He was the Son of Tudhaliya IV  

• Titles My Sun, Tabarna, Great King, King of Hatti, Hero

• Name He spells his name Šuppiluliama, not Šuppiluliuma.

(Contemporary with Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria (See Peter Machinist (1987))

Image of Šuppiluliuma II as a warrior, from Chamber 2, at the northern corner of the Eastern Pond in the Upper City. The lack of detail on the relief suggests that originally the image was painted. The deification of Šuppiluliuma during his life is indicated by triple set of horns on the Great King's hat. (Jürgen Seeher, Hattusha Guide; A Day in the Hittite Capital, 2. Revised Edition, 2002, p. 91.)

Foreign Relations

Alašiya: Alašiya revolted. Šuppiluliuma campaigned against it. Interestingly, he had three battles against Alašiyan ships on the water. He then fought against them on land. He apparently won, since he erected a monument and installed someone in Alašiya. See Güterbock, JNES 26 (1967), 73-81. Since Alašiya is not mentioned in the Südburg inscription, this inscription is probably not his tomb, and the Alašiyan campaign took place after the Südburg inscription was written (See Hoffner (1992)).

Egypt: Received grain shipment from Merenptah due to a famine (See Hoffner (1992) 49 based on Helck (1962) 233).

Kargamiš: Talmi-Teššub succeeded Ini-Tešub without trouble. He corresponded with ʾAmmurapi, the last king of Ugarit. Kunzi-Tešub, son of Talmi-Tešub, is mentioned in a Šuppiluliuma II text. It is not known if he was yet the king of Kargamiš at the time (See Hoffner (1992) 49).

Ugarit: Probably the port from which the Hittite fleet against Alašiya was based. Šuppiluliuma successfully maintained control of Alašiya. ʾAmmurapi was its last king before it got sacked by the Sea People. The king of Ugarit sent a grain shipment from Mukiš to the port of Ura. Ura was located in Tarhuntašša, and the grain was transported overland to Hatti once it was unloaded at Ura. So Tarhuntašša was under Hittite control in the last days of the Empire (Hoffner (1992) 49).

Išuwa: He seems to have campaigned unsuccessfully in upper Mesopotamia, but possibly regained Išuwa.

Tarhuntašša: Included in the list of places against which he campaigned in the Südburg inscription. Was he campaigning against Ulmi-Tešub? A foreign invader? In any event, he appears to have successfully maintained control of this kingdom.

Fall of Hatti, ca. 1178 B.C.

(See Astour, AJA 69 (1965))

(Maşat Level I, Carchemish, Emar, Hattuša, Ugarit (King ʾAmmurapi))

The fall of the empire can be traced to some extent through Ugaritic sources. Whatever problems Hatti may have been having with Ugarit, it seems that this vassal fell in line when faced with the threat of the Sea Peoples.

The threat originated far in the west, and the Hittite king demanded assistance from Ugarit for use in defense of the realm,

"The enemy [advances(?)] against us and there is no number [. . .]. Our number is pure(?) [. . .] Whatever is available, look for it and send it to me." (trans Astour (1965) 256)

It should be noted that we cannot be sure that this is a request for troops, although this seems likely, since the king of Ugarit did in fact send both ships and troops to the Great King's aid. This, however, left his own territory dangerously exposed, and his land was soon being attacked by marauding pirates. He saw hope of early warning against future attacks in his neighbor, the king of Alašiya. He wrote to him, updating him of his perilous situation,

"My father, behold, the enemy's ships came (here); my cities(?) were burned, and they did evil things in my country. Does not my father know that all my troops and chariots(?) are in the Hittite country, and all my ships are in the land of Lukka? . . . Thus, the country is abandoned to itself. May my father know it: the seven ships of the enemy that came here inflicted much damage upon us." (trans. Astour (1965) 255, modified)

He further requested that the king of Alašiya notify him if he saw any more of the enemy's ships. We get an idea of the damage done by these raiders in a letter from the countryside sent to Ugarit,

"Your messengers arrived. The degraded one trembles, the low one is torn to pieces. Our food in the threshing floors is sacked (or: burned), and also the vineyards are destroyed. Our city is destroyed, may you know it!" (trans. Astour, modified)

Ugarit's plight was made worse by the fact that, according to Ešuwara, the Grand Supervisor of Alašiya (so Astour), some of the king's subjects who stopped at Alašiya with their ships, surrendered to the enemy (see Astour, 255f.).

A crucial question which, unfortunately, cannot be answered, is whether Ugarit's troops and ships were both sent to the same place. If they were, then we find evidence that the Hittite Great King failed utterly in his western defense, and was pushed all the way eastward to northeastern Kizzuwatna. It is more conservative to propose instead that the ships were sent to the west, while the troops remained closer to home, and were sent to join the Hittite king in Kizzuwatna. In any event, together with his Ugaritic reinforcements, the Hittite king tried, unsuccessfully, to hold a position in Lawasanda. The Ugaritic general Šipti-Baʾal reported to his sovreign on the disaster,

"Your servant fortified [his] position in Lawasanda with the (Hittite) king. And behold, the king retreated, fled, and there he sacrificed [. . .]" (trans. Astour (1965) 257)

To find that the Hittite king has lost Lawasanda to the enemy, a city far from the coast, is suggestive that it is not the Sea Peoples that he is facing here, but rather the Kaškans who would be found in this region when once the historical record picks up after the collapse of the empire. It might have been both.

We next here from a certain Ewir-Šarruma, who wrote to the queen mother of Ugarit to inform her of what was going on. He did this because by now the king himself had left his capital and was moving somewhere (not preserved). The situation had gotten worse. In his letter, he states that the enemy was in Mukiš, immediately to the north of Ugarit. It further seems that territory in Mt. Amanus was destroyed by the enemy (see Astour, 257). Although desperate, Ewir-Šarruma would not flee,

"And, behold, the enemies oppress me, but I shall not leave my wife (and) my children [. . .] before the enemy." (trans Astour, 257)

The Ugaritc king himself wrote to his mother, to reassure her that he would send a messenger to her, whether or not the Hittites mounted for battle.

But the letters come to an end after this. Some of the above letters were actually found in an oven, being baked for storage purposes. They remained there because the city of Ugarit was destroyed by the enemy. Some houses were burned down, but others were simply abandoned, as the city's residents either fled or were killed or sent into captivity. The city itself, once abandoned, was never settled again. The Sea Peoples did not remain in Ugarit, instead moving on into Amurru, which they made into their central gathering point on the Levantine coast.

Dating the Fall:

Pre-Rameses III Year 8 (1175) (Ultra low chronology)

Post Meli-šipak Year 2 (1178) (Tablet found at Emar)

Emar was probably destroyed when Hattuša was.

Ugarit: Letter from Egyptian Grand-vizier Bay (grand vizier to Tawosret and her two predecessors) congratulating Ammurapi of Ugarit on his succession to the throne. This means that the fall must have come after 1200.

After the fall, the Kaškans were probably in control of the area around the ruined city of Hattuša, which they did not resettle. It was not until the Phrygians appeared that the site was used again. The citadel, Büyükkale, was reoccupied, as was a small, easily fortified location in the Upper City. Stones pulled from the massive Hittite walls were used to fortify these two locations.

After the destruction of Tarsus and Mersin, the sites were resettled by people who used LH IIIC pottery. Were these the Sea People? (See Güterbock (1992) 53)

Kunzi-Tešub, king of Kargamiš, took on the title "Great King" after the fall of the Empire. Kunzi-Tešub was the great-great-great-grandson of Šuppiluliuma I.