LETTERS OF THE GREAT KINGS OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST The Royal Correspondence of the Late Bronze Age Trevor Bryce LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2003 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2003 Trevor Bryce All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data (Data to follow) ISBN 0-203-50498-4 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-56985-7 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 041525857X (Print Edition) CONTENTS List of illustrations v List of abbreviations vi Comparative chronology of the Great Kings ix Introduction 1 Part I Setting the scene 7 1 The main players: the five Great Kingdoms 8 2 The interaction of the players: imperial administration and international relationships 38 Part II The letters and their themes 50 3 Letters and messengers 51 4 The club of royal brothers 70 5 Gift-exchanges 89 6 The marriage market 100 7 Sending for the doctor 113 Part III Historical episodes 121 8 The Syrian principalities 123 9 The warlords of Amurru 137 10 Hittite frontier correspondence 161 11 An extraordinary request 178 12 Letter to a Mycenaean king 190 13 The elusive Urhi-Teshub 204 14 Last days 214 Appendix: the Amarna letters 223 Bibliography 228 Index 235 iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Maps 1 The Near East in the Late Bronze Age viii 2 The Syrian principalities (fourteenth century) 122 3 Sites of the Hittite regional archives (fifteenth to early fourteenth century) 160 Figures 1 Chronology of the Great Kings ix 2 The ‘King’s’ Gate at Hattusa 25 3 Ay performing Tutahkhamun’s burial rites 187 4 The Lion Gate at Mycehae 193 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AA Archäologischer Anzeiger AfO Archiv für Orientforschung ÄHK Edel, E. (1994) Die Ägyptische-hethitische Korrespondenz aus Boghazköi, vol. I, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag ÄHK II Edel, E. (1994) Die Ägyptische-hethitische Korrespondenz aus Boghazköi, vol. II, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag AJA American Journal of Archaeology AoF Altorientalische Forschungen AS Anatolian Studies BiOr Bibliotheca Orientalis CAH Cambridge Ancient History CTH Laroche, E. (1971) Catalogue des textes hittites, Paris: Klincksieck DS Güterbock, H.G. (1956) ‘The deeds of Suppiluliuma as told by his Son, Mursili II’, JCS 10:41–68, 75–98, 101–130 EA The El-Amarna Letters, most recently ed. W.Moran (1992) HKM Alp, S. (1991b) Hethitische Keilschrifttafeln aus Maşat- Höyük, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi JCS Journal of Cuneiform Studies JEA Journal of Egyptian Archaeology JEOL Jaarbericht Ex Oriente Lux KBo Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazköi KUB Keilschrift Urkunden aus Boghazköi MDAIK Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Kairo MDOG Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft MIO Mitteilungen des Instituts für Orientforschung MsK Texts from Meskene (Emar) PRU IV Nougayrol, J. (1956) Le Palais royal d’Ugarit IV (Mission de Ras Shamra Tome IX), Paris: Klincksieck RAss Revue d’Assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale RS Tablets from Ras Shamra SMEA Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici StBoT Studien zu den Boğazköy-Texten TUAT Text aus der Umwelt des Alten Testament UF Ugarit-Forschungen Urk Urkunden des ägyptischen Altertums, Leipzig and Berlin, 1906–58 WVDOG Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichung der Deutscher Orient- Gesellschaft ZA Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie vii viii Map 1 The Near East in the Late Bronze Age COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGY OF THE GREAT KINGS ‘Effective rule begins after Hatshepsut’s death in 1458. **Possible period of co-regency with Amenhotep III. INTRODUCTION The region we refer to loosely—and from certain perspectives quite inappropriately—as the Near East is today occupied by a large complex of states, from Turkey in the west to Iraq in the east, and from Syria southwards through Lebanon, Israel and Jordan to the eastern fringes of the Peninsula of Sinai. Our study of the ancient Near Eastern world extends also to Egypt, for the kingdom which arose in the land of the Nile developed close political and commercial links with this world, and came to exercise a profound influence on its history during the second millennium BCE. Cyprus too played a role in Near Eastern affairs, as to a lesser extent did Mycenaean Greece—thus adding further elements to our study of international relations in the period under review. This period, the so-called Late Bronze Age, covered some 500 years, roughly from the early seventeenth to the early twelfth century BCE. It saw the rise of a number of Great Kingdoms, whose rulers between them controlled almost the entire region. Such control was neither easily won nor easily maintained. Even today, with all the advantages of modern communications and formidable arsenals of weapons, it is virtually impossible for any great power to impose lasting control over any part of the Near Eastern complex. How much more difficult the task must have been, we might reasonably assume, for the ancient kings of the region. During the Bronze Age, effective means of communication were as essential to the maintenance of political and military control over a particular group of territories as they were to the development of international trading