***
The king slumped, head lolling back, eyes staring into eternity. Myriad healers ran to the king’s side and many soldiers dropped their drinking vessels and clamoured there too. Hattu, pale with shock, backed away to give them space to work. He heard their panicked shouts, saw their grieving looks, felt Atiya’s hand on his arm, heard the Wolves rush over too, concerned for their king, but felt himself withdrawing from the scene. Something was beckoning him… something within.
He backed against a smooth, long-ruined column of stone and slid down to sit there. A stinging, blinding light flashed through his mind and he clasped his hands to his temples, screwing his eyes shut tight.
Darkness. Darkness with no form or sense of direction. He heard a sound of a bird landing, gathering in its wings. Then there was silence until, before him, something glimmered in the shadow. It was coming closer. He heard a low, ominous growl of not one creature, but two. Then he saw the eyes. Two pairs of eyes glinting like opals, low down, and another pair in between, much higher, a good few heads over him. He reached for his curved sword, but it was absent in this netherworld.
From the blackness, two lions prowled into view, their fangs dripping with saliva, faces wrinkled in anger. Between them strode an apparition: a curvaceous woman, bare-breasted, impossibly tall, but with wings and the feet of a hunting bird!
‘Ishtar?’ he stammered.
She smiled, and began pacing around him.
‘Let me sing you a song, Prince Hattu…’
Epilogue
Deep Winter 1300 BC
Snow battered the Kizzuwadna coast, white streaks fighting against the blackness of night. A lone figure stood in the lee of a cove by the sandy waterline, swaddled in a red cloak. The hooded head tilted back and sniffed the perishing, salty air. At last after years marooned inland, at last, he had reached the sea – that unforgiving, vicious mistress with which he was still very much enthralled.
A fishing boat rode the spume-peaked, choppy waters, its square sail snapping in the night gale, taking an age to come to him. But coming it was – just as the Egyptian merchant-spies had arranged with him. And what was another hour or so? He had been waiting six moons for this chance after all – hiding in woods, sleeping in caves, eating roots and berries to flee the Hittite heartlands and steal across these southern vassal states – all the time hearing stories of the reclaimed Hittite north, of the power of the Grey Throne and its fierce, doughty army. The truth was far more bleak, he knew: King Mursili lay in complete torpor, mute and staring in his palace bed; the empire was effectively in the hands of his young, inexperienced son, Muwa; the royal bloodline was thin, with just Muwa and the curious young Prince Hattu remaining; the armies were greatly depleted and the harvests of that summer had been neglected.
The flat-bottomed boat ground onto the sand, stern first. A shaven-headed, dusky-skinned fellow with a squared beard leapt over the edge, shooting a sour glance at the local crewmen then turning, shivering, to the cloaked figure.
‘Volca?’ the Egyptian asked, his kohl-rimmed eyes searching within the shadows of the hood, his teeth chattering and his beard flecked with snow.
Volca looked him up and down and chuckled. The fellow’s linen shawl was wholly inappropriate for the harsh Anatolian winter. ‘Namurot? If your kind hope to one day call these lands your own, you had best learn how to dress to survive in them.’
The Egyptian’s nose wrinkled. ‘Come, we must be swift. The crew say if we put to sea now we might reach the fishing village along the coast before morning. The Pharaoh’s warships are docked there, waiting to take you across the sea.’
Volca arched an eyebrow. ‘He sent ships for me to Hittite lands? Ships bearing his own standards? His crewmen are brave,’ he mused as they waded into the perishing waters then and boarded, sitting across from one another on the thwarts.
Namurot sneered and scoffed. ‘Is it brave for the wolf to wander into the lamb’s pen? The Wretched Fallen Ones – those who clamber across the grim rocks of this land like flies, foraging rotten berries and chewing on raw goat meat – don’t even have a navy of their own.’
Volca smiled, thinking of the many ships and warrior-seamen in his homeland. Sherden and Shekelesh in their thousands. Such rich plunder awaited them in these lands, if only they had possessed the courage and wisdom to follow him.
