I, the Sun

by Morris, Janet

  Nearly a year had Aziru been detained in Egypt, wherefrom we were hearing strange news upon strange news: Akhenaten had raised his lover-brother to co-regency, married this bedpartner to the same woman he had wed the year before, one Meritaten, and then married himself the next heiress in line, a girIchild of his loins called Ankhsenpaaten.

  “What means this?” I wondered aloud. And why is Aziru yet in Egypt, alive and well, but silent… his own sons have written pharaoh begging for their father’s release, saying that all the little kings are accusing them of selling their father to Egypt, yet Akhenaten’s answer is to send out his wedding announcement.”

  “Ask, better,” suggested the Shepherd, “how Lupakki is faring in Amqa and Nuhasse.”

  “If you had not been pushing tablets the whole time I was fighting down there, you would not have to ask. Lupakki will do exactly as he chooses in Nuhasse, in Amqa we will be triumphant. I am not worrying anymore about what this hermaphroditic lover-of-boys-and-girls-to-whom-he-is-related is going to do. Any man who orders likenesses of himself loving a man in incestuous relationship to be carved in stone to last forever and ever must be mad beyond redemption.”

  “It is maat,” put in Hattu-ziti. “Akhenaten is ‘living in truth’ in his city, as he has promised.”

  “Well, my resident Egyptian expert, it may be truth, but it is not sanity. I have got to do something about Aziru.”

  “What? You cannot very well send a diplomatic complaint; we have not had any relationship with them for too long; you would likely precipitate his death, rather than aid him.” So spoke Malnigal, who somehow was always present at policy meetings, and who somehow never aroused my anger by speaking in them.

  “If I knew ‘what’ I would not have thrown the matter open for discussion, would I?”

  But we could not think of anything, none of us, that might aid Aziru of Amurru.

  So it came to pass that we did but sit upon our hands, and pick our teeth, and but for Lupakki and Zidanza and their forces raiding Amqa and maintaining Nuhasse, down into Hittite Syria I did not go.

  And as the months dragged by, I gave up on it, and faced the winter, and sent to the brothers and sons of Aziru a gentle message only asking if they had any word of their sire.

  But when the gods came to decide the fates at the commencement of the year, I laid a sacrifice in his honor, and had my more pious sons, and Telipinus especially, do whatever it came to them to do in the matter.

  Now, the gods had not done my will in the matter of Himuili, my second queen’s partner in adultery: he was still living, limping along from battle to battle though I put him ever in what should have been the position of greatest danger. The Oath Gods, to my mind, should have taken care of him for me. But if a man waits for the Gods to act, he may wait forever. And yet, if I laid a hand on Himuili myself, I would be inviting the hand of retribution upon Khinti, by the law of correspondence which all Oath Gods and gods of the field obey. So I had little hope for any miraculous emergence out of Egypt by Aziru of Amurru.

  It was on the day that marked the first full year of life of Malnigal’s second child, the daughter she had borne me, with whom we had just discovered she was pregnant when Aziru went to Egypt, that word came from Lupakki, who was yet harrying the country of Amqa with Aitakama of Kinza in the guise of maintaining Hittite control of ever-restless Nuhasse.

  And what was this word that gathered all my greats and officials in Hattusas? It was that Aziru, having languished eighteen months in Naphuria Akhenaten’s sordid court, was back in Amurru, and in violent dispute with my vassal Niqmad of Ugarit.

  And many mouths curled sardonically among the lords of my army. Some even dared to point out that they had prognosticated this sorry development to me.

  Aziru, it was said, had turned back to Akhenaten, his lord; had turned his face finally away from the Sun. I was urged to invade Amurru and despoil it by Niqmad the timid and those who supported him, the conservatives of Hattusas.

  I was close to allowing it to be done. I was close to giving up on Aziru of Amurru. I was close to making a move that went against all my instincts, to calm my court and my adherents, who feared we would lose precious, bejeweled Ugarit back to Egypt because of Aziru’s duplicity.

  Nor was that all that was concerning me. Malnigal’s sister, I have said, resided in Akhetaten as one of Pharaoh’s lesser wives. Both she and Duttu of the Egyptian court, and also my brother king Artatama of Hurri had written to me concerning one Assur-uballit of Assyria.

