Page 312 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

woes of the children of Israel. She was fascinated, however, by
the colorful foreign embassies which now began to wait upon

the pharaoh. News had reached the northern lands that the
vizier Horemheb was training an army on the Palestine border
with the intention of campaigning against Aziru and recovering
the lost provinces of Syria and Lebanon. And the favor of Egypt

was once more worth working for.
Seated on her throne beside Tutankhamon, the queen, now
seventeen years old in this year 1353 b.c., gazed frankly and

curiously at the black-bearded envoys from Assyria, the hook­
nosed Hurrians from Mitanni, and the tall fair-haired Hittite
ambassadors. The Hittites in particular attracted her. She ques­
tioned them, through the interpreters, about their country, and

was interested to learn that, among them as among the Egyptians,
the queen ruled in her own right beside the king. It was even
said that originally, before the northerners had come among the

Hatti, succession to the throne had been through the daughters
of the king rather than the sons. She learned much of the Great
King of Hatti, Suppiluliumas, and of his many sons, all of whom

had been given kingdoms of their own, carved out of the border
countries in the course of many campaigns. And now rumor said
—and the envoys did not bother to deny it—that Suppiluliumas

was preparing for a new campaign which would finally dispose of
the kingdom of Mitanni.
The nobles of the Egyptian court were little interested in
the tales of Hatti-Iand. But they examined with interest the

swords which the Hittite envoys wore. For they were of iron, an
exceedingly rare metal long considered too brittle to stand up
against weapons of bronze. It appeared that the Hittites had

mastered a new process of forging iron which produced a metal
that need not be cast to shape but could be wrought, hammered,
and tempered to a toughness and sharpness which made it

superior even to the best bronze. It was a new and highly secret
process, said the envoys, but before long even the ordinary
soldiers of the Hittite army would be equipped with this ir­
resistible weapon.

In the meantime they were pleased to present to Tutankh­
amon, with the compliments of the Great King Suppiluliumas,