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The Hurrians (; ; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri) were a people who inhabited the Ancient Near East during the . They spoke the Hurrian language, and lived throughout northern Syria, upper Mesopotamia and southeastern .

The Hurrians were first documented in the city of , where they built their first kingdom. The largest and most influential Hurrian kingdom was . The population of the in Anatolia included a large population of Hurrians, and there is significant Hurrian influence in Hittite mythology.H.H. A. Hoffner, Jr., ed, "Perspectives on Hittite Civilization: Selected Writings of Hans G. Güterbock.", Assyriological Studies 26 Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 1997 By the Early Iron Age, the Hurrians had been assimilated with other peoples. The state of later covered some of the same area.[1] Gelb, Ignace J., "Hurrians and Subarians", Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization No. 22. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944 A related people to the Hurrians are the .

History
Early Bronze Age
The Khabur River valley became the heart of the Hurrian lands for a millennium.Steinkeller P., "The historical background of Urkesh and the Hurrian beginnings in northern Mesopotamia", In: Buccellati G, Kelly-Buccellati M, eds. Mozan 3: Urkesh and the Hurrians Studies in Honor of Lloyd Cotsen. Malibu: Undena Publications, pp. 75–98, 1998 The first known Hurrian kingdom emerged around the city of (modern Tell Mozan) during the third millennium BC.Maiocchi, Massimo, "A Hurrian Administrative Tablet from Third Millennium Urkesh", vol. 101, no. 2, pp. 191-203, 2011 There is evidence that they were initially allied with the of , indicating they had a firm hold on the area by the reign of Naram-Sin of Akkad (c. 2254–2218 BC). A king of Urkesh with the Hurrian name Tupkish had a queen with the name Uqnitum, Akkadian for "girl of lapis lazuli".Lawler, Andrew, "Who Were the Hurrians?", Archaeology, vol. 61, no. 4, pp. 46–52, 2008

Middle Bronze Age
Hurrian names occur sporadically in northwestern Mesopotamia and the area of in modern by the Middle Bronze Age. Their presence was attested at , 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 in the east. By this point, during the Old Babylonian period in the early second millennium BC, the kingdom of Mari to the south had subdued Urkesh and made it a vassal state.Kupper, J.-R., "Lettres royales du temps de Zimri-Lim", Archives royales de Mari 28, Paris, 1998 Urkesh later became a Mitanni religious center.[2] Kelly-Buccellati, Marilyn. "The Urkesh Mittani Horizon: Ceramic Evidence." talugaeš witteš (2020): 237-256

The Hurrians also migrated further west in this period. By 1725 BC, they are found also in parts of northern , such as . The mixed Amorite–Hurrian kingdom of is recorded as struggling for this area with the early king around 1600 BC.Hamblin, William J., "Warfare in the Ancient Near East to 1600 BC", Routledge, 2006 Hurrians also settled in the coastal region of in the country of , 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 (Tell Billa) 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 (possibly known as Asimānum during the Akkadian Empire). Šimānum was important during the Ur III period (ca 2100 BC).Edmonds, Alexander Johannes, and Petra M. Creamer, "More to Tell About Billa!" Https://doi.org/10.1515/za-2022-0011 p.44

Late Bronze Age
The was a strong regional power limited by the Hittites to the north, Egyptians to the southwest, to the southeast and, later, by the Assyrians to the east. At its maximum extent, Mitanni ranged as far as west as by the Taurus mountains, in the south, in the east, and north to . Their sphere of influence is shown in the spread of Hurrian place names and personal names.von Dassow, Eva, (2022). "Mittani and Its Empire", in Karen Radner, Nadine Moeller, D. T. Potts (eds.), The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East, Volume III: From the Hyksos to the Late Second Millennium BC, Oxford University Press, pp. 467, 469. Eventually, after an internal succession crisis, Mitanni fell to the Hittites, later to fall under the control of the Assyrians.Pruzsinszky, Regine. "Emar and the Transition from Hurrian to Hittite Power". Representations of Political Power: Case Histories from Times of Change and Dissolving Order in the Ancient Near East, edited by Marlies Heinz and Marian H. Feldman, University Park, USA: Penn State University Press, 2021, pp. 21-38Devecchi, Elena. “Details That Make the Difference: The Akkadian Manuscripts of the ‘Šattiwaza Treaties.’” Die Welt Des Orients, vol. 48, no. 1, 2018, pp. 72–95