  “Who in the name of the demons of the netherworld is Assur-uballit?” I demanded after a fruitless, gall-raising meeting that resembled more the old debating sessions that used to obtain in Hatti when the democratic assemblage called the “pankus” was in force: in former times, nothing could be done, because between all the folk of the pankus, nothing could be decided. I had never held with councils. That day, I was thinking about abolishing entirely my court and starting anew with younger men who did not crave curl-toed shoes and embroidered shawls above all else.

  “Shepherd, I asked you – what do you know of this Assyrian?”

  “No more than you, my lord. Shall I speak the obvious, that Artatama of Hurri is too busy chasing his brother Tushratta through the bushes to pay attention to his own protectorates; that Assur-uballit has managed to secure his independence and has even gained recognition from the Egyptian court? It is too late to do anything about it. And it is too far away, truly, to warrant our concern.”

  With an empty throne in Mitanni, a civil war in Hurri over whether Mitanni is a vacant Hurrian fief or another state, with the most vile torturers of Assyria raising themselves up and sharpening their weapons, the Great Shepherd of Hatti, my most valued confidant, can only say: they are too far away? If they start moving westward, you will not be saying that, not when the tanned, flayed skin of their enemies start arriving in presentation boxes, you will not. Shepherd, I want some stronger ally than Artatama, one who can protect himself, and thusly ourselves… think upon it.”

  “I will think. But come with me out of this crowd, I have a matter for your attention.”

  As I accompanied him out of the palace, he would not speak of whatever concerned him. While we climbed the stairs to walk the inner wall, I brought up not Aziru, of whom I had had enough talk for one day, but Akhenaten and his shocking behavior in the matter of his co-regent, Smenkhkare, who was also his lover.

  “Tasmi, you are getting old. You have grey hairs.”

  “I am wearing better than yourself.”

  “In body, but not in mind. It bothers you that in lands so foreign as to be considered the furthest extent of civilization, a young king much like yourself has arisen. It troubles you also, I suspect, that in the army are appearing faces wet with youth and downy of cheek. The world does not stop spitting forth beginnings because a man’s thoughts turn to endings, to the stabilizing of past affairs.”

  “What are you saying, oh obtuse one?” We were between two crenellations of the citadel wall, halfway between one guard tower and another. He stopped me, leaning back against the plastered stone.

  “I am saying, my lord king, that you are making more of Akhenaten’s sexual preference than you should. It is not such a weakness as you expound.”

  “Is it not?”

  “Was it with us?”

  “Shepherd, we were never like that.”

  “That is true,” he sighed. “We never were like the Egyptian about it. But I wanted you to recollect that sometimes men grow close, closer than close, and there is nothing wrong in it…”

  “So?”

  “So, you have recollected it, have you not?”

  “Kuwatna-ziti, even a king, these days, cannot afford to stroll the battlements in muzzy recollection of his youth. I remember: so what?”

  “You and I have a problem.”

  “If you are pregnant, it is not from me, Shepherd.”

  “No, but close.”

  “What is our problem?”


  “Piyassilis and Tarkhunta-zalma,” said the Shepherd very quietly, looking out over the Hattian countryside.

  “What about them,” I demanded, not understanding.

  “Do I have to say the words? All be as the gods decide, then, I say them. Hark: your son and mine have more than a friendly relationship.”

  “Shepherd, you are demented.”

  “No, it is true.”

  “So it is true. They will grow out of it, as you and I did. They will find suitable mates, and drift apart. They are young –”

  That is the heart of the matter, Tasmi. They are not young anymore. They are older than boys… my son is thirty, Piyassilis is twenty-eight. They have no wives; few concubines; neither has sired a son. We are going to have to do something about it.”

  “Just what do you have in mind?” I said with a voice fainter than I would have liked. It was just coming over me, the sour stomach and dizzy head of a man faced with such a revelation.

  “You must talk with them.”

  “I must talk with them? You talk with them. It bothers me less than it bothers you.”

  “It bothered you enough in the case of Naphuria Akhenaten; how can you be free of scandalized remarks and superior pontification in the matter of your own son?”

  “Of both our sons. I could dispose of yours and that would end it, would it not?”

