Rethinking the Hittite system of subordinate countries from the legal point of view.

• Author: Altman, Amnon

The Hittite system of subordinate countries is better known to us than any other similar system that existed in the ancient Near East. Thanks to the relatively rich corpus of Hittite subordination treaties and related documents, we have a fairly good general picture of the rights and obligations of vassal kings toward their Hittite overlords and vice versa. (1) This picture also discloses significant differences among these vassal kings (2) in terms of rights and obligations, suggesting different levels of subordination. There are, however, still some serious gaps in this picture, and the available data allow only a partial reconstruction of the Hittite system of grading the subordinate countries. Many questions pertaining to the differences in the legal status of these countries are still unanswered, either because of the lack of sufficient relevant cases or because almost all the treaties available are copies made on clay tablets that have reached us in various states of preservation. These lacunae in our knowledge can for the time being only be filled to a certain extent by logical reasoning. The present paper presents a summary of what is known or may be assumed, and of what is still unknown, and suggests some criteria for grading the Hittite subordinate countries, as well as definitions of their legal status. (3)

1. SOME BASIC OBSERVATIONS

   On the basis of the available Hittite vassal treaties and related documents, (4) as well as on what is known about the circumstances of their subjugation, the Hittite vassal countries may preliminarily be sorted into two basic categories: (5) self-subjugated countries (6) and conquered countries. (7) Conquered countries may be further divided into three sub-groups: countries annexed and turned into provinces ruled by royal officials as part of the Hittite homeland, (8) appanage and granted countries, (9) and rebellious countries that had been re-subjugated by force. (10) Differences in the terms of subjugation of self-subjugated countries, and differences in the manner in which the circumstances of their subjugation are presented in the prologues of the treaties drawn up for them, also suggest a further differentiation within this group. The Hittites seem to have distinguished between countries that had been fully sovereign before subjugation, (11) and those that had previously been subject to another overlord. (12) Before discussing the legal differences among these groups, further elaboration substantiating these distinctions is needed.

   1. Self-Subjugated versus Conquered

      The fact that the Hittites indeed distinguished between these two categories of country comes out clearly in the prologue of the treaty drawn up by the Hittite king Tudhaliya IV for Sausgamuwa, king of Amurru (CTH 105). (13) The historical review of relations between Hatti and Amurru opens with the origins of Hittite suzerainty over Amurru, four generations earlier (A i 13-21): (14)

      [Formerly] the land of Amurru had not been defeated by the arms of Hatti. Wh[en Aziru] came to the (great-)grandfather of the Sun, [(to) Suppilu]liuma, in Hatti, the lands of Amurru were still [hostile]. They [were] subordinates (IR.MES) of the king of Hurri and to him (the Hurrian king) (also) Aziru in the same manner was subject. (15) But he (Suppiluliuma) did [not def]eat him (Aziru) by arms. And Aziru, your (great-great-)grandfather, protected [Suppi]luliuma as overlord, (16) (and) he protected [the land of Ha]tti (as well), (and) afterward he protected also Mursili as overlord, and he protected the land of Hatti, and against the land of Hatti no offense did he commit. The prologue starts with the emphatic declaration that Amurru before the rebellion of Bentesina, Sausgamuwa's father, had never been conquered by force. This is immediately followed by reference to the voluntary submission of Aziru, the great-great-grandfather of Sausgamuwa, to Suppiluliuma I, the great-grandfather of Tudhaliya IV ("Aziru came to ... Suppiluliuma in Hatti"). These statements are reinforced by the assertion that neither Amurru nor Aziru had been forced into subordination ("But by arms he did not defeat him"). The text then asserts that Amurru and Aziru had previously been subordinate to a Hurrian overlord.

      Ignoring the question of the historical veracity of the last statement, (17) this means that when Aziru submitted himself to Suppiluliuma, Amurru had already become a subordinate country, and that Aziru was accordingly a "runaway slave" who defected from one overlord to another. The meaning of this assertion will be discussed below. But we must realize that this assertion, much like the other claims made in the prologue, should have had a legal bearing either on the status of Amurru or on the terms that Sausgamuwa was entitled to expect in this treaty.

