24 MARCH/APRIL 2020
Chariot Diplomacy
Advances in Hittite chariot design coincided
with the rise of the Hittite Empire as a powerful
player in the eastern Mediterranean. Able to
mount rapid s urprise attacks, chariots played a
key role in King Suppiluliumas I’s conquests of
Syria and the forging of Hittite regional suprem-
acy in the 14th century b.c.
One sign that the Hittites had returned as
major players in the region was a letter from an
Egyptian queen to Suppiluliumas I. The pharaoh
had recently died (scholars believe it was most
likely Tutankhamun, but it could have been his
father, Akhenaten). She asked him
to send one of his sons in marriage.
Unfortunately for Hittite-Egyptian
relations, the son, when he arrived,
was killed by an Egyptian faction
who opposed the queen.
Hittites recorded this offense
in one of the “plague prayers” in-
scribed during the rule of Suppilu-
liumas’s successor, Mursilis II. The
words show the central role chariots
played in both the war and regional diplomacy
that followed:My father sent infantry and chariot fighters
and they attacked the border territory. And,
moreover, he sent (more troops); and again,
they attacked. [The] men of Egypt became
afraid. They came, and they asked my father
outright for his son for kingship. And when
they led him away, they killed him. And my
father became angry, and he went into Egyp-
tian territory, and he attacked the infantry and
chariot fighters of Egypt.Suppiluliumas was killed by
plague, as the existence of
the plague poems indicates.
His son Mursilis II took the
throne, but his reign was
overshadowed by pestilence.
Although he had to put down
constant challenges to his
rule, he passed on a stable and
expanding empire to his son,EQUINE
LIFE
Depictions of
horsemen, such
as an eighth-
century b.c.
stonework found in
the capital of one
of the neo-Hittite
kingdoms (below),
were popular even
after the decline of
the Hittite Empire.
ALAMY/ACI