Oldest Stories Podcast

 Mursili I destroyed two empires, plundering Aleppo and Babylon, and ruled for thirty of the best years in Hittite history. His conquests would pave the way for the great battles of the late bronze age. And yet he is almost completely obscure, despite being the singular catalyst for everything that was to come. Today I want to focus in on a man who has failed to receive the immortality he deserved, and to look at the military machine that helped him achieve these things. There are sadly no pictures of the sack of Babylon or Mursili I But this is how Mursili I looked in the video game Civilization III.

 Hattusili I has already shown himself to be a cut above the Anatolian kings that have come before him, but like all the most ambitious of men he has set his sights far higher than just Greatest Anatolian King. Today he marches eastward to challenge the Syrian kingdom of Yamhad, where he will campaign for the rest of his life in an effort to outdo the great Sargon of Akkad. Then he will die after a pretty good showing, but the drama doesn't end there. On his deathbed, the family squabble over succession will force the ill and aged king to re-order dynastic politics. Map time? I think it is map time. Click to enlarge for some glorious detail. This is really from the new kingdom, but the general region stays pretty stable, plus or minus some territory.

 A god is furious, and in his fury he has abandoned the people and the kingdom to suffer one catastrophe after another. Today we look at the myth, the ritual, and the theological understanding of why bad things happened and what to do about them, according to ancient Anatolian traditions that pre-date the Hittites themselves. Through looking at this story, we get a window into the mindset and lifestyle of the people over whom the Hittites rules, a mindset that was almost certainly shared at least in part by the rulers themselves. Will the missing god be found and the natural order restored? Yes, he will, but it is in the manner that this is accomplished that quite a lot is revealed.  The god Telipinu is sometimes spelled Telepinu, or even once Telepenu, not completely sure here again if there is a difference, but it is probably just a shift in the spelling convention. It is very hard to find good online sources for Hittite stuff, but there is a print book called Hittite Myths, 2nd Edit

The first king of the Hittites, Hattusili I, thought of himself as a conquering lion. Given his military record, this isn't a completely inappropriate boast. His accomplishments in establishing the Old Hittite Kingdom are far beyond the merely military, but this episode we are going to focus primarily on the parts of his career he was most proud of, his early conquests. Starting from nothing, he builds up a kingdom to rival his grandfather Labarna and his great ancestor Anitta, then goes beyond what they had ever hoped to achieve. Then has his entire kingdom fall apart, rebuilds it from nothing, and goes even farther. He will deal with the Curse of Hattusa in characteristic manner, and show us how Hittite kings throughout history will handle diplomacy and warfare. A busy episode, and we aren't even half done with Great King Hattusili I. Some more maps of Anatolia for reference, click to expand. I am following Gary Beckman's translation of the Siege of Urshu Text (1995) for