“I have troubles with everyone else, in this time when I would be bringing all my troubles and my disputes to a close so that Arnuwandas will be able to reign in peace, as I have never done.”
“Ssh, ssh, my love. Does Suppiluliumas, lord of Hatti, wish to collect less years than the king of Egypt, who has ninety and three?” she asked, disturbed though she spoke teasingly. “I could not live through the winters without this spring tryst to look forward to. My lord, I would not hear of death, not with life so pleasing, after the long drought of my middle age.”
“Khinti, beloved, you have just said it!” I rose abruptly, disrupting her, and began to pace: “You are right. I will do it!”
“What? What will you do? What am I ‘right’ about, besides loving you?”
“I will not subject you, and myself, to these long barren seasons apart! I have got to find a way to rid myself of Malnigal –”
“No. Not on my account would I wish demotion on any other queen. No; it is too foul a punishment.”
“And ours is not so foul?”
“But, my beloved, it is we who together made our sorrow, and she is free of that taint!”
“Women! I will never understand! Be quiet, then; no more will I hear from you on the subject. Malnigal is no jewel of a wife, and with her I will do as I choose. And when I command you to pack your things and move back into Hattusas, you will do as I say.”
“No one,” she murmured, “would dare disobey the command of the Sun.”
It seems so long ago, that night.
I have been fighting. When have I not been fighting? I have developed the habit of working upon this, dictating it to Pikku, who as much as any of us elder chariot-horses deserves his last gallops in the field.
Those things I have long ignored, the whispered complaints of back and wrist, the crackle of loose teeth within my jaw, I can no longer ignore, for they are no longer so subtle: my back screams like a man whose eyes are poked out with a red-hot iron when I wake in the morning, though the warmth of the day eases it gradually until the cold ground under me brings it round full circle when I rise. My wrist – I did that driving with Malnigal that day up to Alalakh, when the horse went down and the car nearly overturned. It went away with time, but now it has returned. I am thankful that it is my left wrist and not my right; if I put my ear close, I can hear the snapping inside when I move my thumb.
Aye died in his fourth regnal year, and Horemheb is now in name what he had been for four years: Pharaoh, ruler of the Two Lands. I would like to dispatch him before I hand the kingship of Hatti over to Arnuwandas and take up residence in the “palace of the grandfather,” which I am, twenty times over. If I do that, I will be the first king of Hatti to survive so long and not be slaughtered, either by his enemies or his sons. But that is what I am going to do, after I have collected enough evidence to demote Malnigal and brought Khinti back into Hatti to assume the place in flesh, beside me on the throne of queenship, that she never relinquished in my heart.
When I returned from Halap this year, the Prince of Mira was waiting to throw himself on my mercy and beg my protection.
He was fleeing from the Lower Country revolts, which extend further than that: because I am fighting Egypt and am constantly supporting Piyassilis and Mattiwaza in their efforts to maintain Mattiwaza in Washuganni as king of Mitanni and Hurri, the Gasgaeans, the Hayasaeans, the folk in the Lower Country who I brought to their knees at the beginning of my reign: all these are revolting.
My sister died of a plague, though I have heard that it was not the same one that has been ravaging the Hatti land. Our plague turns people blue-fingered, and they cough out their life. It was some other that took her, and her husband, and Mariyas the warrior died also, so that things are with Hayasa as they were when I was sixteen and fighting them, from my base in Samuha.
These things bother me, for I am trying to order my affairs so that I can spend some time being a man, instead of all my time being a king.
But, I was telling you about the prince, of Mira… I am allowed, I think, this one meander, in deference to my age. Hattu-ziti and I and Lupakki have decided that once a moon we are entitled to get drunk unto stammering and stumbling and act just as old and foolish and crotchety as we please. But fifteen- or twenty-year old girls no longer truly interest me, though there is a spice to them, now that I am grizzled and truly fearsome, that I did not find when I was thirty.
