efforts of Mursili and his successors, they would continue to harass,
invade and plunder Hittite territory until the kingdom’s very end.
PLAGUE
The account I have just given of Mursili’s reign is confined largely
to his achievements on the battlefield–understandably, because it
is based on the king’s Annals, which like all such Hittite records is
essentially an account of the king’s military campaigns and their
outcomes. But we must insert into our story another important
event not mentioned in the Annals. We learn of it not from bald
historical records but from the king’s prayers. In what are
commonly referred to as the‘Plague Prayers’, Mursili rebukes the
gods for inflicting a devastating plague upon the Hittite land:
O gods, what have you done? You have allowed a plague into
Hatti, and the whole of Hatti is dying. No one prepares for
you the offering bread and the libation anymore. The
ploughmen who used to work the fallowfields of the gods
have died, so they do not work or reap thefields of the gods.
[...] To mankind, our wisdom has been lost, and whatever
we do right comes to nothing. O gods, whatever sin you
perceive, either let the Wise Women or the diviners(?)
determine it, or let ordinary people see it in a dream! [...]O
gods, have pity on the Land of Hatti! On the one hand it is
oppressed by the plague, on the other hand it is oppressed by
its enemies. [...] Now all the surrounding countries have
begun to attack it!^2As we have already noted, the plague was introduced into Hatti by
prisoners-of-war brought from Egypt’s Syro-Palestinian territories
during Suppiluliuma’s reign. It probably carried off both
Suppiluliuma and his son and first successor Arnuwanda, and
seems to have extended well into Mursili’s reign. So we must add to
the problems confronting Mursili, as he sought to reclaim Hatti’s
disintegrating empire in the early years of his reign, the likely
substantial depletion of manpower available to him because of the
114 WARRIORS OF ANATOLIA