Namurot fell quiet for a moment, then asked: ‘My brother, Sirtaya the envoy, he still lives?’ Hope and hatred battled on his tight expression, his fingers flexing on his sheathed dagger as if imagining vengeance.
Volca shrugged. In his time in Hattusa, he had heard remarks made about the brazen diplomat. ‘He lives. In the eternal darkness of the Well of Silence, I believe. They feed the curs in there offal and mud,’ he replied flatly. Namurot drew his dagger and stabbed it, hard, into the boat’s timbers. Volca masked a disdainful snort; this wretch’s brother was of little concern to him. He turned his thoughts to his own future. ‘Tell me again: what does Pharaoh want of me? He already has a troop of mercenary Sherden in his armies, does he not?’
Namurot pulled his shawl tighter around himself as the wind grew fierce and the boat took to the water again. ‘They are but fierce sea-warriors. Useful, but only with a sword. He wants you for what lies up here,’ he tapped his temple, leaning forward so the dim reflected light from the water’s surface reflected in his inky eyes. ‘You have lived in the Hittite court for three years. He wants to know everything: about their ways, their weaknesses, their armies, their garrison-strengths on the vassal borders of Retenu… everything. And Retenu is key – the throat through which tin pours. Bronze armies can be forged only when kings have tin. Pharaoh intends to press his boot on the throat of the world… and choke the life from the Wretched Fallen Ones. Then, the world will be his!’ Namurot wagged a finger at Volca. ‘That is why Pharaoh wants you by his side.’
Volca stared at Namurot in silence. He saw in his mind’s eye the golden chair of the King of Egypt, saw himself standing by it. He laughed once, short and barking, then again, long and loud. The wind keened, blowing his hood back, revealing the wiry lattice of sinew and scab in place of a scalp, his ring of blonde hair around the back and sides rapping behind him. The Egyptian and the crew gawped in fright, some dropping their oars, but Volca’s blade of a nose bent over a feral smile and he stood up on the rocking boat, his old sea legs coming back to him at once as salty spray and snow stung his flesh, casting his cloak up like the wings of a bird. He planted one foot on the edge of the boat, dunted the haft of his trident once on the timbers and gazed across the roiling sea.
‘Pick up your paddles, sailors, for we must make haste to Pharaoh’s side: glory and fortune await!’
THE END
Author’s Note
Exploring the Hittite era has been a journey riddled with shadows and studded with revelations. The Hattusa excavations are constantly unearthing new tablets and changing our understanding of their world with accounts of gods, kings, wars and treachery.
I found myself drawn towards their so-called ‘New Kingdom’ – the era in which the Hittites were at their strongest… and the time in which the greater world slid towards the edge of oblivion. It has been a delight and a challenge to understand these denizens of ancient Anatolia and their strange ways (as epitomised by their punishment of eating faeces and drinking urine!). Any Greek or Latin preconceptions had to be dispensed with as I tried to put shape to their way of life. I had to mine detail meticulously and where it was absent – and there are many gaps in our understanding of their world – I enjoyed applying speculation to bridge the gaps.
Firstly, I should comment on people and place names. Early in my research I became acutely aware of the rather tongue-twisting nature of certain names from the ancient Near East. To illustrate, I give you: Tawagalawa – the painfully multisyllabic name of a character that will come into play later in the saga. I aim to tell a snappy, entertaining tale, and as such, certain names have been truncated or altered to spar
e my readers from awkward (to the modern tongue) names and to avoid alliterative similarities. The table at the end of this note lists the places where I have done this. Also note that my use of the term ‘Anatolia’ (to refer to what is modern-day Turkey) is anachronistic for the Hittite period. However, I felt it was probably the most succinct way of referring to the geographical region.
The rest of this note serves to outline my major choices in crafting this tale – the places where the fabric of history holds good and the points where fantasy laces the fragments. To begin with, the term ‘Hittite Empire’ is a debate in itself. The Hittites actually called their realm ‘The Land of Hatti’ (the Hatti/Hattians being the original native population of the land), and referred to themselves as ‘The People of the Land of Hatti’. The term ‘Hittite’ is technically an anachronism, coming from the Hebrew Bible, which refers to a group of relatively insignificant tribes living in the hills of Syria during biblical times – long after the era of this story and the fall of the Bronze Age. Modern Archaeologists, realising that these biblical tribes were the fragmented remnant of ‘The People of the Land of Hatti’, thus took to using the term ‘Hittite’ to refer to the Bronze Age superpower as well. And as for the Hittite Empire? It was not an empire in the modern sense, more a proto-empire: a kingdom that enjoyed a loose hegemony over a band of vassal states around its borders.
