and could do no more than take to his heels, abandoning his capital
and taking with him as many of his troops as he could extract from
it. Then Suppiluliuma swung back across the Euphrates, and in
what appears to have been a series of lightning attacks conquered
Mittani’s subject-states and allies between the Euphrates and the
Mediterranean coast, all the way down to the borders of Damascus.
He stopped there because Damascus lay within Egyptian subject-
territory–which for the Hittites was a no-go area.
The kings of the conquered states and cities were deposed and
deported together with their families to Hattusa. This included the
ruler and leading citizens of the city of Qadesh on the Orontes.
Suppiluliuma had actually intended to bypass the city, acknowl-
edging that it was then under Egyptian sovereignty. But when its
ruler launched an unprovoked attack on his troops, he seized the
city and added it to his list of conquests. All this Suppiluliuma
claimed to have achieved in a single year. There has been much
scholarly debate about the actual length and the specific details of
this so-called‘One-year Syrian War’. But whatever its length and
however sweeping Suppiluliuma’s victories, Tushratta remained
beyond the Hittites’grasp. Thefinal conquest of Mittani had yet to
be achieved.
It would be some years before that happened. Before his Syrian
conquests werefirmly bedded down, Suppiluliuma suspended his
eastern operations and returned to his homeland. Almost certainly
this was because of renewed threats to the core territory of his
kingdom by the Kaska people, and renewed anti-Hittite uprisings
throughout the Anatolian region. The king’s preoccupation with
his Mittanian and Syrian enterprises no doubt provided one of the
main incentives for these. Suppiluliuma may now have spent a
number of years back in Anatolia to reassert his authority there.
And while doing so, he assigned operations in Syria to deputies,
notably his son Telipinu. Matters came to a head when Tushratta,
sensing a weakening in the Hittite momentum against his kingdom,
made onefinal attempt to restore his authority west of the Euphrates
by launching an attack on the region around Carchemish, which was
itself a Mittanian stronghold. Telipinu responded by leading a Hittite
army against his forces, taking control of much of the territory
THE GREATEST KINGDOM OF THEM ALL 85