Page 211 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

Babylon were a week’s march behind them, the report came
through to the heavily laden columns of trudging slaves, ass
trains, and bullock carts that hostile contact had been made be­
tween the chariots of the Hittites and the Hurrians. From then

on the retirement on Aleppo was a running fight, with the screen
of heavy chariots put out by Mursilis repeatedly assailed by the
more numerous, but lighter, chariots of the Mitanni kings. Losses

were heavy in the skirmishing, but the Hurrians avoided a
pitched battle against the heavy infantry that guarded the con­
voys of booty. And finally, after weeks of forced marching along
the Euphrates banks, Mursilis won through to the cover of the
army he had left to hold Yamkhad, and knew that the gamble

had come off. With the greater part of the loot of Babylon still in
his possession, he took the now-familiar road from Aleppo to his
capital of Hattusas.

Behind him in Mesopotamia he left a vacuum where Baby­
lon had been. The refugees who returned and began slowly to
rebuild their shattered city were in no shape to hold the realm
of which Babylon had been the center. The nearest power ca­

pable of rapid action was the king of the sea-lands to the south.
And without opposition the rule over Babylon was assumed by
the king of the south. Once again the whole of south Mesopo­

tamia, from present-day Baghdad to the sea, was under a single
rule.
Mursilis returned in triumph to his capital amid the ac­
claim of his people. And within a matter of weeks he was mur­

dered.
Mursilis had forgotten the charge that his foster father
Hattusilis had laid upon him—to be ever on the watch against
intrigue within his own family. The assassin was his own sister s

husband, Hantilis, who had taken advantage of the long absence
of the king to gain the support of the great nobles to his own
aspirations. Believing that the removal of Mursilis would put an
end to the burdensome foreign wars which the conditions of their

fief required them to take part in and largely to finance, the
nobles proclaimed Hantilis Great King of Hatti.
But neither Hantilis nor his supporters realized that Mur