Hurrians


The Hurrians were a people who inhabited the Ancient Near East during the Bronze Age. They spoke the Hurrian language, and lived throughout northern Syria, upper Mesopotamia and southeastern Anatolia.
The Hurrians were first documented in the city of Urkesh, where they built their first kingdom. The largest and most influential Hurrian kingdom was Mitanni. The population of the Hittite Empire in Anatolia included a large population of Hurrians, and there is significant Hurrian influence in Hittite mythology. By the Early Iron Age, the Hurrians had been assimilated with other peoples. The state of Urartu later covered some of the same area. A related people to the Hurrians are the Urarteans.

History

Early Bronze Age

The Khabur River valley became the heart of the Hurrian lands for a millennium. The first known Hurrian kingdom emerged around the city of Urkesh during the third millennium BC. There is evidence that they were initially allied with the Akkadian Empire of Mesopotamia, indicating they had a firm hold on the area by the reign of Naram-Sin of Akkad. A king of Urkesh with the Hurrian name Tupkish had a queen with the name Uqnitum, Akkadian for "girl of lapis lazuli".

Middle Bronze Age

Hurrian names occur sporadically in northwestern Mesopotamia and the area of Kirkuk in modern Iraq by the Middle Bronze Age. Their presence was attested at Nuzi, Urkesh and other sites. They eventually occupied a broad arc of fertile farmland stretching from the Khabur River valley in the west to the foothills of the Zagros Mountains in the east. By this point, during the Old Babylonian period in the early second millennium BC, the Amorite kingdom of Mari to the south had subdued Urkesh and made it a vassal state. Urkesh later became a Mitanni religious center.
The Hurrians also migrated further west in this period. By 1725 BC, they are found also in parts of northern Syria, such as Alalakh. The mixed Amorite–Hurrian kingdom of Yamhad is recorded as struggling for this area with the early Hittite king Hattusilis I around 1600 BC. Hurrians also settled in the coastal region of Adaniya in the country of Kizzuwatna, southern Anatolia. Yamhad eventually weakened vis-a-vis the powerful Hittites, but this also opened Anatolia for Hurrian cultural influences. The Hittites were influenced by both the Hurrian cultures over the course of several centuries.
The city of Shibaniba may have also played an important role at that time. Possible Hurrian occupation was identified at Tell Billa during the middle of the second millennium BC. In 2022, Tell Billa was proposed as the possible site of the city of Šimānum. Šimānum was important during the Ur III period.

Late Bronze Age

The Mitanni Empire was a strong regional power limited by the Hittites to the north, Egyptians to the southwest, Kassites to the southeast and, later, by the Assyrians to the east. At its maximum extent, Mitanni ranged as far as west as Kizzuwatna by the Taurus mountains, Tunip in the south, Arraphe in the east, and north to Lake Van. Their sphere of influence is shown in the spread of Hurrian place names and personal names. Eventually, after an internal succession crisis, Mitanni fell to the Hittites, later to fall under the control of the Assyrians.
The Hurrian entity of Mitanni, which first rose to power before 1550 BC, was first mentioned in the records of Egyptian pharaohs Thutmose I and Thutmose III, the later most notably associated with the Battle of Megiddo in that pharaoh's 22nd regnal year. Most of the time, Egyptians referred to the kingdom as Naharin. Later, Mitanni and Hanigalbat are mentioned in the Amarna Letters during the time of Pharaoh Akhenaten. Domestically, Mitanni records have been found at a number of places in the region, including several Hittite sites as well as Tell Bazi, Alalakh, Nuzi, Mardaman, Kemune, and Müslümantepe among others.
Another major center of Hurrian influence was the kingdom of Arrapha. Excavations at Yorgan Tepe, ancient Nuzi, proved this to be one of the most important sites for our knowledge about the Hurrians. Hurrian kings such as Ithi-Teshup and Ithiya ruled over Arrapha, yet by the mid-fifteenth century BC they had become vassals of the Great King of Mitanni.

Urartu

At the end of the second millennium BC, the Urartians around Lake Van and Mount Ararat rose in power forming the Kingdom of Urartu. During the 11th and 10th centuries BC, the kingdom eventually encompassed a region stretching from the Caucasus Mountains in the north, to the borders of northern Assyria and northern Ancient Iran in the south, and controlled much of eastern Anatolia. Some scientists consider Urartu to be a re-consolidation of earlier Hurrian populations mainly due to linguistic factors, but this view is not universally held.

Shubaru/Shubria

After the destruction of Mitanni by the Hittites around 1350-1325 BC, the term Shubaru was used in Assyrian sources to refer to the remnants of the Mitanni in the upper Tigris valley. The Shubaru people revolted against the Assyrians multiple times in the last centuries of the second millennium BC. The term is related to Shubria, the name of a country located north of the upper Tigris River valley. Shubria was located between Urartu and Assyria and existed as an independent kingdom until its conquest by Assyria in 673–672 BC. The Shubrians worshipped the Hurrian deity Teshub, and several Shubrian names have Hurrian origins. Hurrians formed part of the Shubrian population and may have been the predominant group. Some scholars have suggested that Shubria was the last remnant of Hurrian civilization, or even constituted the original homeland of the Hurrians. Karen Radner writes that Shubria "can certainly be described as Hurrian" state. According to Radner, a letter from the king of Shubria to an Assyrian magnate from the time of Sargon II was composed in the Hurrian language.