links, upon which a kingdom’s prosperity and very survival might largely depend. And effective communication depended on unobstructed travel by land or by sea. The logistics and risks of such travel in the ancient Near East could be daunting. Journeys often involved vast distances by ancient standards, whether undertaken by merchants, royal messengers, diplomatic missions or armies on campaign, and could involve passage through extensive areas of rugged, waterless terrain, on routes infested by bandits and often impassable because of harsh seasonal conditions. Travel by sea was equally, if not more, hazardous, with the ever- present threat of violent storms and attacks by pirates, and few safe havens in long stretches of harbourless coastline. The complex ethno-political character of the Near Eastern world presented its own set of problems and challenges to potential overlords. The region was home to an array of petty kingdoms, nomadic and semi-nomadic groups, independent communities and aggressive mountain tribes—a wide range of disparate ethnic groups speaking a wide range of languages. Yet throughout the Late Bronze Age this unwieldy, politically and culturally diverse conglomerate was to a very large extent controlled and exploited by four men. Between them, these men exercised sovereignty over almost the entire region. How did they do it? One of the key elements in their success was their system of regular communication with each other, and their ability to co-operate and resolve contentious issues through diplomacy more often than by brute force. Great Kingdoms and Empires had been built in the past, particularly in Mesopotamia during the third and early second millennia (i.e. in the Early and Middle Bronze Ages). But they had proved short-lived, for their rulers had failed to appreciate the complexities and the sheer logistics of the task of administering widespread subject territories won by force, or the merits of reaching an accommodation with the rulers of rival powers who sought to establish their own dominance in the region. The possibility of peaceful co-existence based on negotiated settlements between two or more Great Kings, along with an agreed apportionment of subject territories between them, seems never to have been seriously entertained before the Late Bronze Age. Five major kingdoms emerged in this age: the kingdom of Hatti, with its homeland in central Anatolia, the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni in Upper Mesopotamia and northern Syria, the kingdom of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia, coming once more into prominence after the collapse of Mitanni in the fourteenth century, the Kassite kingdom of Babylon in southern Mesopotamia, and the kingdom of Egypt, once more resurgent under a line of native rulers after the expulsion of the Hyksos. For much of the Late Bronze Age control of the Near Eastern world was apportioned between four of these kingdoms, with Assyria replacing Mitanni in the second half of this period. Their rulers constituted what has been referred to as an elite and exclusive club.1 They were styled ‘Great Kings’, addressed each other as ‘My Brother’ and were in regular diplomatic contact with each other. In some respects they were little better than glorified warlords, and from time to time throughout the Late Bronze Age wars flared between them. But Realpolitik often prevailed over more narrowly based military ambitions. More could be gained, in terms of both a king’s personal prestige and the power and prosperity of his kingdom, by forming an alliance with a powerful rival than by forcing a military showdown with him. The region was big enough for a Great King to satisfy realistic territorial ambitions, and peaceful interaction with his peers offered many benefits in terms of international trade opportunities and access to sought-after materials from other lands. Moreover, all kings benefited from the greater stability conferred upon the region as a whole by their pacts with their fellow kings. (We shall have more to say about this in Chapter 2.) 2 INTRODUCTION The essential underpinning of the Great Kings’ relations with each other was the diplomatic communications which passed between them—above all the letters which they exchanged. It is particularly in these documents that we see the process of Near Eastern international diplomacy at work. But some surprises and disappointments may be in store. On a first reading the letters offer little that might be considered uplifting or statesmanlike. Their authors seem much more concerned with complaining about apparent trifles—the paltriness of a royal brother’s gifts, the lack of courtesy shown to a royal brother’s envoys, or the failure to send a message of sympathy to a royal brother who had fallen ill. Such complaints may appear petty, at least to our way of thinking, but, as we shall see, they have a significance which goes beyond mere pettiness, for they highlight a number of matters of procedure and protocol whose correct observance was so important to the agreements negotiated and the alliances established in the world of international diplomacy. The letters also provide us with some interesting insights into the actual personalities of many of those in whose hands the destinies of the Near Eastern world lay. They reveal aspects of their characters which by their very nature never surface in their public monuments and documents. And