As I have said, I was telling you about the prince of Mira…. I offered him asylum, and over the past season, while I was fighting in the Upper Country and Arnuwandas was fighting in Egypt and Piyassilis, that is, Sarrikusuh was fighting in Carchemish and in the Hurri lands beyond, this prince of Mira, one of the Arzawa border lands that I had taken without bloodshed when the king who was this boy’s father came and laid down his weapons at my feet, fell in love with Khinti’s daughter, Muwattish, and she also looked upon him with favor.
Of all my children, none had ever cleaved to my side like Muwattish. None but that princess had offered up to her father such joy. The prince’s name was Mashkuiluwa, and he had rejected a bid by his brothers to secede from my nation and make common cause with the rebels: all of my old Arzawan enemies, in league – though this is hearsay – with Ahhiyawa.
When I heard of my daughter’s feelings for this Miran, I wrote to Khinti about the matter, not making the situation any brighter than it was: I was full extended, fighting everywhere, and though I had promised the boy when I took him in that I would reinstate him in his kingship, I had not that year been able to accomplish it. And of the reputed Ashiyawan influence in these rebellions, I spoke to my wife of old.
And she wrote back to me giving her consent for the marriage, and accepting my suggestion that the ceremony be held in Halap, with Telipinus officiating as priest. But whether her cousin the Ahhiyawan king was aiding the rebellion in the lower country, she did not know.
So the marriage was performed, and Malnigal, who was pregnant (a king must see to his duties) and knew she was in my disfavor, if not exactly why, made no objection.
I had never minded marrying any of my children off, but I minded in the case of this daughter. Muwattish, too, though she loved the big, handsome Miran prince, cried profusely and came creeping into my room in the dark like she had been wont to do of old. And I held her, and comforted her, and told her that a grown woman should not be weeping on her wedding night, unless she could weep tears of joy.
And she sobbed that there would be no one left to take care of me, with her gone. Who would see to my meals? and the fit of my clothes? and that I would be like Zannanza’s lion, all alone; and like him, without the sense to eat.
Now I do forget a meal once in awhile, but I was not going to pine away to skin and bones as the old lion had done. We had turned him loose to die in dignity in the cedar forests. It was not, perhaps, the same as returning him to the plains whence he had been exiled since his youth, but had someone turned me out to roar at the moon and lurk among the trees and ravage what I might, I would have been grateful.
But no one did. My daughter, Muwattish, lived in with her husband in one of the residential palaces, and I began to prepare for the sixth campaign of my greatest war. Even while I was drafting it, Aziru came up from Amurru, and I noticed for the first time the silver that had come to be in the wolf’s thick mane.
And the news he brought was not welcome: Nuhasse was close to open revolt. Aitakama of Kinza, caught betwixt, had said to Aziru that he could no longer hold his country, that all the folk of Kinza would by spring have gone over to Takib-sarri, my faithless vassal in Nuhasse.
“It is hard to blame them,” I said. “I might do the same, if I had an overlord who seemed to be too busy to take any care about me. Do not worry, Aziru, we will burn down their towns around their ears, drop them to knees as in former times.”
With lifted brow, Aziru replied: “I was not in any way worried, my lord, other than for Aitakama’s sake. He has never forgotten the time you used
him for a target and let your son Zannanza try his skill upon his quivering frame.”
“He was rather obviously trembling, wasn’t he?” I recollected, and we fell to wine and cogitation and conjecture about how to best stop this revolt before it even succeeded.
At length, we sent a message down to Telipinus, to seek out Sarrupsi’s grandson. You will remember Sarrupsi, that first Syrian vassal of mine who was so foully murdered by his wives and the Hurrian supporters who did not want to stay with him in the shadow of the Sun. This Sarrupsi’s grandson was well-known to Aziru, and to Telipinus, also, so Aziru said. So in the letter to Telipinus I asked for his opinion on the subject of the fitness of Tette, Sarrupsi’s grandson, to rule, and said that if he agreed with Aziru, then, at the same time he was writing me to confirm his agreement, he should seek out Tette and make him ready to become a king. And I sent a greeting to Khinti, and even mentioned my love, and consigned her into the care of the Storm God, my lord, and the Sun Goddess, my lady, that she would not become ill as people had been doing with greater and greater frequency ever since Arnuwandas’ army brought the Egyptian plague back into the Hatti land along with his captives.
