a coup in the northern part of the kingdom. Here a breakaway
regime established itself, in a city called Sanahuitta.^6 Was the
kingdom built by Labarna already falling apart?
An emphatic‘No!’to that question was provided by a new
successor to the throne. Perhaps the grandson of thefirst Labarna,
the new king was proclaimed‘the Great King’,‘the Tabarna’, King
of the Land of Hatti’,‘Ruler of (the city of) Kussar’. (Tabarna is a
variant of Labarna, which became a royal title in its own right, like
‘Caesar’, after Julius Caesar, in the titulature of Roman emperors.)
The last of these titles seems to indicate that Kussar was his royal
seat. You’ll recall that several generations earlier this city was the
original base of Pithana and his son Anitta, before Pithana shifted
his capital to Nesa. Maybe the new king and his successors came
from another branch of Pithana’s and Anitta’s family, this one
remaining behind in Kussar. We have no actual evidence of any
family connections. But Pithana’s and Anitta’s exploits nevertheless
became an integral part of Hittite royal dynastic tradition.
THE RESURRECTION OF A CITY ACCURSED
Let’s return to the new king. Almost certainly it was he who made the
momentous decision to relocate the kingdom’s capital. And he did so
by resettling the weed-covered ruins of the city which was called
Hattus in the colony period. Anitta had destroyed Hattus and
declared its site accursed. Despite this, Labarna built the city afresh,
and called it Hattusa. To commemorate his resettlement of it, he
adopted the name Hattusili,‘man of Hattusa’.
What motivated him to set up a new royal capital on the old,
abandoned site?
To begin with, Hattusa contained an ideal location for a royal
citadel and palace. This is a large,flattish plateau, made almost
impregnable to attack by natural barriers particularly on its eastern
and northern sides. To the east of the citadel lies a deep gorge,
through which runs a river valley which continues to the north,
where the cliffs of a high ridge now called Büyükkaya (‘Big Rock’)
rise steeply above it. You will understand how formidable these
natural barriers were if you visit the site and clamber through the
26 WARRIORS OF ANATOLIA