New Data on Ulisum

Just this morning the Journal of Near Eastern Studies posted a new issue with an article by Nashat Alkhafaji and Gianni Marchesi called "Naram-Sin’s War against Armanum and Ebla in a Newly-Discovered Inscription from Tulul al-Baqarat."

The inscription gives us much more information about Naram-Sin's campaign into the area around Ebla. The information it provides is material we had not even dreamed about knowing before.

The new inscription published in the article is also important for the on-going discussion about the location of Ulisum, about which I once wrote an article. The inscription gives us one clue about the location of Ulisum that we did not previously have, but it does not supply enough information to positively locate the site.

Congratulations to Alkhafaji and Marchesi for publishing this important inscription.

An Ancient Plague

A few notes on the Hittite plague:

It begins after the Hittite prince, Zannanza, was assassinated on the way to Egypt.

Dismissing the protestations of innocence from the new pharaoh Ay, a bereaved and angry Suppiluliuma immediately took punitive action, sending Hittite troops into the Egyptian-held territories. Ironically, the Egyptian prisoners whom they transported back to Hattis from these campaigns were blamed for the pagues that wreaked havoc in the Hittite heartland for the next two decades. Six years after his conquest of Karkamis, Suppiluliuma died, probably from this very plague. His son and successor, Arnuwanda II, also succumbed to it after little more than a year on the throne.

(Billie Jean Collins, The Hittites and Their World [Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007], 49.)

It continued to be a problem for Suppiluliuma's successor, Mursili:

The plague that Suppiluliuma had brough home from his conquests in Syria continued to rage unabated throughout the kingdom well into the latter half of Mursili's reign. There was no question that this scourge had been brought on by an angry deity, but Mursili had to find the source of its anger. Oracular inquiry identified three possible causes, each attributable to Suppiluliuma. Among the possibilities was a retaliatory attack Suppiluliuma had made on Egyptian-held Amka, which, it turned out, was a violation of an old treaty between Hatti and Egypt. Wile maintaining that the responsibility for the plague did not rest with him personally, Musili promptly made restitution for his father's lapses.

(Collins, The Hittites and Their World, 51-52.)

 Here's hoping the current plague does not last two decades.