Of course, this new scenario raises two big questions.
Suppiluliuma could not have simply walked out into the wilds of
Anatolia with no idea of where he was going. So wheredidhe and
his entourage go? The other main question iswhydid they leave the
city in thefirst place–when it was still intact with no indication
that it was under imminent threat of enemy attack? Indeed it seems
that after their departure, the city continued to exist for some time,
perhaps just a matter of weeks or months, perhaps longer, before it
finally fell into ruin and was plundered by marauders or enemy
forces of anything still worth taking. Then what was left of it was
put to the torch. Later, there was an Iron Age settlement on the site.
But the royal city of the Hittites was lost to human memory, along
with the empire it ruled, until its rediscovery in the modern era.
So why did Suppiluliuma evacuate Hattusa? Let’s recall that this
was the third known time in Hittite history that a Hittite king
abandoned his capital. Thefirst was during the reign of Tudhaliya
III, in thefirst half of the fourteenth century, when the land of Hatti
fell prey to comprehensive attacks by its enemies. The king was
forced to leave the city and take up temporary residence somewhere
to the east where he organised the reconquest and restoration of his
kingdom. The second occasion was when Muwattalli II shifted his
royal capital to Tarhuntassa early in the thirteenth century. This
was partly perhaps to provide himself with a more convenient base
for his looming showdown with Egypt. On the first occasion,
Hattusa was destroyed by its enemies. On the second, it was left
under the command of a local administrator. But Muwattalli had
no intention of moving the royal seat back there, and it was only
under his son Urhi-Teshub that Hattusa was restored as the
imperial capital.
So what about this third occasion? Let me continue with my
speculations. It’s possible that once more a Hittite king decided to
shift his royal seat southwards to Tarhuntassa, just as Muwattalli
had done. The entry into Tarhuntassa recorded by Suppiluliuma in
his Südburg inscription may have paved the way for its restoration
as the new centre of the Great Kingdom of Hatti. It was perhaps
here that Suppiluliuma was heading when he left Hattusa. And as
far as we know, he may have installed an administrator to govern
264 WARRIORS OF ANATOLIA