ABSTRACT
Around 1595 BC,1 the Hittite king Mursili I, fresh from his conquest of Aleppoin northern Syria, led his troops east to the Euphrates, and then south along the river to the city of Babylon. He attacked, stormed, plundered, and destroyed the city, taking rich spoils from it and many prisoners-of-war. In military terms, this was a momentous achievement for the ruler of the young kingdom of Hatti, which had emerged in central Anatolia but a few decades earlier. Mursili’s predecessors had established the kingdom’s dominance over much of eastern Anatolia. And his grandfather Hattusili I, to whose throne he succeeded, had carried Hittite arms through northern Syria across the Euphrates into Mesopotamia. Hattusili boasted that his military triumphs exceeded even those of the great Akkadian king Sargon, whose exploits served as a benchmark for all future warrior-kings. Now, by conquering both Aleppo and Babylon, Mursili had matched, indeed surpassed, all that his grandfather had achieved in the field of battle. His conquests were heralded by later kings as two of the greatest triumphs of early Hittite history.2