Culture and society

Knowledge of Hurrian culture relies on archaeological excavations at sites such as Nuzi and Alalakh as well as on cuneiform tablets, primarily from Hattusa, the capital of the Hittites, whose civilization was greatly influenced by the Hurrians. Tablets from Nuzi, Alalakh, and other cities with Hurrian populations reveal Hurrian cultural features even though they were written in Akkadian. Hurrian cylinder seals were carefully carved and often portrayed mythological motifs. They are a key to the understanding of Hurrian culture and history.
The 2nd millennium Hurrians were masterful ceramists. Their pottery is commonly found in Mesopotamia and in the lands west of the Euphrates; it was highly valued in distant Egypt, by the time of the New Kingdom. Archaeologists use the terms Khabur ware and Nuzi ware for two types of wheel-made pottery used by the Hurrians. Khabur ware is characterized by reddish painted lines with a geometric triangular pattern and dots, while Nuzi ware has very distinctive forms, and are painted in brown or black. They were also skilled at glass working.
The Hurrians had a reputation in metallurgy. It is proposed that the Sumerian term for "coppersmith" tabira/''tibira'' was borrowed from Hurrian, which would imply an early presence of the Hurrians way before their first historical mention in Akkadian sources. Copper was traded south to Mesopotamia from the highlands of Anatolia. The Khabur Valley had a central position in the metal trade, and copper, silver and even tin were accessible from the Hurrian-dominated countries Kizzuwatna and Ishuwa situated in the Anatolian highland. Gold was in short supply, and the Amarna letters inform us that it was acquired from Egypt. Not many examples of Hurrian metal work have survived, except from the later Urartu. Some small fine bronze lion foundation pegs were discovered at Urkesh.
Among the Hurrian texts from Ugarit are the oldest known instances of written music, dating from c. 1400 BC. Among these fragments are found the names of four Hurrian composers, Tapšiẖuni, Puẖiya, Urẖiya, and Ammiya.

Religion

The Hurrian culture made a great impact on the religion of the Hittites. From the Hurrian cult centre at Kummanni in Kizzuwatna, Hurrian religion spread to the Hittite people. Syncretism merged the Old Hittite and Hurrian religions. Hurrian religion spread to Syria, where Baal became the counterpart of Teshub. The Hurrian religion, in different forms, influenced the entire ancient Near East, except ancient Egypt and southern Mesopotamia.
While the Hurrian and Urartian languages are related, there is little similarity between corresponding systems of belief.
The main gods in the Hurrian pantheon were:
  • Teshub, Teshup, the mighty weather god.
  • Hebat, Hepa, his wife, the mother goddess, later equated with the main sun goddess of the Hittites
  • Sarruma, Šarruma, their son, a mountain god of Syrian origin.
  • Kumarbi, grain god, the father of Teshub and a "father of gods" similar to Enlil; his home as described in mythology is the city of Urkesh.
  • Shaushka, Šauska, the Hurrian counterpart of Ishtar, and a goddess of love, war and healing.
  • Shimegi, Šimegi, the sun god.
  • Kushuh, Kušuh, the moon god and a guardian of oaths. Symbols of the sun and the crescent moon appear joined together in the Hurrian iconography.
  • Nergal, a Sumerian deity of the netherworld, who had a prominent temple in Urkesh in the earliest period of recorded Hurrian history. Possibly a stand-in for a god whose Hurrian name is presently unknown.
  • Ea, Hayya, the god of wisdom, who was also Sumerian in origin.
  • Allani, goddess of the netherworld.
  • Ishara, a goddess of Syrian origin.
  • Aštabi, a war god.
  • Nupatik, a prominent god of uncertain function.
  • Hutena and Hutellura, fate and birth goddesses.
Hurrian cylinder seals often depict mythological creatures such as winged humans or animals, dragons and other monsters. The interpretation of these depictions of gods and demons remains uncertain. They may have been both protective and evil spirits. Some are reminiscent of the Assyrian shedu.
The Hurrian gods do not appear to have had particular home temples, like in the Mesopotamian or Ancient Egyptian religion. Some important cult centres were Kummanni in Kizzuwatna and Hittite Yazilikaya. Harran was at least later a religious centre for the moon god, and Shauskha had an important temple in Nineve, when the city was under Hurrian rule. A temple of Nergal was built in Urkesh in the late third millennium BC. The town of Kahat was a religious centre in the kingdom of Mitanni.
The Hurrian myth "The Songs of Ullikummi", preserved among the Hittites, is a parallel to Hesiod's Theogony; the castration of Uranus by Cronus may be derived from the castration of Anu by Kumarbi, while Zeus's overthrow of Cronus and Cronus's regurgitation of the swallowed gods is like the Hurrian myth of Teshub and Kumarbi. It has been argued that the worship of Attis drew on Hurrian myth.