But as she was talking, she took the little prince from me and laid him between her breasts, and as he wriggled sightlessly to find her teat, she said that she thought it was a fine name, since if not for Mursili I, after whom I had named him, her father’s dynasty would never have come to rule in Babylon. And then, smiling that knowing smile from her most beautiful countenance, she raised her gaze and extended her hand to Telipinus, who took it and was seemingly lost to her, all hostility forgotten, whilst Malnigal whispered how long she had craved the attendance of the Priest.
And I was happy enough that she had not been offended by my choice in the child’s naming, for Mursili I had sacked Babylon, put her to the torch, and drove away again, leaving a crippled city writhing in his wake, which then fell to the hillfolk who happened along to claim her, Malnigal’s progenitors, the Kassites.
So I turned to examining the child, his straight arms and legs, his wizened features, his shock of black hair and his manhood: all were faultless, of great proportion, kingly if there is that quality in a newborn child. His campaign to reach Malnigal’s teat was eminently successful, and he occupied the belly of his kingship as aggressively as a man might wish. I stuck my forefinger out and touched him with it. Baby fists flailed and a baby mouth opened to hiss a cry of inarticulate rage.
She was watching me, I must suppose, for when I looked up from him her attitude was beatific, her eyes like a replete lioness’, triumphant. “You are content with him,” she pronounced.
“I am content with you,” I said, and stroked her flaring cheek. Telipinus came to her with water in a golden cup, and I raised her and she sipped from it, the baby clutched against her fiercely, though he screamed and kicked. She would give him up to no wetnurse while she was living, she said, but when she drifted off into exhausted sleep we took him from her.
Then Telipinus and I went off to celebrate, and when we were deeply enmired in wine, I realized how much the sweat-glistened woman struggling to present me with an heir had aroused me, and I called out the team of dancers I had taken from Alalakh, and after they had danced for us, we found other things to do with them, like stripping off their kirtles and their beads.
“What was that?” I asked him abruptly, from the valley of pleasure, “What was it she did with the mirror and the Babylonian rite?”
“You ought to leave a line of succession, if you do not want him someday to rule in Hattusas. Istar, in all her attributes, Malnigal invoked, and who is the complement of the Sun Goddess of Arinna in Babylon’s pantheon, also.” While he was speaking, he was stripping down the last dancer, whose breasts, like Malnigal’s, left nothing to be desired. He muttered brief praise of them, then knifed around to face me. “You say nothing, lord and father. The Sun Goddess of Arinna, who regulates kingship and queenship, has been called into attendance in the matter of my new brother. He will reign over us all, one day.”
“You are not displeased,” I said, half with the girl who kissed about my loins, half-attending the conversation, reminding myself that Telipinus had the sight.
“No, it is not other than I have expected. But you have stepped upon a path that will lead you back into the south. Do you wish to know why?”
“I know why. I do not need you to tell me. I will have no one son over the other in the matter of kingship, but all my sons will have, each one, his realm, and he who sits in Hattusas will but coordinate the Empire.”
Roughly, Telipinus pushed away the three girls, and rolled over, and looked deep into my heart, and said: “There is death on that path.”
“Better than dying in a creaking palace bed, or of the weight of years while performing a sacrifice.”
“May the Storm God, my lord, and his Consort, my lady, aid us all.”
CHAPTER 30
Telipinus’ invocation seemed, as the months wore on, to have been efficacious indeed. I stayed in Hattusas, played with my new son, acquainted myself with my queen. Her beauty was widely celebrated in the country; foreign ambassadors who came up to Hatti would compare her favorably to Naphuria Akhenaten’s wife, Nefertiti, said to be the most beautiful woman in all the world.
And that pleased me, for I am vain as any man, to think that my woman was more beautiful than the king of Egypt’s woman, who was said to rival the sun in her magnificence.
