He then led an unprecedented march of 2,000 km south into the heart of Mesopotamia, where in 1595 BC he sacked the city of Babylon.
Mursili's motivation for attacking Babylon remains unclear, though William Broad has proposed that the reason was obtaining grain because the clouds from the Thera eruption decreased the Hittites' harvests.
[7] The raid on Babylon could not have been intended to exercise sovereignty over the region; it was simply too far from Anatolia and the Hittites' center of power.
[8] It might also be that Mursili undertook the long-distance attack for personal motives, namely as a way to outdo the military exploits of his predecessor, Hattusili I.
[10] His death inaugurated a period of social unrest and decay of central rule, followed by the loss of the conquests made in Syria.