Tushratta was killed or at least driven from power, Suppiluliuma
would support Artatama’s accession, followed up by friendship
between the two kingdoms. Of course if Suppiluliuma did make
such an agreement, he must have done so with hisfingersfirmly
crossed behind his back, as later events were to prove.
In the lead-up to war, he also made attempts by diplomatic
means to win away from the Mittanian side some of its allies and
subject-states in Syria–with mixed results. His great prize was
Ugarit, a wealthy Syrian coastal state. Ugarit was a valuable timber-
producing region, and had rich, fertile steppes excellent for grazing
purposes and the production of abundant quantitities of grain
and other agricultural products. It was the centre of thriving
manufacturing industries, and contained four or more seaports,
including its capital city, also called Ugarit. But other Syrian states
refused to have anything to do with Suppiluliuma, and in fact carried
out reprisal attacks on Ugarit for joining him. But Suppiluliuma
honoured the terms of alliance he had made with the Ugaritic king
Niqmaddu II by sending an expeditionary force to his rescue, driving
the invaders from his land and adding substantial slices of their
territory to his ally’s kingdom. Later Ugarit was to become a Hittite
vassal state, rather than just an allied one. It became the Hittites’
Syrian‘jewel in the crown’.
Suppiluliuma won over at least one other Syrian state to his side,
the kingdom of Nuhashshi, and may well have sought to extend his
influence into, if not his authority over, a number of Egyptian
vassal states, if we are to believe the complaints of some of their
rulers to Akhenaten. But the majority of Syrian states remained
firm in their Mittanian allegiance. They would have to be won over
by force of arms, for Suppiluliuma was now ready to embark on his
final showdown with Mittani.
OPEN WAR WITHMITTANI
Once more, he crossed the Euphrates, conquered the land of Isuwa,
then struck into the heartland of Tushratta’s kingdom, capturing
and plundering its capital Washshuganni. He had moved with such
speed and ferocity that Tushratta was caught completely offguard,
84 WARRIORS OF ANATOLIA