None were more shocked than we to hear that the king of Egypt had demoted his renowned queen, indeed had taken her name off his monuments. It was said that he would marry his daughter, by those who should have known; it was said he would marry his brother, by those who liked him not; it was said he would put the whole of Egypt in a bath of natron for seventy days and then embalm it and all that would be left would be a few towering temples and sealed tombs, that is, unless the earth opened up and swallowed him whole, by those who read portents in Hattusas.
It was said that Upper and Lower Retenu crumbled away into the “sea of asiatics,” of which I, and my people, were considered by Egypt a part. It was said that as Byblos went, so went the Egyptian protectorates above the Nile’s mouth, and it was said that Byblos, the Pharaoh’s city, was on the verge of collapsing into Aziru’s waiting arms.
All these things were said to me not formally, for Egypt and I were maintaining a diplomatic silence neither wanted to break. But Duttu was sending me up from Akhenaten’s chancery every letter he received in Pharaoh’s name which mentioned myself, or Aziru of Amurru, or any of my protectorates: Nuhasse, Mukis, Halap, Alalakh, Kinza. So what was said to Naphuria Akhenaten was said to me also, though I must admit that by all accounts he was not listening, and I the Sun most assuredly was.
It was said by poor Ribaddi, who had endured year after year of Amurrite hostility, that he had fled to his brother’s city, and that all of Pharaoh’s cities were falling away to Aziru, whose hostility to him grew daily more open. Now, I do not know what Ribaddi of Byblos expected from the Amurrite: he had killed Aziru’s man in Tyre and supplanted him with his own; he had been instrumental in Aziru’s father’s death. Aziru was a man who savored revenge. But how the revenge would be perpetrated, even I myself was then not sure. When at the beginning of the next year Ribaddi’s own brother expelled him from his refuge and declared himself an open supporter of Aziru’s, I understood, but perhaps Naphuria Akhenaten did not understand. Or, as many said, perhaps he did not care.
I will admit some items of correspondence for your scrutiny, so you will see why I was content to school Khinti’s son Zannanza in princely ways and wait like an eagle on the rock sanctuary’s pinnacle, to see what might develop.
Firstly, a letter of which I made good use by subsequently demanding of Aziru that I also be privy to the intelligence of which it spoke.
Wrote Abimilki of Tyre to Akhenaten: “But behold, I am guarding Tyre the great city, for the king, my lord, until the mighty power of the king come unto me, to give water for me to drink, and wood wherewith to warm myself. Further: Zimreda, the king of Sidon, has written every day to the criminal Aziru, son of Abdi-asirta, concerning everything that he heard from Egypt. Behold, I have written to my lord: it is good that you should know.”
When I informed Aziru that I knew, I began receiving this Zimreda’s correspondence, and thus had a check on whether or not what Duttu was telling me was true.
And Aziru was even gracious in this matter, for he knew as well as I that once Ribaddi was expelled by his brother, it was only a matter of time until Aziru would be smelling his blood.
Once more did Duttu forward to me the pathetic bleatings of Egypt’s loyal governor, and I had to agree with Ribaddi’s own words: ‘Behold our city Byblos! There is much wealth of the king in it, the property of our forefathers. If the king does not intervene for the city, all the cities of Canaan will no longer be his. Let the king not ignore this deed.”
But ignore Aziru’s persecution of Ribaddi and his evermore-fierce siege of Byblos, Pharaoh did. He did not lift a finger to aid his servant, not even when Ribaddi was expelled from his final refuge with Ammunira of Berut
a, and fell into Aziru’s power. Death at the hands of the Amurrite’s allies, the rulers of Sidon, was Ribaddi’s reward for a lifetime of loyal service to his king the Pharaoh.
This affair almost had me harnessing my team, for had Akhenaten’s professed oblivion to all things not concerned with the worship of his god the Aten continued, I surely would have been rolling down into Syria again that spring, of my twenty-third regnal year.
But it was just as I was thinking about it, convening my greats to discuss a hasty campaign to take advantage of what was by then Akhenaten’s well-demonstrated disinterest, while I was finally finding time to listen to Hattu-ziti’s glorious tales of Pharaoh’s naked self driving a white and golden chariot whose white horses had gold trimmed harness, and even hooves gilded so they shone, that we heard two things so unbelievable and yet so very intriguing that I put away all thoughts of war.
