We have no objective, independent contemporary historians to
chronicle from an impartial viewpoint the episodes that make up
the kingdom’s history. This is not to deny that there may often be
much truth among the spin. Most scholars accept that the bald,
matter-of-fact nature of the majority of Hittite records gives the
information they supply a greater ring of authenticity than the
flamboyant rhetoric which is so marked a feature of the records of
Egypt’s pharaohs or the rulers of the Neo-Assyrian world.
Bearing all this in mind, let’s return to our question. Why
did the Hittites make substantial commitments of their military
resources to far-distant campaigns in the west, with all the risks this
entailed of attacks on their homeland during their absence, and in
view of their clear interest in establishing and maintaining their
influence in Syria–which lay in precisely the opposite direction to
their western enterprises?
My view is that the Hittites believed they had no choice. It is clear
from both Tudhaliya’s Annals and what’s left of those of his successor
Arnuwanda, that the western Anatolian states had the capacity to
form powerful alliances among themselves. While individually these
states posed no serious risk to Hatti, in combination they could
become a distinct danger to it. So much so that western forces led by
Arzawa invaded Hatti’s southern lands, and along with other forces
around its periphery threatened to obliterate the entire kingdom.
Indeed the pharaoh Amenhotep III, whose reign covered much of the
first half of the fourteenth century, believed that the Hittite kingdom
wasfinished. He wrote to the king of Arzawa about a proposed
marriage-alliance, no doubt as the prelude to a diplomatic alliance, in
recognition of the Arzawan king’s potential status as the new overlord
of Anatolia.^3
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