The Hittite Empire was also known as ‘The Land of a Thousand Gods’, and it’s easy to see why (in fact, the title is probably an understatement!). Their system of deities is perplexing, non-linear and unfamiliar to the modern theological eye. It seems that their chief deities were Tarhunda the Storm God and Arinniti, Goddess of the Sun. That said, each major city had a storm god, a sun goddess or some specific deity of its own, rapidly expanding the godly ranks. More, the Hittites worshipped the ether around them, believing every spring, tree, rock and meadow was watched over by gods and spirits. They also practiced syncretisation (the custom of integrating foreign gods into their own pantheon), and one such divinity was Ishtar, Goddess of Love and War – a very ancient deity present in various forms across the civilizations of the ancient Near East.
Now, on to our hero…
The Hattusa tablets record that young Hattusili III was a sickly baby. When Ishtar came to King Mursili in a dream (supposedly in the form of Prince Muwatalli), she offered to save the baby if the king promised to name her as Hattu’s protector. I have added a rather dark twist to this with the choice she also forces upon him (save your Queen or your boy).
Hattu’s exact birth date is uncertain. We only know from his own later writings that he was ‘only a child’ around the time of Queen Gassula’s passing (perhaps 1313 BC). This is as precise as most Hittite dates get, and so I have speculated that it might well have been Hattu’s birth that caused Gassula’s death. Little is known about Hattu’s early life, thus his wretched time as the Cursed Son is conjectural but ties nicely into the words of Ishtar and brings him to the famed Hittite military, where he went on to excel.
The Hittite military academy existed somewhere in the countryside near Hattusa. The ‘Fields of Bronze’ as I have titled this complex, would have been the training ground for new recruits. One of Mursili’s attested and most trusted generals, Kurunta, would most likely have had a hand in overseeing the raising and training of young men. Hattu’s status as a son of the king would have afforded him little leniency by his trainers. Hittite princes were expected to inspire awe in their soldiers, and it is likely he would have had to push himself further than the rest to prove himself worthy.
The Hittite army is thought to have numbered ten or twenty thousand, or possibly far more. There is limited information on how they were structured, other than that they consisted of a standing army, complemented by ‘shepherds’ when extra numbers were required and that they were organised into regiments of one thousand, companies of one hundred and troops of ten. There is evidence that there were four main infantry generals, and this is the basis of my four divisions – the Storm, the Wrath, the Fury and the Blaze (evocative but entirely fictional titles).
Regarding weapons technology: popular conception has it that the Hittites ‘possessed’ iron weapons that were harder than bronze and that this gave them a martial edge over their rivals. This view is very simplistic and the truth is too complex to be covered in this note. But, concisely, iron was ‘known’ to the world well before the Hittites and all throughout the Bronze Age. The problem was that in this era, almost all of the Earth’s iron was locked inside stone in the form of iron ore, and the technology to smelt (liquidise and extract) iron from ore had not yet been developed (or was in its infancy). Thus, pure or close-to-pure iron came almost exclusively in the form of meteorites which plunged from the sky – a rare commodity indeed. The cuneiform texts of Assyrian merchants translated by Prof. Klaas Veenhof support this rarity, showing that iron was hugely expensive (upwards of forty times the cost of silver!). The Hittites certainly never fielded an army equipped throughout with iron super weapons – if they had they would have flattened all of their opponents. The likelihood is they had a very small amount of precious iron blades reserved for kings or men in high stations. These blades may have been worked with emerging techniques to give a small advantage over bronze – or they may have been brittle and purely ceremonial as described in this volume. It is also worth noting that the Hittite and other Anatolian Kings preferred their thrones to be fashioned from iron. For those interested, I’ll be investigating the iron debate in more depth on my blog (my web address is at the end of this note).
