fuckyeahhistorycrushes:

I would like to present to you my boy Mursili II, King of Hatti (a Bronze Age kingdom and later empire in central Turkey). Unfortunately, there are no known statues or reliefs of him, so the picture above is a screenshot from the 2003 Turkish documentary The Hittites which I may or may not have chosen because the actor playing Mursili is pretty damn handsome.

Mursili was a badass warrior but also a sensitive sweetheart, a writer and a historian. He was the youngest of five sons and nobody expected him to rule, but when his father and eldest brother died, he was the only son left to be king. (Two of his other brothers were already local rulers in Syria, and the last brother, Zannanza, had died in an affair which is a story in its own right.) Mursili was very young at his accession, barely an adult, and after his badass father’s rule nobody took him seriously. His allies belittled him and called him a child, and when Mursili sent out envoys to negotiate, they never sent them back.

So Mursili defeated them all.

Within ten years, he had either conquered or allied himself with all the kings of the region. He was also the first Hittite king to subjugate Arzawa, a neighbouring kingdom which Hatti had been at odds with for centuries. Despite his young age, Mursili quickly became known for his success in battle. Under his rule and that of his father, the Hittite empire reached its peak.

But Mursili’s rule wasn’t just about fighting. For twenty years he struggled with a plague that was killing masses of his people. In those days, such a plague meant that the Gods were angry against the king, and Mursili clearly took it to heart. He wrote a number of extremely emotional prayers in which he asked for forgiveness, and as time went by, argued with the Gods about the unfairness of such suffering. These prayers are some of the most beautiful examples of Hittite literature.

But as if that wasn’t enough for poor Mursili, in his tenth year as king, his wife died of a mysterious illness. He accused his stepmother of cursing her (probably the most controversial thing he did) but though he was legally and religiously allowed to have her executed, he only banished her. He also wrote about this episode in his prayers, in vivid words:

I punished her with this one thing, that I sent her down from the palace. (…) Has her life now become miserable? Because she is alive, she beholds the sun of heaven with her eyes. She eats the bread of life. My punishment is the death of my wife. Has this gotten any better? Because she killed her, throughout the days of life [my soul] goes down to the dark netherworld [on her account]. For me it has been unbearable. (translation: Harry A. Hoffner Jr)

A few more facts about Mursili:

• he suffered from temporary speech loss that might’ve been caused by a stroke due to all the stress he was under
• he was interested in history and wrote not only annals (year-by-year events) for his own rule, but also for his father’s
• during the first years of his reign, his two surviving brothers regularly helped him out. They both died the same year as Mursili’s wife.
• he witnessed an eclipse which can (probably) be dated to the 24th of June 1312 BC. This is really useful for establishing a chronology of Bronze Age history!

Mursili died in his 40s after a successful but difficult life. He’s hardly known outside of Hittitology circles but he will always be my sweet, badass, scholarly history crush!