in several respects they bring us as close as we can possibly get to the actual time in which their authors lived. Above all, they enable us to reconstruct the period as they saw it, through their perceptions and reactions. As a student I once had the task of reading a number of Cicero’s works, primarily as source material for an assignment I had been set on the last decades of the Roman Republic. The Roman statesman’s speeches were obviously a valuable source of information, but it was only after reading the letters written by him to his friends and associates, and vice versa, that I gained a clear sense of what the political atmosphere of Rome must have been like in those politically turbulent days. To read first-hand accounts of what was happening in Rome—as it was happening—by those directly involved in the intrigues and faction disputes and street violence conveyed much more effectively a sense of being part of it all, of observing events as they were actually unfolding, than the most graphic of the speeches. So too the letters from the Late Bronze Age enable us to put together first-hand accounts of events in the Near Eastern world, in some cases observing them through each stage of their unfolding. Such accounts, a record of events told by the actual participants in them as they happened, can have far greater impact than a record of the same events made by a third party in retrospect, sometimes long after the story has run its full course. Of course letters are but one of a number of sources of information on which we draw in reconstructing a history of the ancient Near Eastern world. And we need to take full account of all such sources in order to provide as balanced and reliable a picture as possible of the various kingdoms which constituted this world. This I attempted to do in my history of the Hittite kingdom.2 Yet in writing this history I became increasingly interested in the prospect of devoting a book entirely to the correspondence of the broader world in which the Hittite INTRODUCTION 3 kingdom arose. There are many fascinating stories which the letters have to tell, may fascinating insights which they provide. Unfortunately these can only be touched upon lightly in a general history, which must draw upon a wide range of sources without giving undue attention to any of them at the expense of others. Hence came about the idea which has led to this book. Some of the letters already dealt with in my history and my subsequent book on Hittite society3 will appear again here, though this time they will be treated in fuller detail and placed more firmly within the context of events in the Near Eastern world in general, as well as within the genre of the royal correspondence of the period. It is almost superfluous to use the word ‘royal’ in this context, since almost all the surviving letters of the period were sent to or from a king or other members of his family, or to or from a member of the palace bureaucracy. That is a reflection of the fact that practically all surviving documents inscribed on clay, including letters, have been unearthed in official archives. Of course the number of literate persons outside the ranks of the state bureaucracy was likely to be extremely small. Hence, what we find in the official archives probably does provide us with a genuinely representative sample of the range and type of all correspondence produced in this period. But voluminous though the quantity of preserved letters appears to be, they must represent only a tiny fraction of those that were actually written. Fortunately we know the contents of many letters which have not survived from passages quoted verbatim from them in the responses which their recipients made to the senders. We shall say more about this in Chapter 3. Two further observations might be made on the survival of the texts. First, it will soon become clear to the reader that letters to and from the courts of Egypt and Hatti figure most prominently in the correspondence dealt with in this book. To a large extent that is a reflection of what has been found. The largest quantities of letters known to us from the period are those that have been unearthed in Egyptian and Hittite archives, and also in the archives of the lesser kingdoms like Ugarit which had particularly close ties with Egypt or Hatti or both. Aside from this, there is no doubt that during the second half of the Late Bronze Age, the period to which most of the letters belong, Egypt and Hatti dominated the international scene. It should therefore be no surprise that they appear to have played a more prominent role in the network of international communications and diplomatic exchanges than did the other Great Kingdoms which enjoyed theoretical parity with them. Of course, we must always make allowance in drawing any such conclusions for the possible distortions of chance survival. Second, there is a very good prospect that tablet archives with large numbers of letters will continue to surface in the years to come. The important recent finds of archives at sites like Ugarit and Emar, and within the Hittite homeland at the sites of (modern) Maşat, Ortaköy and Kuşakli give high hopes that further excavations within the Near Eastern region will bring other such archives to light. But to date, by far the most important collection of international correspondence is still one of the earliest to be discovered, the tablets that came 4 INTRODUCTION