First, we heard that Naphuria Akhenaten had indeed married his daughter, one Meritaten, whom Malnigal’s father referred to “Mayati” when he wrote to my wife about Egyptian matters and urged her to write to her sister, whom my father-in-law had given to Akhenaten as a wife.
Though I refused to allow Malnigal to instigate any direct correspondence with persons living in Egypt, even if the person was her full sister, I was amused that Akhenaten and I were thusly brothers-in-law, and pleased that such an unHattian affair was corroborated from another source besides Duttu. It was Malnigal, whilst she fed Mursili his last breast-meal, who explained to me that the marriage was a way of Akhenaten’s assuring his claim to the throne, having to do with bloodlines and solar princesses and the fact that Akhenaten had borne no male heirs.
I shrugged and said that incest, no matter what the excuse, is still incest, and she observed that had Egypt not been practicing the custom for hundreds of years, the cone-headed ones would not be weak and maddened, fit for taking.
And I smiled, and kissed her forehead and observed that she should not flaunt her ability to read the Sun’s mind. She was wearing, that day, a headdress of solid gold which her father had sent, a gift from her sister in Egypt. I had almost not allowed her to accept it. We were a rich nation then, but not rich enough for such excess. Down to her shoulders from the crown of her head extended this mantle, like hair: a thin, linked, complexity of gold rosettes which she wore with all her black mane braided in a multitude of tiny plates beneath. But she loved it so, I did not deny it to her. In fact, I was denying her less and less; all the things I had taken in the southern lands were hers to choose; whatever delighted her I gave her gladly. Khinti became like the blue-cloaked lord, relegated to my dreams and my half-drunken dawns.
It was the very day she first wore this queenly headdress that the Amurrite messenger stormed into Hattusas, with the second astounding message of the season. The message that had me pacing the walls and barking like a froth-mouthed dog and taking omens as if I believed in them for nearly two years afterward.
Behold, this message that Pharaoh Naphuria Akhenaten sent to Aziru, and which Aziru had no choice but to obey:
“To Aziru, the man of Amurru. Thus speaks Pharaoh: If you desire to do evil, or lay up evil words in your heart, you will die by pharaoh’s axe, together with your whole family. Render submission to the king, then, and you shall live.
“Did you not say, ‘Pharaoh, leave me alone this year, and I will come next year.’ And I left you that year. Come, and you will see the pharaoh by whom all lands live. Do not say: ‘Let him leave me alone also this year.’ If it is impossible for you to come, then send your son.
You wrote: ‘Send me Hani a second time, and I will send by him the opponents of pharaoh.’ Behold, I send you a tablet with the names of the opponents of Pharaoh. Send them to me, with bands of copper as fetters on their feet. Know that Pharaoh is as well as the sun in heaven; his soldiers and his many chariots from the upper land and the lower land, from rising sun to setting sun, are very well.”
And with it, from Aziru, was a short, terse message to me, saying:
“Look you, what the Sun of Hatti has done. Remember your oath to maintain my sons, and may the Adad of Heaven make these things right.”
I sent back with the messenger words of optimism, more than I felt. I offered once again my full and unstinting protection, even saying that if Aziru came instead to Hatti, then I would hold his person in my very palace, safe from all violence. But both I, as I wrote, and he surely when he read, knew such a thing could not come to be.
In fact, so dangerous would such a move have been on my part, with Naphuria Akhenaten awakened at last, that Kuwatna-ziti cautioned me to send no such offer to Aziru.
“There are some things a man does against all reason, because he has to, because his heart tells him. Now, Aziru is about to be trundled off to Akhenaten as a prisoner, mostly upon my account. I must make the offer. He will not accept it, though if he were any less mad than myself, he surely would.”
“Tasmi, I beg you, do not become further involved.”
“You should have begged me twelve years ago, when went out to get my head split by Mitanni, or when I first crossed paths with Aziru on Alashiya. You were not saying anything then. Now, it is too late.”
