Priestess, Queen and Co-Ruler

Puduhepa was the daughter of a priest serving the storm god of Kizzuwatna, a kingdom in southeastern Anatolia later absorbed into Hittite territory, and her marriage to the future king Hattusili III is recorded, unusually for the period, in Hattusili's own account of his life, the so called Apology, which describes their meeting as arranged through a divine dream rather than ordinary political negotiation.

Once Hattusili took the Hittite throne, Puduhepa did not remain a purely ceremonial queen; surviving tablets show her acting as high priestess of the Hittite state cult, overseeing religious administration alongside her husband, and continuing to exercise substantial authority after his death, into the reign of their son Tudhaliya IV, longer than most Hittite queens are documented holding influence. Her own religious writings include prayers composed and issued in her name rather than her husband's, most significantly appeals to the Sun Goddess of Arinna, the chief goddess of the Hittite pantheon, asking for Hattusili's health and long life and offering vows of gifts to several deities in exchange, texts that give modern scholars a rare direct window into how a Hittite royal woman addressed the gods in her own voice rather than through a king's formal state ritual.