudly as ever, and he was yet sporting huge hairy arms and a broad back, and that may have been it.

  “Khinti, what is it about Himuili? Look at him, with all the fairest flowers of Kumanni at his feet.”

  She did not look where I pointed. She looked at me, a long, deep staring look through those change-color eyes. Then with a toss of her head she touched my forehead, traced the scar out of my eyebrow up to the hairline, and said:

  “Jealous, m
y lord? He bears his scars no less prettily than you; he is simply more accessible. When first I saw you, I thought you frightening, formidable. Himuili, upon first sight, is reassuring: a woman knows he could be very fearsome, but not with her… he includes her instantly in his protection. You, my lord, present no such false security.”

  “Which is why Arnuwandas does better with his women than Piyassilis, I suppose?”

  “Arnuwandas is next in line, that is why he is so courted. A woman got in that way bodes ill for us all.”

  “Khinti – I told you, as long as he takes no wives it is none of our concern.”

  “My lord, I do not see how the morality of princes cannot be a concern to their father the king.”

  “Well, it is not. And I wish to hear no more about it.” I put my hand on her waist, let it slide, felt her stiffen with outrage. But I won the argument without a word, showing her to what depths even a queen might sink while reviewing troops in Kumanni of a bright spring day, and she gasped and tried not to show what she felt, leaning against me in hopes that none would mark the raising of her robe.

  Afterwards, her fury knew no bounds, and, since the review had finished at about the same time as she, she insisted on being driven directly to the king’s estate, whence she would be pleased to leave, upon that moment, back to Hattusas and her twins.

  When I was sure she was serious, I hailed Himuili and asked if he would see to my wife’s wishes, handed her down out of the chariot into his care, and thought no more about it other than the inadvisability of mixing women and armies and went off to hold council with my commanders and my sons.

  But she was yet in my bed when I stumbled in shortly before dawn, and not sleeping either, but curled into a ball.

  I stared down blinking a time, trying to recollect through the wine why I had been out doing what I was doing, if I had a woman ready in my bed, then managed, “You are still here, are you?”

  She made no intelligible answer; I stripped off my gear and lay back, thinking of something else to say, and fell asleep before I had found it.