Hattusili III
Hattusili III was the Hittite Great King who took the throne from his nephew, spent the rest of his reign justifying it, and made with Ramesses II of Egypt about 1259 BC the treaty that is the oldest international agreement whose text survives from both sides; the Hittite copy, on a clay tablet in Akkadian, was dug up at Hattusa, and an enlargement of it hangs at the United Nations. He was the youngest son of Mursili II, sickly as a child and, by his own account, given by his father to the goddess Ishtar of Samuha, who saved his life and whom he credited with everything after. His brother Muwatalli II made him commander of the northern frontier against the Kaska tribes and then governor of the north, and he commanded the Hittite chariotry at Kadesh in 1274. When Muwatalli died his son Urhi-Teshub, called Mursili III, became king, and for seven years uncle and nephew coexisted until the nephew began stripping the uncle of his provinces. Hattusili rose, defeated him, and sent him into exile in Syria, from which Urhi-Teshub fled to Egypt. The document called the Apology of Hattusili, in which the usurper explains to the gods that Ishtar chose him, is the nearest thing to an autobiography the Bronze Age produced. The problem of legitimacy shaped his foreign policy. Assyria under Adad-nirari I had swallowed Mitanni and stood on the Euphrates, and Egypt held the exiled rightful king. So he made peace with Ramesses on terms of full equality, each king calling the other brother, with a defensive alliance, a promise of help to each other's heirs, and the return of fugitives, which was the clause he wanted. Ramesses married his daughter thirteen years later and the queens wrote to each other. His own queen, Puduhepa, a priest's daughter from Kizzuwatna, was a ruler in her own right, sealing treaties beside him and corresponding with Egypt. He restored the capital to Hattusa from the city Muwatalli had moved it to, rebuilt the shrines, and left the kingdom to his son Tudhaliya IV about 1237, with the Assyrians still on the river and the nephew's descendants still claiming the throne, a claim that would help bring the kingdom down within sixty years.
- Lived: 1310 BCE – 1237 BCE
- Nationality: Hittite
- Roles: king, monarch
