only in cases where a state continued to be troublesome after
conquest, and then only until the troubles had subsided.
The surviving preambles to the treaties often provide useful
information about past relationships between the vassal state and
its overlord, and can thus make a valuable contribution to our
attempts to reconstruct Hittite history. But there is an important
caveat: the ‘facts’ they contain are presented purely from the
overlord’s point of view, and in many cases may be adapted,
distorted, cherry-picked and perhaps even falsified to give whatever
spin the overlord wishes to the events leading up to the treaty.
Sometimes, the king uses the preamble to praise the loyalty of the
current vassal’s predecessors, to serve as a model for the vassal’s
own behaviour. Sometimes, the king speaks of the disloyalty and
treachery of a vassal’s father and predecessor, to emphasise his
forebearance and readiness to‘forgive’and accept the new ruler.
(Remember that a son can rightly be held responsible for the‘sins
of his father’.) Of course, we need to take claims like these with the
proverbial grain of salt. The king accepts the new vassal purely
because it is in his own best interests to do so.
There were a number of occasions when Hittite kings sought to
win over their subject-rulers by displays of clemency rather than by
threats and intimidation. Here is an example: The Hittite king
Mursili II was preparing to invade a rebel vassal state, Seha River
Land, whose ruler Manapa-Tarhunda had persistently defied Hittite
calls upon him to surrender. In accordance with the‘rules’of
warfare, if a king was compelled to take a land or city by force then
he and his troops had free rein to sack and plunder it and massacre
or take prisoner all its inhabitants. On this occasion, Mursili was on
the verge of doing just that when a terrified Manapa-Tarhunda sent a
delegation of old men and women to him, led by the rebel ruler’s
own mother, to offer his surrender and to plead on the rebel’s behalf.
Mursili was won over, or so he says:‘Because the women fell down at
my feet, I had mercy on them and so I did not enter the Seha River
Land.’^7
While this is clearly propagandistic stuff, it does exemplify a
characteristic desire of a number of Hittite kings to project an
image of chivalrous, compassionate behaviour rather than of brute
ALL THE KING’S HORSES AND ALL THE KING’S MEN 181