Herstory: An Ancient Cold War Resolved by a Marriage

By Judith Starkston

Toward the end of the Late Bronze Age, in the decade after their colossal confrontation at Kadesh in

Ramses II,  Temple at Abu Simbel

1274 BCE, the two major world powers, Egypt and the Hittite Empire, eyed each other with hostility. Rather like the U.S. and Russia during the Cold War, neither could afford to restart open warfare, but the treaty they had signed formed an uneasy peace.

(If you are caught by surprise at the mention of the Hittites as a major world power at any period, you are merely a victim of what we might call the Forgotten Empire Syndrome. The Hittites got buried and lost to memory until not so long ago when modern archaeology dug them up.)

Rock carving of Queen Puduhepa (far right) making an offering

Into this diplomatic breach stepped Great Queen Puduhepa, the indomitable leader of the Hittites, who frequently took state and judicial affairs into her own hands on behalf of her husband Great King Hattusili III. Theirs was a genuine partnership of equals. Hittite law and custom allowed queens plenty of latitude but few took every inch of that power the way Puduhepa did. She reigned until she was at least 80 and probably started before she passed 20. An impressive run, with many impressive accomplishments.

We often think of the power of women through much of history as arising from their use as brides to kings, sealers of bonds between two dominant men. This reeks more than a bit of chattel. Certainly it isn’t the role we most admire and celebrate when we study women’s history.

But in Puduhepa’s case we get the bizarre mixture of a powerful woman using a lot of mostly anonymous young women as guarantors of her country’s peace and power. She arranged politically adept marriages for her husband’s many daughters and sons, both sending out Hattusili’s girls and bringing in foreign potentates’ daughters for his sons. (Only some of these children were literally Puduhepa’s. Concubines were the norm, but only for the royal family. Before Puduhepa arrived in the palace, there was already a good stock of future political brides and loyal generals. The loins of the king were the supplier of the state department staff and military leadership, so to speak…)

Of all the marriages Puduhepa arranged, the most complicated and tricky was between Pharaoh Ramses II and one of Puduhepa’s own daughters. She had to negotiate for months—years—the appropriate size of dowry, the travel arrangements, the status once of this wife within Pharaoh’s court, and most challenging, she had to first convince Pharaoh that he wanted a new wife.

This marriage was the crowning achievement of her peacemaking. The Hittite Empire needed this surety that Pharaoh would not back Hattusili’s challengers far more than Pharaoh needed anything from the Hittites. Hattusili and Puduhepa had usurped the throne from a secondary son of a concubine who as near as history can tell us was singularly untalented at ruling judiciously. They may have been right to take the throne, but that didn’t eliminate all the challenges of establishing a legitimate claim. Marriage with Pharaoh settled the question.

Rameses smiting the Hittites
A really BIG Pharaoh
in Egyptian iconography

Puduhepa’s other difficulty in making this peace-sealing marriage happen lay in Ramses’s personality. He shows clear signs of an ego even bigger than the one of a certain recently elected U.S. president. Not an easy guy to talk into doing something that might imply that he is equal to, not greater than, his least favorite “Brother” king. (If you were important enough, you got to address your fellow king as brother. Most kings didn’t qualify.)

In defense of Puduhepa’s chattel-like use of her daughter, other than that it was the norm and the best expected outcome for said daughter, the queen took extreme precautions to assure her daughter’s status as Ramses’ “first wife.” He was an old man with a large harem and women tended to disappear into oblivion at his court. They probably led comfortable lives, but who knew for sure? None of the ambassadors Puduhepa sent could reassure her on this point. The Babylonian princess had been denied access to her family’s messengers once the marriage was consummated. Sadly, Ramses went back on his promise to keep this newest wife as the top lady. But Puduhepa tried. If he hadn’t lied, she’d have won that one, too. Along with world peace and economic well being for her country. Not too bad with one marriage deal.

Here are some trimmed excerpts from her most famous letter to Ramses, giving him a hard time

A cuneiform letter similar to Puduhepa's
next to its clay envelope
Istanbul Archaeological Museum

about his complaints. He has accused her of stalling, but she points out putting a dowry together is tricky because the king before Hattusili (whom Hattusili usurped and who is now living in exile with Ramses) stole most of the state treasury (or something like that, the words aren’t totally clear, as is true with pretty much every word in every Hittite document for reasons I won’t go into, but that are fascinating.)

