cities served as administrative centres of the kingdom, and all have
provided us with tablet archives. They are Sapinuwa, the largest
(modern Ortaköy), Sarissa (modern Kuşaklı) and Tapikka (modern
Maşat). We’ll focus on the third of these. Tapikka, where excavations
began in 1973, served as both an administrative centre and a military
outpost in the homeland’s northern frontier region. It lay 100 km
northeast of Hattusa. Within the remains of the city’s chief building
(the so-called‘palace’), 116 tablets dating to thefirst half of the
fourteenth century were found, 96 of them containing the texts of
letters.^1 Many came from the Great King himself and were addressed
to his local officials in Tapikka. They provide an excellent example of
the hands-on approach, or micro-management style of His Majesty.
This was particularly important at that time in Hittite history, when
the kingdom was under severe threat from the Kaskan forces, not
least because of their plundering of what was probably one of the
richest grain-producing areas of the homeland. It was not only the
Hittites’territory that was at risk but also, quite literally, Hatti’s bread
of life!
The letters exchanged between the king and local officials, who
were often summoned to Hattusa for face-to-face briefings with His
Majesty, could best be described as bulletins, hastily written and
reflecting the king’s concerns of the moment. There are none of the
niceties of more formal communications. This is what the king
writes to an official in Tapikka:‘Thus His Majesty: Say to Kassu:
“Re what you have written to me about the chariots, note this: I have
now sent forth the chariots. Look out for them.”’The bulletins
contain demands by the king for up-to-date reports of enemy
movements in the region; there are also responses to officials’
requests for auxiliary troops to reinforce a region’s existing defences,
instructions from the king regarding the relocation of populations in
areas most directly threatened by the enemy, and instructions about
the treatment of defectors and enemy prisoners.
The urgent tone of many of the bulletins provides a kind of
microcosm of how grave the situation was confronting the kingdom
in Tudhaliya III’s years. Yet the mood of doom and gloom that
pervades many of the communications is occasionally lightened by
pieces of trivia. These are due to the scribes who actually wrote the
74 WARRIORS OF ANATOLIA