Hattusili I
Hattusili I was the king who made Hattusa the Hittite capital, took his throne-name from it, campaigned every year across the Taurus into Syria and once to the Euphrates, and on his deathbed dictated to the assembly of his nobles the speech disinheriting his nephew and adopting his grandson Mursili, which survives as the first political testament in history. It is the first document in which a king argues with his own family in front of witnesses. He reigned about 1650 to 1620 BC, and little before him is more than a name. The tradition made him the nephew and heir of a king called Labarna, whose name every later Hittite king took as a title. The city of Hattusa on its rock in the bend of the Halys had been destroyed and cursed by an earlier king of Kussara, and Hattusili rebuilt it, moved his seat there from Kussara, and called himself the man of Hattusa. His annals, in Hittite and Akkadian, are the record of six campaigning years: down through the Taurus to destroy Alalakh on the Orontes, north against the Hurrians who invaded while he was away and left him, he says, only Hattusa itself, west against Arzawa, and east to Hahhum and Hassuwa on the Euphrates, where he compared himself to Sargon of Akkad, crossed the river as Sargon had, and brought the gods of the cities home in a cart drawn by their own kings. He besieged Aleppo, the Yamhad capital, and failed, and was wounded or fell ill; it was Mursili who took it. The testament was spoken at Kussara. His nephew, whom he had named heir, had listened to his mother, whom the king calls a snake, and shown no pity, so the king cast him off and set the boy Mursili in his place, telling the nobles to feed him wisdom, keep him from wine, and read him the speech every month. He begged his own family to bury him properly and warned them that a house divided would fall. Mursili took Aleppo and Babylon and was murdered by his brother-in-law, and the house fell as predicted for a century, until Telipinu wrote a law of succession that quoted the old man's words.
- Nationality: Hittite
- Roles: king, monarch, founder
