missions from one Royal Brother to another played an important
role in maintaining a reasonably high level of political stability in
the Near Eastern world. Apart from frequent clashes between the
Hittite and Mittanian Great Kings, Hatti appears to have had only
three all-out conflicts with another Great Kingdom –two with
Egypt at Qadesh in Syria, and one with Assyria (the battle of
Nihriya) in northern Mesopotamia. (We’ll say more about the last
of these in the next chapter.)
On the other hand, military campaigns of one kind or another
were an almost yearly event in which Hatti like the other Great
Kingdoms independently engaged. For the most part, these
campaigns were directed against rebellious subject-states and
insurrectionists, or hostile independent cities and countries, and
mountain tribes like the Kaska people. Indeed, Hatti’s struggles to
maintain its authority over its subject-states and to ward off attacks
by hostile independent forces made ever greater demands on its
increasingly limited military resources, and imposed ever greater
hardships on its homeland population and loyal subjects elsewhere
as the empire moved irrevocably towards its end.
230 WARRIORS OF ANATOLIA