Thus have I come here, to the battlefield once again, to my goat’s hair tent, while without ring the snorts of stamping horses and the moans of the wounded under the vast southern sky, in the forty-first season of my kingship, to subdue once more the rebellious countries of Kinza and Nuhasse.
This, too, I am doing for the Hatti lands as so long ago I had sworn, to make her great, to extend her boundaries farther than they have ever been extended in former times, to make of all the little, warring nations brothers, Hittite people, that they may live better lives, free under the mandate of the thousand gods to worship howsoever they choose.
CHAPTER 34
It is deep, amber autumn, crackling brown grass shrivels under the greying sky. The blue-cloaked lord has come amongst the tents of the Sun, padding soundlessly on his worn sandals, hardly brighter than a shadow cast by the moon. Last night I saw his profile; this night, I know, we will sit together as brothers. I will see his face. Then, I will be able to say that I have done it. What more might any man ask?
I dreamt of him, and that I took my chariot, the war chariot with its iron scales and the black team who are the descendants of the black team I took from the royal stables so long ago when Tuthaliyas and my mother sent me off to Samuha with the Shepherd that I might live. I dreamt of him, and I dreamt that on yonder hillock I drew up my team and He, himself came to sit with me. And we sat in the rear of the car with our legs dangling down, and we spoke of many things. Still, in the dream, I could not quite see his face. Tonight, I will see it.
This morning when the Sun awoke, weakness was full upon me. My limbs trembled and my head ached and I was coughing. It is not a good sign, but somehow I have been expecting it.
I bedded a namra, a girl from the pens, taken out of Nuhasse, and that was six days past. Two days ago she died of the blue plague, and sometimes it does not take so long as that.
Telipinus and Khinti were here the day we installed Tette in his grandfather’s seat of kingship.
They came down in a whirlwind of dust and with frothing horses, and Telipinus had given no explanation as to what brought him hither in such unseemly haste. I was glad enough to see the Priest, and we spoke long of the mechanics of reinstating Khinti’s name among the Tawanannas of Hatti, and it will be done, so that she will be a Great Queen in the gods’ eyes, and so that she may join me when I go up to become a god and take my seat of kingship in heaven.
She leapt like a maiden from out of Telipinus’ car and thrust herself against me, panther’s eyes gleaming, and with her face pressed against my breast told me that she had had an awful dream, and she thanked the gods that it was not true, that all was well with me.
And since all was well with me, I laughed softly at her, and hugged her close, and drew her into my embrace once more.
And I have never been gladder of any thing than that she came to me then, except perhaps that she left when she did, safe in Telipinus’ care.
The Priest, before he drove back to Halap, his capital, spoke with me about what had happened when I fought the Assyrians and the lightning of the Storm God came to my aid. And we both agreed that the Storm God, my Lord, had revealed himself at last, that he had reached down and touched the Sun, who has been all these years his servant. And at last, I have come to believe it. How, without the gods, could I have done it: all the things I have set out to do?
Ah, I am a stranger to meditation, and perhaps not, the man for it.
But no higher sense, no godly insight, is needed to see what everyone’s faces are saying.
Mursili, my youngest, squats in a corner, too old for his tears, but offering them up to me just the same.
“Mursili, go and fetch me Lupakki, and Arnuwandas, if he is here.”
So the boy, the Great Bull, leaves to fetch them, and Pikku and I have a moment to ourselves. In it, I make provision for my faithful scribe who has served me since the days of my youth, and for my daughter Muwattish and her husband, who is not yet a king, and for my sons and their sons, and for my wives. And I have a moment to write and seal on my own a message to Khinti. While I am doing it, I see the blue tinge creeping up my fingers toward my heart. Beneath my arms and in my groin there are sore swellings.
