Remember that since the core land of Hatti had no sea outlets, the
ships in Suppiluliuma’sfleet must have come from allied coastal
states like Ugarit and Amurru.
That raises another intriguing question. Why suddenly did the
empire’s tail-end rulers, with all the problems they faced in their
mainland territories, turn their attention to an island in the eastern
Mediterranean? I believe this question can be largely answered by
looking at another problem the last Hittite kings faced. There is
good reason to believe that the Hittite land, especially its core
region, was suffering increasingly from food-shortages at this time.
Periods of prolonged drought and famine have been suggested to
explain this. Indeed, harsh natural conditions may have played
their part in severely reducing food production. But man-made
conditions, I suggest, played at least as great a part.
Once more we return to one of Hatti’s most serious problems,
its chronic shortage of manpower. This affected its ability not only
to keep its army operational, but just as importantly to maintain an
adequate level of food production for the land, as well as servicing
Hatti’s other important needs. Years of military campaigning,
which drew many of the able-bodied workers from theirfields,
inevitably took their toll on the kingdom’s population, for even
successful campaigns must have resulted in significant casualties,
and thus a constant drain on the kingdom’s human resources.
In the past, losses due to war and other factors like plague could be
replenished from the large numbers of deportees brought back to
the homeland, in the wake of military conquests, to restock its
labour force and to swell the ranks of the kingdom’s armies. But in
the kingdom’sfinal century, the supply of new workers andfighters
from conquered areas had dropped off considerably–at a time
when instability in the subject-territories made ever greater
demands on the kingdom’s military resources for restoring control
over rebellious subjects.
Redeployment of the kingdom’s able-bodied men from the
fields to the defence forces almost certainly occurred now on a
greater scale than ever before, forcing the Hittites to rely
increasingly on grain imports from abroad. Following the‘Eternal
Peace’, representatives from the Hittite king had arranged
DEATH OF AN EMPIRE 259