The most likely answer to thefirst question is that he shifted his
court to a city called Samuha. We have yet to identify the remains
of this city, but it probably lay in the east of the kingdom, perhaps
on the upper course of the Marassantiya river or even further east
on the Euphrates. We conclude that Samuha became the new royal
seat from the fact that it served as the base for Tudhaliya’s
campaigns to drive out the invaders and regain his kingdom.
This we learn from the biography of the king’s partner in the
fight-back programme and his successor on the throne– a man
called Suppiluliuma, thefirst of two Hittite kings of this name.
The biography called in the Hittite text‘The Manly Deeds of
Suppiluliuma’(DS for short) was composed by Suppiluliuma’s son
and second successor Mursili (II).^3 It’s our main evidence for the
remarkable comeback in which Tudhaliya and Suppiluliuma not
only succeeded in regaining all their lost territories, but laid the
foundations for the greatest phase in the history of the Hittite
kingdom.
Before moving to this, let’s give a bit more thought to what was
undoubtedly one of the most significant achievements of Tudhaliya’s
reign–the shift of the seat of the kingdom to the east. Consider what
this entailed. The evacuation of Hattusa with all its important
possessions, the statues of its gods, its priests, its palace functionaries,
its militia and a large part of its population as well, must have been a
highly planned and carefully executed operation–with all the risks
of moving to a new location an entire city through many miles of
territory infested with enemy forces. This new location must have been
prepared some time in advance, and already sufficiently fortified to
protect the newcomers while they consolidated their position there.
The obvious success of the operation was in its own way equal to any of
the achievements of Hittite kings on thefield of battle. It becomes all
themorenoteworthywhenwethinkofothersuchventureswhich
ended, as this one easily could have, in disaster. I have in mind the
biblical account of the attempt by the Jewish king Zedekiah to abandon
Jerusalem secretly when it was under siege by the Babylonian
Nebuchadnezzar’s forces, only to be caught with his army in open
territory. His forces were routed, and he himself was captured and
suffered a terrible punishment. Read about it in 2 Kings 25.
FROM NEAR EXTINCTION TO THE THRESHOLD OF SUPREMACY 77