A FOREIGN AFFAIR

he succession crisis that gripped Egypt near the end of the 18th Dynasty not only plunged the lives of Amenhotep III’s surviving family members into turmoil, it also sealed the fate of an Anatolian prince, Zannanza, son of the Hittite king Suppiluliuma tell the story of the prince’s involvement in an effort at diplomacy that went disastrously awry. A vivid passage in this account of Suppiluliuma I’s reign records a panicked missive written to the king by an Egyptian royal identified as a which seems to be a rendering of the Egyptian term for the “king’s wife.” In her letter, the dakhamunzu tells Suppiluliuma I that her husband, the king, is dead and that she has no children. She needs to remarry, and suggests a mutually beneficial arrangement. “They say you have many sons: Give me one of your sons,” she writes, “to me he will be husband, but in the land of Egypt he will be king!”