After her dig about the missing treasury, which she tells Ramses to ask his pal the ex-king about, she carries on with some salesmanship:

“To whom shall I compare the daughter of heaven and earth whom I will give to my brother: Should I compare her to the daughter of Babylonia, of Zulabi, or of Assyria? [absolutely not, she’s way better]

[Then back to the dowry quarrels, Ramses wants a lot] Does my brother have nothing at all? Only if the Son of the Sun God, The Son of the Storm God, and the Sea have nothing, do you have nothing! Yet, my brother, you want to enrich yourself at my expense! It (i.e., such behavior) is unworthy of name and lordly status.”

A later bit of salesmanship about the daughter Puduhepa has chosen for Ramses comes in this sentence: “And may the gods likewise endow the daughter whom I will give to my brother with the Queen’s experience and capacity for nurture.”

As she hints in the letter, Puduhepa counted as one of her greatest accomplishments her mothering and loving raising of her children and, quite inclusively, Hattusili’s children by his concubines. Sometimes that poses challenges for the modern mind to get around—just what was this equal partnership really like?

About the author

Judith Starkston is the author of Hand of Fire: A Novel of Briseis and the Trojan War

Her website is a great place to subscribe to if you enjoy engaging windows into ancient history and archaeology. You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter. 

Legendary Heroes and Feats: Achilles

Achilles receiving divine armor from his goddess mother

Achilles, as depicted in Homer’s Iliad, is a legendary hero. You might even say a mythological one since his mother was said to be a goddess—a goddess strong enough to protect Zeus when all the other gods ganged up against him. Some mom! And some son.

He’s an interesting bundle of contradictions. In the Iliad, he asked uncomfortable questions of the Greek leadership in the Trojan War. Why are we fighting? What is the meaning of a warrior’s life if we all die, both the one who fights in the forefront and the one who hangs back? For what end should our fathers, mothers and wives suffer such losses? He had the moral courage to be a thorn in a powerful but greedy leader’s side and defend the men of the fighting ranks. Homer’s depiction of this questioning dimension in Achilles’ character makes him an appealing hero to a modern world, weary of war. Achilles would be great in a democracy—just the kind of gadfly every open society needs. Through Achilles Homer lets us explore the big questions about life and war, family and loyalty, love and hate. There’s something so irresistible about a man who has all the physical power and none of the answers but is willing to ask the questions anyway.

On the battlefield at Troy

But also in the Homeric tradition Achilles was the Best of the Achaians, a formal title that meant everyone saw him as the pre-eminent warrior without question on the battlefield. If he sometimes questioned why they fought, he still excelled at the fighting.

One battle in particular showed his semi-divine excellence. The Greeks and other ancient people imagined that every river was a god, and appropriately enough, the rivers that embraced Troy on either side were controlled by divinities who supported the Trojans. At one particularly fierce moment in the war, Achilles slaughters Trojans right and left in order to get to Hector, the greatest of the Trojan warriors. Hector has killed Achilles’ best friend, and Achilles is driven by both grief and fury. He kills so many Trojans on the bank of the River Scamander that the divine river decides to enter the battle and finish Achilles off. Huge waves rear up to drown the hero. Zeus sees what is going on and brings a fiery wind to help drive away the water. Eventually Achilles fights his way free and dashes across the plain killing Trojans as he goes. Revenge is a powerful motivator. To succeed against a godly river is an extraordinary feat—even if we rationalize the tale it’s still impressive. Almost nothing is more powerful than the onslaught of tons of water. But when the tradition remembers your battle as a victory over a god, well, that’s a pretty legendary feat.

I’ve been intrigued at where the tradition behind such a hero might have arisen. It’s as likely as not that some “real” human warrior provided the beginning of the Achilles legend. Some version of a Trojan War did historically happen (I discuss this in articles entitled  “Troy History or Myth?” and “Did the Trojan War Really Happen?”) But any historical warrior received several generations of mythologizing before he became the Achilles we hear about in the tradition.

We think of Achilles as part of the Greek tradition because Homer composed in Greek, but it’s also the case that the poetic/mythological tradition of the Trojan War, including the stories of the heroes on the Greek side, arose in the region around Troy, the western coast of what is now Turkey. The peoples there, in the era in which any “Trojan War” would have occurred, were culturally and religiously closely related to the powerful Hittite Empire just to the east. Troy was formally allied to the Hittites through much of this period.

Among the Hittite myths there is one about a young, angry god, Telipinu, and I think his myth influenced the way Achilles’ story formed. Homer and the other oral bards would have heard the Telipinu cycle of myths, and they could have incorporated it into their understanding of this hero.

