The Hittite body of subordinate countries is better known to us than any other similar a whole that existed in the ancient Near East.

The Hittite body of subordinate countries is better known to us than any other similar a whole that existed in the ancient Near East. Thanks to the relatively rich corpus of Hittite subordination treaties and related documents, we have a fairly useful general picture of the rights and obligations of vassal kings toward their Hittite overlords and vice versa. (1) This picture also discloses significant differences among these vassal kings (2) in bounds of rights and obligations, suggesting different of the same heights of subordination. There are, however, still a certain quantity of serious gaps in this picture, and the available data allow simply a partial reconstruction ...