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.

Who Deserves the Blame?

Occasionally the news media will report something outrageous of some diva (whether male or female), thinking that the world revolves around her whims. This behavior is old indeed, and particularly unbecoming when involving someone with power. Jared Miller provides one such ancient story that accompanied an instruction by means of explanation:

Furthermore, you who are water carriers, you must be very careful concerning the water, and you must always filter the water with a sieve. One time I, the king, in the city of Sanhuitta, found a hair in the washbasin, and (my), the king's ire was raised, and I became enraged at the water carriers (and said): "This is disgusting!" Arnili (responded) so: "Zuliya was the overseer!" And the king (continued) thus: "Zuliya shall go through the river(ordeal)! If he is (shown to be) innocent, then let him purify his soul. But if he is (shown to be) guilty, then he will die." So Zuliya went through the river(ordeal), and he was (shown to be) guilty. And they "dealt with" him in the city of Suresta. (Jared L. Miller, Royal Hittite Instructions and Related Administrative Texts [Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013], 17)

Miller also notes that there is another version of this story in which Arnili is put to death as well.

One thinks of the variety of jokes about a hair (or fly) in one's soup:

Man: Waiter! What is this fly doing in my soup?

Waiter: It looks like the backstroke to me.

In the case of the Hittite king, however, it was more serious, deadly serious. Depending on which version you read, one or two individuals lost their lives over something as trivial as a hair. The problem with tyrants is that one never can be sure ahead of time, what will set one off, or what their reaction will be.

Credit Where it is Due

Jared Miller's new book on Hittite instructions begins with a text classified as belonging to the Old Hittite Empire. This is a harangue of officials who have been doing less than stellar work. This bit gives a feel for the problem.

When my father calls together the assembly he will investigate among you for corruption, not (among) your pack bearers (saying): "You constantly oppress your own pack bearers, and you repeatedly cause the king aggravation." (Jared L. Miller, Royal Hittite Instructions and Related Administrative Texts [Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013], 75.)

The text deals with various types of corruption, including irregularities in both treatment of personnel, and use of funds. While human corruption is spread throughout history, one of the interesting things about this text is that it focuses on the leader, not the underlings. The writer (whose identity is lost in a break in the table) recognizes the likely source of the problem.

Greco-Roman Hittites

The Hittites, for modern scholars, a nation of people living in Anatlia from about 1800-1200 BC. The spoke the earliest attested Indo-European language, a distant cousin to English. (The Hittite word for water is watar.) The Hittites seem to have been wiped out aroun the time the Israelites entered the promised land.

Most of the Hittites in the Bible (think Uriah the Hittite, you know, the guy David betrayed to his death to cover up his adultery with Uriah's wife, Bathsheba) are the various Neo-Hittite kingdoms in the areas of modern Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. They too spoke an Indo-European language, Luwian, but also Aramaic, a Semitic language. These kingdoms disappeared in the Assyrian expansion by the end of the eighth century. Conventional wisdom says there were no more Hittites after that time.

Conventional wisdom is wrong.

1 Maccabees opens with the words:

And it came to pass, after the conquest of Alexander, son of Philip of Macedon, who came from the land of the Hittites (Χεττιμ), and he smote Darius, the king of the Persians and the Medes, and he reigned in his stead, and previously over Greece. (1 Maccabees 1:1)

The author of Maccabees identifies those place on the other side of the Mediterranean, not to mention Anatolia, as the land of the Hittites (Χεττιμ). This is also reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the Commentary on Habakkuk, the enemies of Israel (such as the Chaldeans) are identified as Hittites, which seems to indicate the same thing as it does in Maccabees. Modern scholars have often identified the Hittites of the Habakkuk Commentary as the Romans. It seems, in light of the Septuagint, that the term Hittite could either be a geographic or linguistic designation. Geographically it would be the lands northward and across the sea from Israel. Linguistically it would mean Indo-Europeans.

Thus a notion of Hittites continues at least a millennium after the people that modern scholars recognize as Hittites have disappeared from the scene.