Hittite gods carved into an open air sanctuary

As the Hittite myth describes it, Telipinu, son of the Stormgod, attends the assembly of the gods one day only to find they have offended his honor so vilely that he rushes out in fury and refuses to have anything to do with the gods or mankind. He runs around burning rivers and hiding from his friends. His absence from the company of the gods causes great harm. Eventually he is brought back into harmony with the gods. This mythic plotline calls up pieces of Achilles’ story with remarkable precision, including burning up a river. I think this young warrior god, Telipinu, whom the armies of the Hittites and Trojans described as “running before them” in battle, became intermixed with a human warrior. I think this literal combination of man and myth gave rise to a hero slightly disjointed with his world, one who could ask big moral questions as well as fight.

I’ve expressed this understanding of Achilles through fiction in my novel of Briseis and the Trojan War, Hand of Fire. While my readers need never have read the Iliad or any Hittite myths, those influences guided my writing. Here’s my description of Achilles burning up the river, with some appropriately ambiguous help from Briseis and the gods. (For my sources of inspiration, you’ll find the relevant “battle in the river” verses in Homer in Iliad Bk 21, the first 400 lines or so, and the Telipinu myth is published in English translation in Hittite Myths, by Harry Hoffner, Jr., published by Scholars Press.)

“There—Briseis saw a golden flash. Achilles stood in the river surrounded by the dead bodies of his victims. The water crested above him like a lion pouncing on its prey. Boulders and bodies, carried by the water’s force, knocked his feet from under him. Troy’s immortal river itself engaged him in battle. Achilles reached for a branch of an overhanging elm, but the whole tree wrenched from the riverbank, its dense roots dragging the river bluff with them into the water, nearly burying Achilles.

Surely this was not his fate, to lie folded under mud and stones in the hostile waters of Scamander, but how could even he escape such raw power?

To reach for Troy he had fought against the city’s gods for so long; she could not tolerate this river god rising against him also and drowning his beauty in its murk, no matter how many dead he had thrown into Scamander’s waters. She strained forward, willing him to escape the river’s hold. A wind rose up, hot and blasting. It caught her hair and pulled it toward the river. When she tried to gather her hair in her hand, it scorched her fingers and escaped her hold.

The banks of the river burst into flames. The dead burned in a sudden pyre. The water boiled. The fish leapt upon the scorched banks in a vain attempt to flee the flames that had replaced their watery homes. The tamarisks and elms along the river’s edge became monstrous torches.

In the midst of this inferno, she saw Achilles lift his massive shield and spear in victory. Her heart surged. Not even the divine river could stop him. She heard his shout of joy as he raced across the plain, blasting Trojans like a bolt of lightning. Invincible warrior god, unstoppable fire.”

Curing the Hittite Way: Analogical Magic and Powerful Words

Hittite Mother Goddess Figurine

By Judith Starkston

Like many ancient peoples, the Hittites of the Late Bronze Age (13thC BCE) in what is now modern Turkey, along with their semi-independent ally, Troy, believed that illness came from the gods. Sickness revealed a lack of harmony between mortal and immortal worlds that once restored would also restore physical well-being. Their definition of illness was considerably broader than our modern one often is. A quarrel between a wife and husband was viewed as needing the attention of the healer just as much as a cough or broken limb. Perhaps in this respect they had a more progressive, holistic view.

Although there is some evidence of herbal cures, poultices and brews of various sorts as well as practical wound treatments, most of what we know about Hittite cures is more magical than practical. They were particularly drawn to analogical magic. So if a baby in the womb was turned the wrong direction, they would hold a root vegetable, perhaps an onion, that had layers within layers and turn the inner layer as they said the proper words, and the assumption was that the baby also would turn in the same manner as the onion. This is an example that strains our credulity. Certainly they noticed the baby didn’t turn? But perhaps they accompanied this magical formula with some manual procedure and attributed the benefit to the prayer and rite.

Hittite Cuneiform Tablet

The cuneiform tablet only mentions rather opaquely an unidentified root vegetable, turning and special words. For Hittites words were of utmost importance and power. They had a saying, “The tongue is the bridge.” The words are the connection between human and divine worlds. Words have transformative power.

The Hittites were also early practitioners of “scapegoating” as a healing process. If you suffered from a pain in your chest, the healer would rub a mouse on the source of the pain, transfer some red and green wool threads from your chest to the mouse, and then send the mouse away—again with the proper incantations to the gods. Your pain was supposed to wander off with the mouse. In some cases it probably did, at least temporarily. Modern studies of placebos show a remarkably high success rate, after all. If your whole belief system built trust in the efficacy of a rite, it may well have accomplished pain reduction often enough to sustain the overall belief.

