Šuppiluliuma I

Šuppiluliuma distinguished himself as a military commander before he ever took the throne, defending and reclaiming Hittite lands after a wave of foreign attacks. Once king around 1350 BC, he pressed the advantage: victories over Mittani, the major rival kingdom in Upper Mesopotamia, brought a string of petty Syrian kingdoms under Hittite control and let him install his younger sons as viceroys at Aleppo and Carchemish. Mittani itself became a Hittite dependency. Relations with Egypt swung between peace and tension until the Zannanza Affair - Egypt's widowed queen asked for a Hittite prince to marry and rule; Šuppiluliuma sent his son, who was murdered en route. The fallout locked the two powers into long hostility, and captives from Šuppiluliuma's campaigns brought plague back to Hittite lands, a catastrophe that ravaged the kingdom for at least twenty years. His own son, Muršili II, would later lay the blame for that evil on his father's ruthlessness.