Temples, Tombs & Hieroglyphs_ A Popular History of Ancient Egypt - Barbara Mertz [110]
Two of the great powers of this age that are mentioned in the diplomatic correspondence with Egypt were Hatti—the kingdom of the Hittites—and Mitanni, or Naharin. Both kingdoms lay north of the narrow coastal plain of Syria-Palestine, Mitanni on the Upper Euphrates and Hatti in Anatolia. Egyptian-Mitannian relations had changed since Thutmose III crossed the Euphrates with his army. Mitanni was now on friendly terms with the Two Lands, and several Egyptian kings, including Akhenaton, had married daughters of the royal house of that nation. But the Hittites were a horse of a different color.
Like Sumer, Mitanni, and the ancient Indian civilization represented by Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, the Hittite kingdom had vanished from human memory until it was resurrected by archaeologists. The fate of such cultures, once brilliant and flourishing and powerful, may be regarded as an object lesson in the brevity of human vanity. Archaeologists also view them as banners, bearing the word Excelsior! If the last one hundred years have brought such discoveries into the light of day, what buried civilizations may yet lie hidden beneath the soil of the several continents?
The existence of the Hittites did not come as a complete surprise to scholars, for there were hints in the Bible and in other sources that such a people had once lived in the Near East; but it was not until after 1906, when the excavation of the Hittite capital at Boghazkoi in Anatolia began, that the full splendor of Hittite culture was really appreciated. The most astounding result of the excavations arose out of the study of the Hittite language; to the surprise of practically everybody, it turned out to be an Indo-European tongue related to Latin and the Germanic languages. To speak of the speech of Boghazkoi as one language is an oversimplification, for there were half a dozen different languages and two scripts—cuneiform and the strange Hittite hieroglyphs. It seems, to put it in simple terms, that Anatolia was, before the second millennium B.C., invaded by a group of warriors who spoke an Indo-European tongue, and who conquered the indigenous, non-Indo-European speakers who lived in the area. The grammatical awkwardness in the preceding sentence is intentional; “Indo-European” does not apply to peoples, only to the language they spoke, and I want to avoid even the faintest hint of Aryans or other racial wonders. The origins and early history of Hittite civilization are outside the subject of this book; what concerns us is its relationship with Egypt.
By the period we are considering, the Hittites were in good shape. The credit for their flourishing condition, internal and external, seems to belong to one man—Shubilulliuma, the king. The possessor of this mellifluous name must have been a dynamic personality, but we know him only from his deeds, which were admittedly considerable.
Syria-Palestine has long been a focus of strife, no less so in Akhenaton’s day than in our own. During the first part of the Eighteenth Dynasty the area consisted of a number of city-states, each with its own local ruler—and all under the control of one of the great powers, Mitanni or Egypt. The Egyptian empire, so called, was always loosely held. Egyptian representatives in the larger centers watched over the pharaoh’s interests and kept him informed of events, but there were no large garrisons of Egyptian troops. In spite of the military exploits of Thutmose III and his successors, the small city-states in the area never completely abandoned their dreams of independence. There were frequent “rebellions,” as the scandalized Egyptians called them, particularly at the death of a pharaoh, when the internal confusion incumbent upon the accession of a young and inexperienced ruler might have kept Egyptian forces at home. But the great conquerors such as Thutmose I and III had