Puduhepa who shares his displeasure. Has his Royal Brother really
said this? He looks across inquiringly at the scribe who is checking
the clay tablet copy of the speech. The scribe verifies with a nod that
the emissary’s words are exactly those of the letter’s written version.
Already in his mind the king is framing a suitable response to his
Royal Brother. And so is his queen! I have discussed elsewhere in
the book the important matters of state with which the letters deal,
and the sorts of things written in them that pleased or displeased
their recipients. See how many you can identify.
When all is done, the pharaoh’s envoys await the king’s
approval for their return home. Letters of response will be written
to the pharaoh, by both the king and the queen, and these along
with appropriate gifts will be conveyed by the king’s own envoys to
the pharaoh in his royal capital Pi-Ramesse in the Egyptian Delta.
THEROYALCLUB
Hattusili and Ramesses were members of what we might call a
Club of Royal Brothers. Well, a club in a sense. It basically had
only four members, and these never actually met. But their regular
diplomatic missions to one another’s courts kept them in
relatively close contact–despite the vast distances between them
and the weeks, even months, it must have taken for travel between
their courts.
The qualification for membership was that you had to be one of
the Great Kings of the age. In Hittite texts, the term‘Great King’is
represented by a combination of the Sumerian logograms GAL
(meaning‘great’) and LUGAL (meaning‘king’–literally‘great
man’). There were plenty of LUGALs–‘kings’–in the Bronze Age
Near East, for the term was used of a range of smaller-scale rulers,
like those who held immediate sway over the kingdoms subject to
one or other of the great powers. But if you’re able to attach GAL to
LUGAL in your title, you’llfind yourself in very elite company.
In Hattusili’s and Ramesses’time, the four Great Kings were the
rulers of Hatti, Egypt, Assyria and Babylon. The home territory of
Assyria and Babylon lay in northern and southern Mesopotamia
respectively. Admission to membership was dependent on
AN ELITE FRATERNITY:THE CLUB OF ROYAL BROTHERS 227