Enlil’s failure to respond to his earlier declarations of friendship and support: ‘But
my brother was a child in those days, and they did not read out the tablets in your
presence.’ And in responding to the young king’s complaints, he assures him that
the murderers of the Babylonian merchants will be brought to account, in accordance
with the Hittite system of justice, and that an investigation of his complaint against
Benteshina is already under way. He does, however, mention that Benteshina claims
that his action against the Babylonians was prompted by their failure to repay a debt
of three talents of silver. Nevertheless:
If my brother does not believe this, let his servant who heard Benteshina when
he continually cursed the land of my brother come here and oppose him in court.
And I will put pressure on Benteshina. Benteshina is my subject. If he has cursed
my brother, has he not cursed me too?The matter of the physician who failed to return to Babylon was a cause of some
embarrassment to Hattusili, particularly since an earlier Babylonian physician on loan
to the Hittite court during Muwattalli’s reign had been bribed to remain in the land
of his hosts; he had been given a fine house in the Hittite capital and married to a
member of the royal family. The second physician sent by Kadashman-Enlil to
Hattusili’s court had also remained in Hatti. But that was because he had fallen ill
and died there. In response to his royal brother’s suspicions and protests, Hattusili
declared that everything had been done for the physician in his illness; he had,
moreover, been held in high regard in the Hittite land for all that he had accomplished
there, and been rewarded with lavish gifts in recognition of this. These gifts were all
carefully recorded, and the tablet on which they were recorded, along with the gifts
themselves, would be sent to Babylon to verify what Hattusili had written.
In spite of the embarrassment over the two physicians, Hattusili showed no hesitation
in asking his royal brother for the services of another skilled craftsman: he wanted to
have some statues made, to be set up in the royal family’s quarters. Could Kadashman-
Enlil please send him a sculptor to do the job? The request was accompanied by an
assurance that the sculptor would be sent back home as soon as the job was finished.
We do not know what response, if any, Hattusili received from Kadashman-Enlil
to his long letter. But henceforth Babylon rates scarcely a mention in texts relating
to the Hittite world. With the conclusion of the famous treaty between Hattusili III
and Ramesses II in 1259 , Hatti’s problems with Egypt, referred to in Hattusili’s
correspondence with both Kadashman-Turgu and Kadashman-Enlil, were considerably
diminished. And if Kadashman-Turgu’s treaty with Hattusili was ever renewed, either
between Hattusili and Kadashman-Enlil, or between later Hittite and Babylonian
kings, we have no indication that it was ever put into effect. Certainly the Hittite
king Tudhaliya IV, son and successor of Hattusili, made no call on Babylonian support
when he clashed with the Assyrians in the battle of Nihriya (c. 1230 ) in northern
Mesopotamia – and was resoundingly defeated by them.
Indirectly, however, Babylon may have saved Hittite territories in Syria from the
ravages of the Assyrian forces after their triumph at Nihriya. An invasion of these
territories by the victorious Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta now seemed imminent.
Instead, Tukulti-Ninurta turned his attention southwards – against Babylon. Whether
or not his decision was prompted by an attack on his own lands by the Babylonian
— A view from Hattusa —