Šuppiluliuma I

Šuppiluliuma I, also Suppiluliuma (/ˌsʌpɪlʌliˈuːmə/) or Suppiluliumas (died c. 1322 BC) (/-məs/) was an ancient Hittite king (r. c. 1350–1322 BC).

Even before assuming the throne, Šuppiluliuma distinguished himself as a military commander protecting and reclaiming Hittite territories after a period of foreign attacks. Once king, he continued this program of consolidation and expansion, both in Anatolia and in Syria, with a great deal of success. Victories over a major rival, the Upper-Mesopotamian kingdom of Mittani, led to the extension of Hittite authority over a bevy of petty kingdoms in northern Syria, the installation of the Hittite king's younger sons as local viceroys at Aleppo and Carchemish, and the rump of the Mittanian state itself became effectively a dependency of the Hittite Kingdom.

Relations with Egypt vacillated between friendship and hostility, culminating in the so-called Zannanza Affair, in which Šuppiluliuma was persuaded to send one of his sons to marry the widowed queen of Egypt and assume its throne. The murder of the Hittite prince resulted in a long period of Hittite-Egyptian hostility, and Šuppiluliuma's captives causing an outbreak of plague that ravaged Hittite society for at least two decades. For all his successes, Šuppiluliuma's ruthlessness was blamed for this evil by his own son, Muršili II.