But I have this day, so the Storm God has promised me. Tonight it will rain, and his thunder will strike the hillock beyond my tent, and I will see what I have been waiting to see all these long campaigns through: the face of the blue-cloaked lord, and what is to follow.
Now, I am not so calm, within. I do not know how to fight this enemy lurking inside my flesh. And yet, all my life I have gone out to meet the enemy, and I am going to do just that.
Lupakki comes, and with him the brown-haired Tarkhunta-zalma, the Shepherd’s boy who so favors his sire. If the Shepherd were here, it would be easier, but he is not.
And I am not moaning: I would want no death of pinches, sliding, slowing, then finally stopping enfeebled after having hung on my children’s necks overlong.
“Lupakki, may the gods favor you. It is my time and I have no doubt of it. I will want my chariot, and my blacks, at dusk.”
“My Sun, I…” and he went to one knee and pressed his lips against my hand, and Tarkhunta-zalma took Mursili against him while my youngest son sobbed.
“Go on, Lupakki, do this thing I have asked.”
“Where am I driving you, Great King Tasmisarri… Suppiluliumas?”
Gods, how grateful I am that Lupakki forgot himself, bid farewell to “Tasmisarri”.
“You are driving me nowhere at all, most faithful. I am driving myself this last time. I crave the reins of the team, and the wild winds blowing, and all the substance of my life this evening.”
And he nodded and went away, and I called my youngest, and cradled his head in my arms as if he were a child again, and told him, as none had ever told me, “If aught happens to Arnuwandas, you are tuhkanti for Hatti. It is my will.”
And after that I could not console him, but bade him help me upright, for the horses stamped with trembling flanks beyond the tent’s entrance.
I gave up all the things I owned; the iron sword to Lupakki; the seal of Hatti into the, trembling grasp of my eldest, Arnuwandas, who stood by the chariot, leaning on it.
And with him I spent a somber moment, instructing him as to what to do in this case, or in that, or if Malnigal became a greater problem with myself, the Sun, not around to control her.
“I cannot believe this,” broke Arnuwandas. “Not that you will never be in Hattusas; not like this; not now.” He looked about him, at the drizzling, early dusk. “Please, Abuya, go you back into your tent, and rest. And we will call upon the gods, and –”
“The Storm God has called upon me, and this is what he has said: ‘Go up on the hill and I will come to you, in my thunder and my lightning. Now, is that not a befitting su
mmons for even a king to attend?”
“Abuya –”
“Arnuwandas, my first born, wish me well, and be a Great King over whom I can exclaim with joy should I truly sit among the gods. And take care of Pikku, who has taken down what –” And the coughing hit me, so that my son supported me, and everything grew bright with blue sparks, and I knew I had to hurry, for it was getting late. “– what I have not time to say. Be a good king to your people, know that you are a joy to my heart. Over you and Piyassilis and Telipinus and Mursili I will hover like the Sun’s own armies,” and I kissed him, and levered myself up into the car and took hold of the reins.
And they were cool and right to me, and the horses bobbed their heads; understanding, as horses will, and did not tax, my strength.
So, it is over. I have done it. And upon the hillock I will meet him, who is both the Storm God, and myself, and at last we will look eye to eye at one another. But it is late, and I must hurry. Already, it is raining. The Storm God looses his lightning, and the feet of his sacred bulls, Serris and Hurris, cause the ground to tremble with their thunder.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
A Guide to the Babylonian and Assyrian Antiquities, British Museum, 1900
A Twelfth-century B.C. Opium Pipe From Kition, Karageorghis, Antiquity, Vol. L #198, 1976
Ancient Near Eastern Texts, J. B. Pritchard, ed., Princeton, 1974
Ancient Records of Egypt, J. H. Breasted, Vols. II, III, Russell & Russell, New York, 1962
Babylon, James Wellard, Shocken, 1974
Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. II, Pt. 2, Cambridge, 1975
Deeds of Suppiluliumas As Told By His Son Mursili, H. G. Guterbock, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 10, New Haven, 1956.
Die Boghazkoi-Texte in Umschrift, Leipzig, 1922
I, the Sun Page 54