continued to resent his appointment. Notable among them was
Arma-Tarhunda, the sacked governor of the region, who took
advantage of Hattusili’s absence in Syria to bring an indictment
against him. He allegedly even resorted to witchcraft as he
relentlessly sought his successor’s overthrow. Hattusili responded
with a counter-indictment, and won his case. Muwattalli
informed him that he could now do what he liked with the
loser. This was an excellentpropaganda opportunity.‘Ididnot
respond with malice,’he tells us in theApology.‘Rather, because
Arma-Tarhunda was a blood-relative, and was moreover an old
man, I took pity on him and let him go free.’Hattusili says that he
freed his son as well. He later had cause to regret doing so. Far
from being reconciled with Hattusili by this act of mercy, Arma-
Tarhunda’s family remained implacably hostile. Time would
make that very clear.
THE ILL-FATED REIGN OFMUWATTALLI’S SON
On Muwattalli’s deathc.1272, the succession passed smoothly to
his son Urhi-Teshub. The new king was the offspring of a
secondary wife, a concubine, since presumably the king had no heir,
or no suitable one, from afirst wife. Urhi-Teshub’s appointment
accorded perfectly with the royal laws of succession, and was fully
supported by the young man’s uncle Hattusili. Indeed, in hisApology
Hattusili claims credit for actually putting him on the throne. Maybe
he made this claim to help justify the actions he later took against the
king. Or just possibly Muwattalli did in fact die without formally
proclaiming Urhi-Teshub his heir and it was left to Hattusili, now
the most senior office-holder in the land, to formalise the
appointment. In any case, there is no doubt whatever that Urhi-
Teshub was now the legitimate Great King of Hatti. And perhaps to
emphasise this, he took on the throne-name Mursili, the name of two
of his most illustrious predecessors.
In the early years of the reign, nephew and uncle seem to
have got on well together. And to be fair to Hattusili, ruthless
schemer though he turned out to be, he may initially have had no
intention of changing the status quo. But a momentous decision by
186 WARRIORS OF ANATOLIA