of his sons to become her next husband, and consequentially
Egypt’s next ruler. This was because the royal dynasty of Egypt had
come to an end, the queen said, and she refused to marry anyone of
lesser status among her own countrymen.
Suspicious of her request, Suppiluliuma despatched his vizier to
Egypt to check out the truth of the matter. The main reason for his
suspicion was that the now deceased pharaoh had recently ordered
an attack upon the city of Qadesh, formerly an Egyptian subject but
now under Hittite sovereignty. The Hittites had repelled the attack
and carried out a retaliatory one on Egyptian subject-territory
further south. But Suppiluliuma’s fury at this act of treachery, all
the greater because of his own alleged scrupulousness in keeping
out of Egyptian territory in his war with Mittani, remained
unabated. He now suspected that the queen’s letter was merely a
front for further Egyptian treachery.
While his vizier was on his way to Egypt, Suppiluliuma
completed his conquest of Carchemish and returned to Hattusa
before the winter snows set in. But before doing so, he took a
momentous step in the history of the Hittite empire. In the wake of
his capture of Carchemish, he appointed his son Sharri-Kushuh as
Hittite viceroy there. Around the same time, or perhaps earlier, he
appointed another of his sons Telipinu, whom we have already met,
as viceroy in Aleppo. He set up Telipinu as ruler there after taking
prisoner the previous local king and despatching him and his
family as deportees to Hattusa. Thus for thefirst time in Hittite
history direct Hittite rule was established over parts of the kingdom
outside the homeland. In Suppiluliuma’s newly acquired Syrian
territories, his appointed viceroys in Carchemish and Aleppo had
bestowed upon them all the chief functions of the Great King of
Hatti–military, administrative, judicial and religious. All other
Syrian territories conquered by the Hittites became Hittite vassal
states, their rulers bound by treaty to their Hittite overlord.
The following spring the king’s vizier returned from Egypt,
along with Egypt’s leading envoy Hani. Both bore assurances that
the queen’s appeal to Suppiluliuma was sincere. There was no-one
left of the royal line to succeed the dead pharaoh, and the request
for a Hittite prince to mount the throne of Egypt could be taken at
THE GREATEST KINGDOM OF THEM ALL 87