“So Telipinus assures me. But, great king, the Sun, Tabarna, my lord, if you will recollect, you did not consult me in the matter of raiding that season in Mitanni, or rather did not heed my consultation. And when you were on the island of Alashiya, you had not seen fit to take me with you, and never have you consulted me about your dealings with this criminal of Amurru since the beginning of your acquaintance, down to this very day. In fact, I have never set eyes on him.”
“Shepherd, calm down. I am not going anywhere, and Aziru has Hatib to aid him in Egypt –”
The Shepherd snorted, suggested that I do as I pleased, since I would do only that in any case, and stalked out. But I was right.
Aziru did not call me on my offer of hospitality. He went docile as a lamb down to rejoice in the City of the Horizon. And there did he stay, as the summer spent itself and the fall seared the land and the winter came and went. And we were chewing on our nails in Hattusas, for there was the smallest chance that Aziru would not lose his head, but only forget his loyalties, and if all the things I had been doing to obstruct Egyptian sovereignty were spoken to Naphuria Akhenaten’s face, it would start a war the proportions of which had never been seen in all of former times. The Hyksos invasion of Egypt would be as bush-fight in Gasga when compared to the carnage all my generals and officials assured me would come of Aziru’s protracted stay in Egypt.
I was urged by Takkuri and some few others to have Aziru murdered, his throat cut before out of it could issue my own death. But though I could have done it as easily as lifting my pale-haired princess up to ride on my shoulders, I was not as sure as they that anything anyone said would incriminate me more than the years had done… and too, it was Aziru they were talking about assassinating. So I stolidly refused all that and waited the year out with a calmer aspect than I felt.
I heard that Abimilki of Tyre was abandoning his city, Egypt’s city, to the brothers of Aziru and his adherents, who evidently felt that all was lost in the matter of Aziru’s life, and so warred more determinedly, extracting what satisfaction they could sacking Egyptian cities, raping Egyptian women, spending Egyptian gold. Even my vassal Niqmad, king of Ugarit, they attacked, and I could do little but support my Ugaritic interests against Amurru, with whose present rulers, Aziru’s kin, I had no surreptitious treaty. Also, while Aziru was gone, I was receiving no dispatches from Amurru of any sort.
All my court was telling me that I had failed, that I should have taken Aziru’s country by force, or burned it down around his ears when I had had the chance.
And I could but wait, and taste sour criticism to which I was not ready to answer, and wait more.
My twins, those that Khinti had birthed me, were ten that season. Malnigal’s fruitless efforts to win their hearts over from the black girl Lord Hani had given me
out of Egyptian generosity on Alashiya lessened, then ceased altogether as her son came more and more to occupy her mind. Also, it became clear that she was again pregnant, which was not surprising since somehow she had come to exercise sovereignty over my nights, though I neither expected nor desired to desire her above my others, only wanted to allow her her rights of queenship, nothing more.
I was not the only one she ensorcelled. No, the whole of the palace was taken with the queenly beauty, the dignity and the perfection of Malnigal, whose son was already labeled “precocious” by those who pay attention to such things.
We celebrated the New Year’s festival together: she had been diligently memorizing Hittite ritual texts under Telipinus’ tutelage; there was none better suited to make the teaching easy, for Telipinus had much studied the correspondences of foreign gods, and Malnigal was a woman greatly inclined to mysteries and priestess’ ways.
I was as content as a man can be with an unsettled empire, and since the troubles were all in foreign lands I did not have to look at them, if I wished a peaceful interlude. And I took one, or Malnigal witched me into taking one, and we performed the different festivals in all the towns together, with the twins and baby Mursili at our sides.
When we had returned from that, however, the pace of foreign affairs, which comes, though it is easy to forget this, from the vagaries of men’s lives and thus is increased or decreased accordingly, was greatly quickened. Some men find their seed rises like tree sap in spring. With men who play at power, it is their ire, their decisiveness, their battle which rises to the fore.
I, the Sun Page 47