Page 206 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

[1650-1580 B.C.] The Great King 167

Mediterranean. In its capital, Aleppo, its kings had collected the
wealth of a century of peaceful trading, for the city stood on
the main road from the Euphrates and the east to the port of
Ugarit, the Mediterranean, and the west. The country would be a
rich prize, but no easy one. Its cities, and in particular Aleppo,
were strongly defended with walls of immense height and
thickness.
It took some years to plan the campaign and to devise and
test the weapons, battering rams and mobile towers and pro­
tective screens, which could make an impression on the fortified
cities. But finally Hattusilis set out, with squadron by squad­
ron of chariots riding the rough mountain roads, descending
into the coastal plain of Kizzuwatna, passing the frontier fortress
by the Syrian Gates, and debouching into the plain of northern
Syria. Mursilis, now a mature man and an experienced field com­
mander, accompanied the expeditionary force.
The war went slowly. The men of Yamkhad refused all
temptations to do battle in the open against the heavy chariots of
the Hittites, and retreated to their walled cities. The attitude
of the Hurrians was equivocal; they had mobilized an army on
the frontier towards Yamkhad which could as easily be thrown
in on the one side as on the other, and Mursilis detached the
greater part of his chariotry to guard against Human interven­
tion while the Hittite infantry assaulted the Yamkhad cities.
There was delay in bringing up the heavy equipment, the new
siege engines, and they were not at first employed with full effi­
ciency. But as the troops gained experience in the new techniques
of siege warfare, one after another of the cities fell, and finally
the Hittite army took by storm the capital city of Aleppo itself.
They failed to capture the king of Yamkhad. He escaped
from the city and, given free passage, it was said, through Hur-
rian territory, appeared as a refugee at the court of Samsi-ditana
in Babylon.
But Yamkhad was conquered, and Hattusilis and Mursilis
were well aware that by that conquest the Hittite kingdom had
for better or worse entered the play for power in the ancient
civilized area that stretched from Mesopotamia to Egypt. So long
as they held Yamkhad they would have new sources of revenue,