CHAPTER 9

From Near

Extinction to the

Threshold of

Supremacy

A

rnuwanda may have been a conscientious ruler who did
his best with the limited resources at his disposal to
stabilise his kingdom and keep its enemies at bay. But his
kingdom remained a fragile one, and on his death a crisis of
catastrophic proportions was rapidly approaching. That was the
situation facing the new king Tudhaliya, whom we’ll call the third
of that name. Once more, Kaska tribes were at the forefront of the
problems. Arnuwanda’s probably naive efforts to pacify them by
diplomatic means achieved at best a temporary respite before these
aggressive mountain people were on the move again, crossing the
Hittite frontiers, now pushed further south, in hundreds-strong
raiding parties which looted Hittite towns and cities, and plundered
Hittite grainlands.

URGENT BULLETINS TO REGIONAL OFFICIALS

Thanks to majorfinds made in fairly recent years, we have some up-
to-date accounts of these raids. From the 1970s onwards, excavations
have uncovered several important cities within the Hittite homeland,
already known from references to them in texts from Hattusa. These