May I invite you to play the part of detective and try to reconstruct
from these snippets a plausible scenario for what was going on in
the royal family at this time? While you’re thinking about it, let me
suggest two possibilities.
Thefirst is that the Urhi-Teshub branch of the royal family
never abandoned its hopes of regaining the main prize, the throne
of Hattusa. Though initially loyal to the usurper and his
descendants, at least outwardly, Kurunta used Tarhuntassa as a
base for building resistance against the Hattusa regime, eventually
declaring his position by proclaiming himself‘Great King’. His
nephew and probable successor Hartapu followed suit, claiming the
title‘Great King’, and reasserting his right to the throne by naming
his father Mursili (Urhi-Teshub) the (legitimate) Great King of
Hatti.
In several of his inscriptions, Hartapu states his credentials as a
great military conqueror, with the support and blessing of the
Storm God. The belligerent nature of these inscriptions and the
spread of the monuments on which they are carved in the north of
the land of Tarhuntassa and beyond (there may well have been
many more that have not survived) may represent early stages in a
rebellion against Hattusa and attempts to win support from the
local populations. Suppiluliuma’s campaign through southern
Anatolia may have been in response to uprisings prompted by the
Tarhuntassa regime, and may have ended with the kingdom’s
conquest.
The perception of an empire on the verge of disintegration
when Suppiluliuma mounted the throne could have prompted the
Tarhuntassa-based regime to make its bid for the main prize–the
Great Kingship of the entire Hittite realm. To counter such a move,
it was essential that Suppiluliuma give clear proof, at the earliest
possible opportunity, that despite his sudden and unexpected
elevation to the Hittite throne, the reins of imperial power were
firmly in his hands. This he sought to demonstrate by his military
progress through southern Anatolia, bringing to heel a number of
rebellious states. He completed his campaign with a comprehensive
conquest of Tarhuntassa and the elimination of the regime there.
The long and now almost illegible hieroglyphic inscription on the
DEATH OF AN EMPIRE 257