Page 212 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

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silis had started something that his death could not stop. And
that only a strong army and a vigorous monarch could hold what
a strong army and a vigorous monarch had won.

The Hurrians had had the fact rammed down their throats
that the Hittites were their rivals for dominion of the fat val­
leys of the south. And their rulers, the king and the nobility of
Mitanni, sat in their new capital of Wassukkanna, where the
Khabur river debouches from the mountains into the Syrian

plain, and laid plans to strike at the heart of Hittite power.
It was not so easy to take Hattusas by surprise as it had
been to take Babylon. In the mountain country chariots were
ineffective, and the frontier garrisons of the Hatti were strong

and well positioned. Still, the Human attack was powerful and
dangerous. Hantilis was forced to call out his nobles to take the
field once more, as reports came in by mounted messenger of
fortresses taken by storm. When two cities only a day’s march
away to the north of the capital were besieged and captured, the

artisans of Hattusas, too, were conscripted to strengthen the
walls of the city.
It never came to actual siege of Hattusas. The campaign

season ended with the capture of Nerik and Tiliura, and with the
first snows of winter the Hurrians withdrew eastward to their own
country.
But the myth of Hittite invincibility was shattered. During
the remaining dozen years or so of this chapter there were re­

peated revolts among the subject provinces which Mursilis and
his two predecessors had added to the kingdom of the Hatti.
Many broke away completely, for Hantilis had no desire for pro­

longed campaigns at a distance from his capital. He had learnt
that assassination is a two-edged weapon, and he lived under
the constant (and, as it proved, justified) fear of palace revolu­
tion.
And the Hittite soldiery, who had marched and ridden with

Hattusilis and Mursilis on the long campaigns, looked in bitter­
ness at the renewed independence of Yamkhad, and even of
Arzawa and Kizzuwatna closer home, and wearied their sons and

grandsons with the tale of how they and their commander rode