      Finally, the text asserts that following his submission to Suppiluliuma, Aziru remained loyal to him, to his son Mursili II, and to Hatti. The object of this assertion is to clarify that Aziru was for quite a long period content in his subordination to Hatti. This fact constituted "a lack of protest," which in turn deprived his descendants of the right to protest Hittite suzerainty and to repudiate their obligation to remain loyal to Hatti. (18) Having presented these claims, the next paragraph jumps to Aziru's great-grandson Bentesina, Sausgamuwa's father (A i 28-39):

      But when (my uncle) Muwattalli, the brother of the father of the Sun, became king, the people of Amurru sinned (waster) against him, communicating to him as follows: "Out of love (= voluntarily) we became (Hatti's) subordinates, but now we are no longer your subordinates." And they went over to (lit. "after") the king of Egypt. Then the brother of the father of the Sun, Muwattalli, and the king of Egypt fought over the people of the land of Amurru, and Muwattalli defeated him. He (Muwattalli) destroyed the land of Amurru with arms and subjugated it, and in the land of Amurru he made Sapili king. This is not the proper place to go into the details of this paragraph. (19) For our purposes it will be sufficient to note the very clear contrast presented here between the two phases in Amurru's relations with Hatti. Until the rebellion in the days of Bentesina, Amurru was regarded as a self-subjugated country; after it had been re-subjugated by force it was regarded as a conquered country. The statement concerning the replacement of the rebellious king by the unidentified Sapili (that is, not necessarily a member of the earlier dynasty) clearly indicates the free hand the conqueror had in Amurru following the conquest.

      The role of the so-called "historical prologue" of the Hittite vassal treaties was not to present a literary-historiographic treatise, but rather to marshal legal arguments and facts in order to justify the terms of subordination set forth in the stipulatory section. (20) The reason for the presentation of the two phases in the history of Amurru was no doubt the same, and we must therefore assume that these two different manners of subjugation would have resulted in different legal status for Amurru. (21) The earlier phase was very likely presented in order to explain the more favorable terms that Amurru had enjoyed before the rebellion. The rebellion and the conquest of Amurru were discussed either to justify an actual worsening of the original terms of subordination, or to pave the way for drastic changes in the future, should Sausgamuwa or his offspring again violate the treaty with Hatti. (22) The characterization of Aziru as but a "runaway slave" was very likely intended to assert that from the very beginning Aziru was entitled to fewer privileges than a self-subjugated ruler was entitled to expect from his overlord. (23)

   2. Absence of Correlation Between a Land's Status and its Terms of Subjugation

      We would have expected that the higher status of a self-subjugated country would have been expressed through the terms of the treaty, particularly in the promises to the vassal king, the most important of which were to guard the vassal king on his throne (24) and to safeguard rule for his offspring. (25) Yet not only is it impossible to draw any decisive conclusions from the available treaties, of which practically none have preserved their stipulatory section intact, but it seems from the available material that differences in the obligations of various self-subjugated kings are sometimes greater than contrasts between the terms of self-subjugated countries and those of conquered ones.

      A case in point is the treaties with Aziru and Duppi-Tessub, kings of Amurru, and the edicts issued to Abiradda of Barga and to Niqmaddu II of Ugarit. We may note that while Aziru had subjugated himself on his own initiative--and this fact was repeatedly mentioned in the treaties drawn up for him and his successors--in all probability he received no guarantee that the throne of Amurru would pass to his offspring. (26) Later, in the treaty drawn up for his grandson Duppi-Tessub, such a promise was given, but was restricted to his son. (27) Only in the next generation, in the treaty for Aziru's great-grandson Bentesina was the promise extended to the grandson (CTH 92 obv. 30-33). This seeming absence of a promise for the son in the Aziru treaty stands in contrast to the case of Niqmaddu II, also self-subjugated, whose throne was promised to his sons and grandsons (CTH 46.A rev. 10'-11'; B. obv. 15'-19'). The case of Aziru also seems contradicted by the experience of Abiradda, whose rebellious country of Barga was (re-)conquered. For Abiradda, its new king, was nonetheless promised that his son would follow him on the throne. (28)

      Another seeming inconsistency appears in the terms of two treaties concluded with the sons of rebellious kings: Kupanta-Kurunta and Sausgamuwa. While neither treaty has survived intact, we are able to distinguish at least one significant difference between them. In the treaty of Kupanta-Kurunta...