an acrimonious exchange of correspondence between the Hittite and Babylonian royal
courts. The Babylonian vizier Itti-Marduk-balatu accused Hattusili of treating the
Babylonians as inferiors: ‘You do not write to us like a brother. You pressure us as
if we were your subjects.’ (Ironically, Hattusili was later to accuse the pharaoh Ramesses
of much the same thing.) This accusation is quoted by Hattusili in the still surviving
letter which he wrote to Kadashman-Enlil. We have already referred several times
to this letter. It is one of the longest and best preserved of all pieces of correspondence
to have survived from the archives of the Late Bronze Age Near Eastern world, and
provides us with one of our most important sources of information on Babylonian–
Hittite relations. In fact what we have is not the actual letter received by the Babylonian
king, but a copy of it, perhaps just a draft, which was unearthed in the archives of
the Hittite capital Hattusa.
Hattusili refers in his letter to other grievances about which Kadashman-Enlil had
written. The latter complained that Babylonian merchants had been murdered while
travelling through Hittite subject territory in Syria, and that no attempt had been
made to bring their murderers to justice. He also spoke of constant harassment of
Babylonian merchants by Benteshina, Hattusili’s protégé and vassal ruler of the
western Syrian kingdom called Amurru. A further grievance was Hattusili’s failure
to send back to Babylon a physician who had been sent to the Hittite court on loan.
This was in fact the second physician lent to Hattusa in recent times who had failed
to return home.
Hattusili’s letter is in part a response to these complaints. He also takes his
correspondent to task for ending diplomatic communications with Hatti. Kadashman-
Enlil had ceased the practice of sending ‘messengers’, probably meaning diplomatic
missions, to the Hittite court. Hattusili contemptuously dismisses Kadashman-Enlil’s
excuse that the termination of this service is due to attacks on the messengers by
hostile Aramean Ahlamu tribesmen, and the refusal by Assyria to allow the messengers
permission to travel through Assyrian territory:
How can this be, that you, my brother, have cut off your messengers on account
of the Ahlamu? Is the might of your kingdom small, my brother?... What is
the King of Assyria who holds back your messenger [while my messengers] cross
repeatedly? Does the King of Assyria hold back your messengers so that you,
[my brother], cannot cross [to] my [land]?Hattusili suggests that the real reason for the break in Babylon’s diplomatic links
with Hatti lies much closer to home: ‘Has perhaps Itti-Marduk-balatu spoken
unfavourable words before my brother, so that my brother has cut off the messengers?’
This was the nub of the matter, to Hattusili’s way of thinking: Kadashman-Enlil has
been led astray by his evil counsellor, the pro-Assyrian anti-Hittite Itti-Marduk-
balatu, an eminence grise‘whom the gods have caused to live far too long, and in whose
mouth unfavourable words never cease’.
Yet, by and large, the letter is written in a conciliatory tone. Hattusili’s main
purpose is to renew with the son the close bonds he had enjoyed with the father:
‘When your father and I established friendly relations and became loving brothers,
we did not become brothers for a single day. Did we not establish brotherhood and
friendly relations forever?’ In the spirit of reconciliation, Hattusili excuses Kadashman-
— Trevor Bryce —