Hittite subversive activities and military intervention in their
territories. The pharaoh’s clear intention to avoid getting caught up
in a conflict between Hatti and Mittani was a good outcome for
Suppiluliuma.
While preparing for a final showdown with Mittani,
Suppiluliuma received further good news. The Mittanian king
Shuttarna II had recently died, and on his death conflict had broken
out between factions within the royal family over the succession.
As Suppiluliuma well knew from his country’s own history,
conflicts of this kind could weaken and divide a kingdom, making it
vulnerable to outside attack. The Mittanian throne was seized by a
man called Tushratta, but his occupation of it was challenged
by a second claimant, Artatama. This may have been the time
Suppiluliuma chose to launch an attack across the Euphrates on
the land of Isuwa, one of the countries whose forces had invaded
and occupied Hittite territory during the dark days of Tudhaliya
III’s reign. Now at last Suppiluliuma was ready to take retaliatory
action against it. But Isuwa was an ally of Mittani, and it’s very
likely that Suppiluliuma’s campaign brought the new Mittanian
king Tushratta into thefield. Tushratta won a resounding victory
against the Hittites–at least that’s what he told the pharaoh in a
letter he wrote to him.^2
Tushratta may have exaggerated the magnitude of his victory,
but a Mittanian victory it almost certainly was. And as
Suppiluliuma retired to lick his wounds, he could reflect that he
had learned an important lesson from the encounter. Tushratta had
proved himself a formidable foe. Mere military might would not be
enough to beat him. Force would need to be combined with
effective diplomatic action if the Hittite warlord was to achieve
ultimate success. And so before launching an all-out assault on
Tushratta’s kingdom, Suppiluliuma made overtures to his
Mittanian rival Artatama, and concluded a treaty with him. The
treaty hasn’t survived, so we don’t know what its terms were. But at
the very least it probably helped ensure that Artatama and the
forces that backed him would not stand in the way of a Hittite
campaign against the Tushratta regime. This was presumably on
the understanding that if the campaign were successful and
THE GREATEST KINGDOM OF THEM ALL 83