face value. A furious letter from the pharaoh’s widow accompanied
the diplomats. In it the young queen took Suppiluliuma to task for
doubting the truth of her request. After some self-righteous
grumbling in response to the letter, Suppiluliuma was won over, no
doubt highly attracted by the prospect that his son would be the
new pharaoh, and that all future pharaohs would have Hittite blood
in their veins. So he despatched one of hisfive offspring to Egypt
for the royal wedding, a young man called Zannanza.
Shortly afterwards, news came that Zannanza had been killed
on the journey. And despite protestations of innocence from the
new pharaoh Ay, now hastily installed on his kingdom’s throne,
Suppiluliuma held the Egyptians responsible for his son’s death.
A punitive expedition was sent to raid and plunder Egyptian vassal
territory by way of revenge.
Ironically, the thousands of prisoners-of-war which the
Hittites deported to the homeland in the wake of this expedition
brought with them a plague which allegedly ravaged the homeland
for 20 years, decimating the population. Suppiluliuma himself, and
his son andfirst successor Arnuwanda, were among the plague’s
victims.
So who was the dead pharaoh? In the Deeds, he is called
Niphururiya. This the Hittite form of his name corresponds
precisely to Egyptian Nebkheperure, the throne-name of the
pharaoh Tutankhamun. And we know that Tutankhamun’s
death did in fact bring to an end the famous Egyptian Eighteenth
Dynasty. His wife in theDeedsis simply referred to asdahamunzu,
a Hittite rendering of an Egyptian term meaning‘wife of the
king’. If Tutankhamun was the pharaoh in question, then the queen
who wrote to Suppiluliuma must have been his wife Ankhesena-
mun. These identifications, I believe, are the correct ones. But other
scholars identify the pharaoh as Akhenaten, and in that case
dahamunzuwould have been his wife Nefertiti. If they’re right,
then we would have to make a number of alterations to our
reconstruction of the history of this period. But I don’t believe that
is necessary.
What we can be sure about is that the whole episode put an end
to all possibility of a peace between Hatti and Egypt. In fact,
88 WARRIORS OF ANATOLIA