Page 207 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

168 The Argosies [1650-1580 b.c.]
and a whole new set of enemies. They must leave a very strong
garrison behind with their viceroy in Aleppo.
The progress of the army north to Hattusas was not a little
slower than its advance southward. The trains of slaves and the
groaning bullock carts loaded with the wealth of Aleppo slowed
the chariots to walking pace. But nobody minded that as they
thought of the share they would receive of slaves and cattle, fine
linen and pottery, gold and silver, furniture and ivory. The sol­
diers joked among themselves as they swung northward, and
Mursilis had time to remember boyhood dreams of victory in the
east.
That winter the ritual round of the temples became a prog­
ress of triumph and thanksgiving. The conquest of Yamkhad was
the crown of Hattusilis’s career, and in the few years that were
left to the old king he was content to hand over more and more
of the mechanics of government to his brilliant crown prince.
Even so, it came as a shock to the whole of Asia Minor when
the heralds proclaimed six years later from the gates of the palace
that Hattusilis was dead, and that Mursilis was the Great
King, king of Hatti. For Hattusilis was the founder of the realm.
He it was who had renewed the ancient glory of the Hatti, and
the glory could not survive his death.
Mursilis summoned his squadrons, and in a brief but em­
phatic tour of his realm persuaded doubters that the glory of the
Hatti was by no means a thing of the past. A punitive expedition
against the Gasga of the north, always prepared to strike south
at the first suspicion of weakness, re-established the inviolability
of the frontiers in that direction—but cost a precious summer.
And in the meantime trouble came to a head in the south.
The news of the death of Hattusilis reached Babylon with
all the speed that relays of chariots permitted. The exiled king
of Yamkhad had long prepared for this day, and within a week
he was on his way up the Euphrates with an army of Baby­
lonian “volunteers.” Again the Hurrians gave him passage (and
further “volunteers”), and his attack on Aleppo, coupled with
a fifth-column rising within the walls, took the Hittite viceroy by
surprise. Mursilis had scarcely secured his throne and his fron­