While the Hittite infantry was hardy and feared, the Hittite chariot wing was the dread of the battlefield. These were the lancers of Bronze Age warfare – fast, striking in appearance and lethal in the fray. The horses of the chariot wing were bred and trained by the famed Hurrian, Colta (real name Kikkuli – but this is thought to mean ‘Colt’ in Hurrian). I’ve named the Hittite chariot wing ‘The Lords of the Bridle’, but this was actually the title of an Arzawan chariot wing captured by an earlier Hittite King and brought back to Hattusa to serve their conquerors. It is unlikely that the Hittites adopted the ‘Lords of the Bridle’ title as their own, but the name is an evocative one with a firm root in the era. It’s also worth pointing out that the lack of conventional cavalry (i.e. armed men fighting on horseback) is an accurate reflection of Bronze Age warfare. Horses of this time were smaller and had not yet been bred to produce the likes of medieval destriers or modern racehorses. They could not be expected to walk with armoured soldiers on their backs for any great distance, let alone charge with such a burden during battle. Horses were ridden, but only by light scouts or messengers.
The city of Hattusa, despite its striking location on a craggy hill, was assailed several times throughout its long spell as capital of the Hittite realm. On the majority of these occasions it was the Kaskans who committed the assault, forcing the kings to move the royal seat to the safety of other cities. The raid I describe in 1303 is speculative – no such event is recorded on the Hittite tablets for that year (the closest such raid happened in 1318) – but is representative of the constant, mortal threat of the Kaskan tribes.
The Kaskans are something of an enigma. Described as pig-herding mountain men, they appear all too easily in the mind’s eye as rough, rugged ‘barbarians’. Some scholars theorise that instead, they might actually have been an offshoot or remnant of the native Hattians. Regardless, they were famed for their warlike tenacity and their pervasiveness – plentiful and uncontrollable, a true bane to the Hittite King.
Pitagga (Pitaggatalli) is but a shadow in the annals of history. It seems most likely that he was a Kaskan ‘Lord’ of some sort, and spearheaded the raids on northern Hittite territories around 1303-1300, including a raid on Wahina (Takkuwahina) in 1303 and on Tummanna & Pala in 1301.
Around this time, King Mursili suffered what historians believe was a stroke. During a thunderstorm, his speech became slurred and his body sagged on one side. I
have portrayed this happening during Hattu’s ‘Chariot Ordeal’, and woven in the influence of the deplorable Volca as a possible cause. You might be wondering what was in Volca’s root brew for it to have had such a terrible effect on the king? Warfarin is a drug that can be used as a means to thin blood and prevent clotting (useful to alleviate DVT risk) or – in significant doses – as rat poison. As a poison, symptoms include shortness of breath, chest pains, hair loss, general wasting and fatigue and ultimately bleeding on the brain (i.e. a stroke). Of course, Warfarin was only discovered in the 20th century just before WW2, when cattle suffered the above symptoms. Investigations found that their illness had been caused by decomposing sweet clover mixed in with their feed. It is from the elements of that plant that modern Warfarin is derived. So I went for the speculative angle that the people of ancient times might well have noticed or discovered the effects of ingesting rotting sweet clover.
Volca is a fictional character, but his people, the Sherden were all too real. Onomastic theory and archaeological finds suggest the Sherden might have originated from the Island of Sardinia. They, the Shekelesh (from modern Sicily, perhaps) and many other peoples at this point hovered on the edges of the ancient world. But that would soon change, as this saga will show…
In 1300, the Hittites marched north with the intention of finally retaking ‘the Lost North’ from the Kaskans. On their way, they had to deal with an uprising in the allied lands of Galasma (Kalasma), and a small force including General Nuwanza quelled the revolt. They then marched on through the Soaring Mountains (my speculative title for the modern Pontic massif) to take back a region known as Hatenzuwa and, most famously, they reclaimed the ruins of Nerik. The Hittite annals tell of King Mursili giving prayer there – the first time a Hittite king had done so since the city’s fall to the Kaskans three hundred years previously.
Son of Ishtar Page 44