CHAPTER 23

The Empire’s

Struggle for

Survival

T

here could have been fresh problems in the royal family
over the succession when Hattusili died and kingship
was passed on to his son, another Tudhaliya (commonly
designated as the fourth of that name). Not just because Urhi-
Teshub’s branch of the family might have made a new bid to put
one of its own members on the throne, but also because another of
Hattusili’s sons, Nerikkaili, had already been designated as the
crown prince and was now passed over in favour of Tudhaliya.
Our texts provide no explanation for this. It may be that important
considerations of state were involved.
But it has also beenproposedthat Tudhaliya’s appointmentasheir
was due to Hattusili’s wife Puduhepa, on the (unproven) grounds that
Tudhaliya was her own son by Hattusili, and she was seeking to
promote his interests above those of her stepson(?) Nerikkaili. That
could be right, and would give a nice air of intrigue to the matter, with
the whiff of the shenanigans of Rome’s Julio-Claudian dynasty about
it. In any case, Nerikkaili seems to have accepted his displacement
with good grace and continued to play an important role in the affairs
of the kingdom. Before his death, perhaps for some years before it,
Hattusili appears to have been preparing Tudhaliya for the highest
office of the land by appointing him at a very early age to the highly
prestigious post of Chief of the Bodyguards, and giving him extensive