  “Tasmi, I am serious.”

  “And I, Kuwatna-ziti, am equally serious. Do this, then: bring them both before me. I will decree that each must take a wife and beget sons upon whomsoever they choose by year’s end. More than that, I cannot do.”

  “Will not, you mean.”

  “Shepherd, I cannot say to a prince who is, as you point out, nearing his third decade, that he cannot see his lover anymore, even if that lover be a man. I have not raised my boys that way. You think it is just about Akhenaten’s choice of bedpartners that I am concerned… it is not that at all. It is the raising of one god above all others that concerns me: if such a point of view were disseminated among the nations, war would be waged until the last person among us died. How fiercely might a man who feels he is fighting for his god wield a sword? And I am not misconstruing it, either. In Naphuria’s own writings are the seeds of chaos: he has said that his god, Aten, has differentiated all the nations. He is making a holy crusade out of his god’s service, and has even said that his god has settled every man in his place…

  “You mean the hymn to the Sun god, don’t you, where he says:

  ‘Their tongues are diverse in speech,

  Their forms and likewise their skins,

  For thou divider hast divided the peoples.’”

  “That is exactly what I mean, Shepherd. He is making skin-color and nationality a matter of godly favor, of degree, of maat, as Hattu-ziti is so fond of reminding us. He is installing racism in the cult of his god, and in the minds of all the peoples. Down go the gods who the peoples have worshipped since former times; down goes their self-esteem, and their brotherhood under the Thousand Gods of Heaven along with them. I am not just against his methods; I am against the danger of his cult, and what it may do to all the peoples.”

  Thus I bespoke my opinion, as much to change the subject as anything else.

  But the Shepherd would not be silenced: “In the matter of making married men of our sons, if you the Sun chose the women, it would be impossible for them to do any other than what you command.”

  “Sumeris, my daughter of the second degree, is comely. Would she suit?”

  “My lord, I was not asking.”

  “When you start ‘my lording’ me, then I know the matter is grave. I wish I had a grown princess of full blood to offer; your house and mine should by now have been formally joined.”

  So it was decided, and so was it performed.

  The telling of them was left to me, and I chose to do it in such a way that neither man was embarrassed, that my son not think that I disapproved of him in any way. I did not let them know that I knew, or that I cared, only that I thought it time each took a wife and insured his line.

  Since I had not made similar demands on my other sons, Piyassilis doubtless realized what was happening. But a man must be allowed to correct his mistakes; by rubbing his nose in them before everyone, I would only have made it harder on them both.

  I sent down Piyassilis to aid Lupakki in Nuhasse and posted Tarkhunta-zalma in Kumanni, and it was then that the blue-cloaked lord appeared in my dream and he was grey as good iron, and noticeably dimmer, as he laid upon my path two tablets, first one and then another. But as I was stooping down to retrieve them, Malnigal woke me from my dream, saying that a messenger awaited.

  “Awaiting? Now? It is the depth of night. Who is it?”

  I groped my way up out of sleep in a bad temper, and into my hands she pressed a full cup, and by the time I had drunk it she had laid out my clothes as if she were a bodyservant.

  I paused in my dressing, touched her cheek, saying: “Have I told you how beautiful you are?” for I was sorry I had been sharp with her.

  She kissed my palm, and asked if she should admit him, or if I would see him elsewhere.

  “Admit him, for if he must wake me in the middle of the night, then he can stand the sight of rumpled bedclothes and a sleepy king.”

  The message was by way of Lupakki, but had come from Niqmad of Ugarit. It was a copy of a treaty, and besides that he sent no other word to me. Thus did the treaty read:

  “Dating from today, Niqmad, king of Ugarit, and Aziru, king of Amurru, have made this agreement by oath. The disputes of Aziru with Ugarit, and those of former times, from the day of this oath, they are no longer valid. Of all these disputes, as the sun is pure, so he, Aziru is pure in respect to Niqmad and the prince of Siyannu, Abdihebat; in respect to Ugarit and Siyannu. Furthermore, five thousand shekels of silver are paid to Aziru and he is pure as the sun. Furthermore, if there is a king who should make an act of hostility against the king of Ugarit, Aziru with his chariots and soldiers will fight him. If the soldiers of an enemy king attack my country, Aziru will fight my enemy with chariots and soldiers. If they penetrate into my land, Aziru – his chariots and soldiers – will come to my aid.”

