Page 306 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

been conquered by Persian mountaineers called Kassites nearly
seventy years ago, and its Kassite kings now wielded little power,
at least in the direction of Mitanni.

But just about ten years ago two other powerful kings had
appeared in the north. Suppiluliumas of the Hittites, a people of
Asia Minor who two hundred fifty years ago had taken Babylon
by storm, had led his forces out of the mountains once more. He

had captured the capital of Yamkhad, Aleppo, and then gone
on to capture the capital of the Mitanni, Wassukkanna. The
army of the Mitanni, however, had avoided battle, and their king

Tushratta—Tatukhipa’s father—had returned to his throne when
the Hittite king retired. But Suppiluliumas had left his son
Telepinus to govern Aleppo and the whole coastline north of
the Egyptian vassals in Lebanon.

The Other new monarch in the north was Assur-uballit of
Assyria. Assyria, the Semitic kingdom on the upper Tigris, was
an ancient land, though it was all of four hundred fifty years

since Samsi-Adad, its king, had campaigned to the Mediter­
ranean in the old days when Amorites reigned supreme and
Indo-Europeans were still no more than a shadow on the northern

horizon. For many generations now Assyria had been in the
pincer grip of the new peoples, with Hurrians to the west and
Kassites to the east. Since Hammurabi long ago had conquered

Assyria, the kings of Babylon had claimed sovereignty over the
country, but in fact it had until recently been a vassal of the
Mitanni kings. Why, during their grandfather’s last illness, said
Horemheb, the king of Mitanni had sent him the statue of an

Assyrian goddess, a certain Ishtar from a town called Nineveh,
who was supposed to be able to cure illness but had not been as
effective in Egypt as she undoubtedly was in her own country.

But now Assur-uballit, the present king of Assyria, was
showing himself more than a match for his overlords. The latest
news was that he had encouraged a younger branch of the

Mitanni royal family to make a successful bid for the throne.
Tatukhipa s father, the old king Tushratta, had been assas­
sinated, and the Assyrian nominee, Artatemu, had proclaimed

himself king. And that could be serious, said the vizier. For
Tushratta had been a friend of Egypt, whereas Assur-uballit

s