Here is a brief excerpt from my novel Hand of Fire, showing a healer named Briseis trying to use her array of tools to heal her mother, divinations, rites recorded on tablets, incantations, and analogical magic:  

Briseis believed her mother had given in to this illness, accepted defeat from the beginning. Illness generally came from the gods as punishment for violations against the gods’ laws. In case her mother had neglected a sacrifice or some similar affront— any more serious sin seemed unlikely—Briseis performed a snake divination at the temple to ask Kamrusepa directly how they had offended the gods. But the swimming snakes had given only a muddled answer as they touched the words inscribed in the great basin. The snakes failed to identify anything Briseis could correct. Even before she’d tried the divination it had seemed impossible to Briseis that her mother could have sinned so greatly that Kamrusepa sent the illness, but giving in to the disease felt like a sin to Briseis. Her mother had resigned herself to death too easily, and the gods abandoned her because she did not love life enough— their gift to all. She needed to be dragged back to life.

Briseis had an idea. “You two stay with Mama. I need some supplies.”

She ran downstairs to the back storerooms, the sound of the storm growing muted as she went deeper into the house with its thick walls. Once inside the library, the comforting odor of clay soothed her. Her mother, Briseis thought, was a mixture of lavender and earthy clay. She pulled tablets from the wooden pigeonholes, scanning the words formed with a reed stylus that her brothers said looked like bird tracks. She found it, “The Breath of Life Incantation.” It hadn’t made sense to her when she’d been required to copy it for practice three years ago, but it did now. Her heart felt light. She committed the rite to memory and tucked the palm-sized tablet back in its place.

She hurried through the megaron hall, the main room of the house with its two-storied ceiling and circular hearth, out to the main courtyard and into the kitchen opposite the stables. The wind-driven rain splattered under the portico’s shelter.

The cook, a middle-aged woman with a kinder heart than her boney, hard face indicated, looked up in surprise from sorting lentils when Briseis appeared at the door.

“For Mama, hurry. I need honey, mint and sweet wine.”

The cook quickly gathered everything on a tray, and Briseis carried it back upstairs. From the carved wooden chest next to the floor-to-ceiling loom in her mother’s sitting room, she grabbed a sachet of lavender and a clay incantation jar shaped like a fig.

Iatros and Eurome looked up when she entered the sleeping chamber. She set down the tray on the table and leaned in close over her mother. Antiope’s lips were parted, her eyes closed, their lids withered like fallen leaves in winter. The space between breaths felt impossibly long.

Iatros crouched by the bed, biting his upper lip, eyes fixed on his sister.

Briseis shifted her mother’s legs aside and sat down. She closed her eyes and waited while the fear she felt emptied out with each breath she exhaled. The power of the ritual’s words filled her mind. She called to Kamrusepa, praying for her to give power to this rite.

She opened her eyes and placed both hands on her mother’s chest, then her head.

“Antiope, wife of Glaukos, mother of Bienor, Adamas, Iatros, and Briseis, you have heard death whisper in your ear. You have mistaken that whisper for the nurturing breath that flows in and out of every human being. You have gone after death. Return now. Hear the breath of life.”

Briseis poured wine and honey into the fig jar, breathed into it, and then added the lavender and mint, crushing the leaves to release their scent as she held the jar close to her mother.

“Antiope, do you smell the spring? The time of new growth and blossoms? Remember the spring. Remember your children. Remember the sweetness of life. Remember that you love life. Take a strong breath.”

Silently Briseis added, Come back, Mama, I need you. Remember how much I love you. Antiope sighed and her eyelids fluttered for a moment. Iatros cried out.

Briseis’s heart leapt like a deer. “Mama!”

Daughter and son clung to their mother’s hands. They waited for Antiope to open her eyes and reassure them that she would live. They listened for the slow rattle to quicken. Instead it faded, caught once, tangled in a last wisp of life, then fell silent.

Tears ran down Briseis’s face, hot against her skin. Gradually her wet cheeks grew cold.

About the Author:

Judith Starkston writes historical fiction and mysteries set in Troy and the Hittite Empire. Ms. Starkston is a classicist (B.A. University of California, Santa Cruz, M.A. Cornell University) who taught high school English, Latin and humanities. She and her husband have two grown children and live in Arizona with their golden retriever Socrates. Hand of Fire is her debut novel.

Find an excerpt, Q&A, book reviews, ancient recipes, historical background as well as on-going information about the historical fiction community on Starkston’s website www.JudithStarkston.com

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