  Now, what this was, was extortion, on Aziru’s part. On the part of Niqmad, it showed little faith in the Sun, that he would buy protection from Aziru. What it was in large, though, most concerned me. This was a vassal treaty: Ugarit, however delicately the matter was stated, was suddenly not just my vassal, but Aziru’s also. If indeed the Amurrite was now a loyal Egyptian subject, I had just lost a very rich and important country.

  I dismissed the messenger to await me in the Gal Meshedi’s house, while I tried to toss off the mists of sleep and draft some suitable reply. I had hoped Aziru would come up to Hatti upon his return from Egypt. I had been waiting for him so do so. The treaty seemed to say that he was not in any way inclined to visit me.

  And yet, I was not enraged. Something in the back of my mind whispered caution, for Aziru was a master of actions whose consequences were never what they seemed.

  I called for Telipinus, who was still in Hattusas on account of the gathering of Lords, and asked him what his “sight” showed, what he would advise.

  Fingering the tablet, he answered me slowly, “I am not Piyassilis, in blind love with Aziru. But Abuya, all my person screams caution: take no action. You can crush him as easily later as now. Give him a chance to explain. Summon him to Hattusas, if you must, but into Amurru send no troops… do you think I am mad?”

  “Now, Telipinus, if I have asked you here to counsel me, would I be thinking that? And furthermore: my feeling is the same as your own, though no god tells me his innermost thoughts. Only stand with me tomorrow when we inform the lords of what has occurred.”

  He agreed, and we stood together before the doom-criers and the battle-hungry, and we won them over without my having to hand down a unilateral decree, and barely a month after that Aziru, king of Amurru, drove up to the gates of Ha
ttusas and turned his own country and all his territories, his alliances, his vassals over to me. Thus the entire coast, excepting Amqa and a few beleaguered Egyptian outposts, came under the overlordship of the Sun. I had Byblos, and Ugarit once again, and all between was also mine.

  Now, the tribute that I laid on Aziru of Amurru was harsh, but just. Since he was collecting tribute on his own from Ugarit and all the cities he had under his sandal, I knew he could afford it. The provision that he deliver the agreed-upon tribute by his own hand yearly into mine was somewhat unusual, but in the case of such a man as the Amurrite had shown himself to be, quite necessary. Only by looking in the eyes and listening to the words of Aziru in one’s own presence did a man have the slightest chance of determining in advance what the wolf of Amurru was likely to do.

  I kept him in Hattusas longer than he might have wished, but there were many things I needed to learn from him about Egypt. On the day the treaty was read aloud and the copies signed by us both, I felt as if I had conquered the world entire and brought it to its knees.

  I was watching his face while the words of Hattu-ziti rang out in the administration hall’s chancery, for I had called all my lords and the greats of the army to witness this event, so long in coming to be. Intoned Hattu-ziti, while Aziru watched the eagles fly at the window behind the Sun’s back:

  “These are the words of the Sun Suppiluliumas, Great King, King of Hatti, the Hero, favorite of the Storm God.” And Aziru’s face drained pale under his pointed beard as the gods were invoked to oversee our agreement.

  And as Hattu-ziti continued, Aziru would sometimes nod, sometimes bite his lip, sometimes pull on his brightly colored mantle. But to the words of the Sun, spoken by my chamberlain before the lords of Hatti, he made no objection, not to his yearly tribute of three hundred shekels of refined gold, first class and pure, nor to his obligation to come up to the Hatti land once a year. In fact, as Hattu-ziti spoke the customary treaty phrases of indebtedness, it might have been another whose rule was being circumscribed. But when Hattu-ziti came to the part in the historical preamble where I had written; “But Aziru, king of Amurru, away from the court of Egypt arose, and he submitted to my Majesty the king of Hatti. And my majesty the Great King was very pleased that Aziru had submitted to the Sun, and come away from the court of Egypt. Because Aziru at the feet of his majesty bowed down and came away from the court of Egypt and at the feet of the Sun knelt, I, his majesty, have treated Aziru like one of my brothers.”