Subject: noble warrior

Culture: Hittite

Setting: Anatolia 14th-13thc BC

Context

* Bryce & Hook 2007 p4-5

"From their royal capital Hattusa, the rulers of Hatti embarked on a programme of territorial expansion that took their armies westwards across the face of Anatolia to the Aegean Sea, south-eastwards trhough northern Syria and then across the Euphrates river into Mesopotamia. In the 14th and 13th centuries BC, the Hittites controlled the most powerful empire of the Late Bronze Age. By the 1320s BC, under their warlord emperor Suppiluliuma, they had destroyed their most dangerous rival, the kingdom of Mitanni. Egypt, Babylon and Assyria were the other great powers of the age. Their rulers formed with Suppiluliuma a kind of elite, highly exclusive club. They corresponded regularly with one another, exchanged gifts and addressed one another as 'My Brother' and 'Great King'. But their diplomatic communications, their often lavish gifts, their marriage unions and their profuse expressions of mutual love and devotion barely concealed their distrust of one another and the underlying tensions in their relationships, which sometimes erupted into open conflict."

* Nossov & Delf 2008 p5

"[B]y the reign of Suppiluliuma I (c.1380-40 BC), the Hittite Kingdom reached its prime. Suppiluliuma I, along with his successors Mursili II and Muwatalli II, made the Hittite Empire one of the leading powers of the ancient Near East. As a result of military operations or carefully thought-out treaties, the Hittites subjected the western regions of Asia Minor, the kingdom of Mitanni and Syria as far north as the river Euphrates to their rule. This expansion led to conflict with Egypt, culminating in the battle of Qadesh (c.1274), after which the two superpowers of the Bronze Age signed a pace treaty.

"The 14th and 13th centuries BC was [SIC] a golden age for Hittite imperial power and culture ...."