the last words he will ever speak. They may prove crucial to the
kingdom’s survival. Already the land of Hatti has suffered turmoil.
The king blames it largely on the treachery of his own children, a
son and a daughter. He reminds the gathering of their‘offences’.
The son Huzziya, appointed as regional governor in the city
Tappassanda (otherwise unknown), had been persuaded to join in
a local uprising against his father. Huzziya was apparently a
popularfigure in the kingdom, and may well have been next in line
for the throne. Now, he was under arrest for treason. Yet his fall
from grace merely served to widen and intensify discontent among
the king’s subjects. There were fresh uprisings throughout the
kingdom, apparently led by the prince’s sister. The kingfinally
reasserted his authority over the land and banished his daughter,
but only after many of his subjects had been slaughtered.
Once more, the question of the succession arose. With his own
son ruled out of contention, the king had turned to his nephew, and
announced his appointment as the new Labarna, the heir designate.
But that appointment too ended disastrously. The nephew proved
unfit to assume the responsibilities of kingship – so Hattusili
informs the gathering:‘He was an abomination to the sight! He
shed no tears, he was without compassion, he was cold and pitiless!’
Repeatedly ignoring the king’s advice, the assembly is told, he
listened only to his cold-hearted siblings and his evil mother. In a
bizarre mix of animal metaphors, the king refers to his sister as a
‘serpent’, who‘bellowed like an ox’when she heard that her son had
been sacked. But the king had no choice. The nephew had to go. His
rule would have led only to more bloodshed and chaos in the
kingdom. That could not be allowed to happen. He had to be
stripped of all his powers and, like the king’s daughter (and
probably his son), banished from the capital.‘Until now nobody [in
my family] has obeyed my will,’the king sighs.
And then we come to the main purpose of the meeting. With
Hattusili’s repudiation of his nephew, there is only one other
possible successor to the throne–the king’s grandson Mursili. And
that is what the king announces to his gathering. The problem is
that Mursili is still a child, too young to assume the responsibilities
of kingship. But there is no-one else. We can now fully understand
THE LEGACY OF AN AILING KING 35