The Hurrian entity of Mitanni, which first rose to power before 1550 BC,Barjamovic, Gojko, (2012). "Mesopotamian Empires", in: P.F. Bang, and W. Scheidel (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Ancient State in the Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean, Oxford University Press, p. 125: "...The Mitanni empire covered northern and western Syria and northern Iraq (ca. 1600-1340 BCE) but succumbed to internal strife and the pressure of an expanding Assyrian empire..."Barjamovic, Gojko, (2020). "The Empires of Western Asia and the Assyrian World Empire", in: The Oxford World History of Empire: Volume Two: The History of Empires, Oxford University Press, p. 76: "After 1600 BCE the area between Iran and Egypt was united into a dynamic regional system of empires, Mitanni covered northern and western Syria and northern Iraq circa 1550-1340 BCE..." was first mentioned in the records of Egyptian pharaohs (1506–1493 BC) and (1479–1425 BC), the later most notably associated with the Battle of Megiddo in that pharaoh's 22nd regnal year.Redford, Donald B. “A Gate Inscription from Karnak and Egyptian Involvement in Western Asia during the Early 18th Dynasty.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 99, no. 2, 1979, pp. 270–87His memoir was published by L. Borchardt, "Altägyptische Zeitmessung" in E. von Basserman-Jordan, Die Geschichte der Zeitmessung und der Ühre, vol. I. (Berlin/Leipzig) 1930, pp 60ff, noted in Astour 1972:104, notes 25,26. Most of the time, Egyptians referred to the kingdom as . Later, Mitanni and Hanigalbat (the Assyrian name for Mitanni) are mentioned in the during the time of Pharaoh Akhenaten (1353–1336 BC). Domestically, Mitanni records have been found at a number of places in the region, including several Hittite sites as well as , , , , , and Müslümantepe among others.Ay, Eyyüp, (2021). "A Hurrian-Mitanni Temple in Müslümantepe in The Upper Tigris and New Findings", in Gaziantep University Journal of Social Sciences, April 27, 2021.A. Otto, "The Late Bronze Age Pottery of the Weststadt of Tall Bazi (North Syria)", in: M. Luciani, A. Hausleitner (Eds.), Recent Trends in the Study of Late Bronze Age Ceramics in Syro-Mesopotamia and Neighbouring Regions. Proceedings of the International Workshop in Berlin, 2 – 5 November 2006, OrA 32, Rahden/Westf., pp. 85-117, 2014

(1988). 9788772890401, Museum Tusculanum Press.

Another major center of Hurrian influence was the kingdom of . 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.Speiser, E. A., "Notes to Recently Published Nuzi Texts", Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 55, no. 4, pp. 432–43, 1935

Urartu
At the end of the second millennium BC, the Urartians around and rose in power forming the Kingdom of . 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 and northern 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.Benedict, Warren C., "Urartians and Hurrians", Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 80, no. 2, pp. 100–04, 1960

Shubaru/Shubria
After the destruction of Mitanni by the Hittites around 1350-1325 BC, the term 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 , the name of a country located north of the upper Tigris River valley.
(2025). 9780415394857, Taylor & Francis.
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 ,
(2025). 9780941694810, Institute for the Study of Man. .
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.
(2025). 9789514590528, Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. .
Karen Radner writes that Shubria "can certainly be described as a (linguistically and culturally) 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 as well as on cuneiform tablets, primarily from (Boghazköy), the capital of the Hittites, whose civilization was greatly influenced by the Hurrians. Tablets from Nuzi, Alalakh, and other cities with Hurrian populations (as shown by personal names) reveal Hurrian cultural features even though they were written in Akkadian. Hurrian 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 and 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.[7] Oguchi, Hiromichi, "The Date of The Beginning of Khabur Ware Period 3: Evidence from the Palace of Qarni-Lim at Tell Leilan", Al-Rafidan 27, pp. 45–59, 2006Paul Zimansky, "The Origin of Nuzi Ware: A Contribution From Tell Hamida", In: David I. Owen and Martha A. Morrison (Hrsg.): General Studies and Excavations at Nuzi 9/1, Pennsylvania State University Press, Philadelphia, 1995 ISBN 978-0-931464-37-9 They were also skilled at glass working.Vandiver, Pamela, "GLASS TECHNOLOGY AT THE MID-SECOND-MILLENNIUM B.C. HURRIAN SITE OF NUZI", Journal of Glass Studies, vol. 25, pp. 239–47, 1983

The Hurrians had a reputation in . It is proposed that the 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.

(1989). 9780856684425, Aris & Phillips. .
Pp. 8–9. Copper was traded south to from the highlands of . The Khabur Valley had a central position in the metal trade, and copper, silver and even tin were accessible from the Hurrian-dominated countries and situated in the Anatolian highland. Gold was in short supply, and the 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.Muscarella, Oscar White, "Bronze and Iron: Ancient Near Eastern Artifacts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art", Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988

Among the Hurrian texts from Ugarit are the oldest known instances of , dating from c. 1400 BC.Güterbock, Hans Gustav, "Musical Notation in Ugarit", Revue d'Assyriologie 64, pp. 45–52, 1970Duchesne-Guillemin, Marcelle, "A Hurrian Musical Score from Ugarit: The Discovery of Mesopotamian Music", Sources from the ancient near east, vol. 2, fasc. 2. Malibu, CA: Undena Publications, 1984. Kilmer, Anne Draffkorn, "The Cult Song with Music from Ancient Ugarit: Another Interpretation", Revue d'Assyriologie, 68, pp. 69–82, 1974 Among these fragments are found the names of four Hurrian composers, Tapšiẖuni, Puẖiya(na), Urẖiya, and Ammiya.West, Martin Litchfield, "The Babylonian Musical Notation and the Hurrian Melodic Texts", Music and Letters 75, no. 2, pp. 161–79, May 1994

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.Görke, Susanne, "Hurrian and Luwian Elements in the Kizzuwatna Religious Texts", Altorientalische Forschungen, vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 148-157, 2022Güterbock, Hans Gustav, "The Song of Ullikummi Revised Text of the Hittite Version of a Hurrian Myth", Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 135–61, 1951 merged the Old Hittite and Hurrian religions. Hurrian religion spread to Syria, where became the counterpart of Teshub. The Hurrian religion, in different forms, influenced the entire ancient , except and southern Mesopotamia.

While the and Urartian languages are related, there is little similarity between corresponding systems of belief.G. Wilhelm, The Hurrians, 1989, p. 41

The main gods in the Hurrian pantheon were:

Hurrian 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 .

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 . was at least later a religious centre for the moon god, and Shauskha had an important temple in , when the city was under Hurrian rule. A temple of was built in Urkesh in the late third millennium BC. The town of was a religious centre in the kingdom of Mitanni.

The Hurrian myth "The Songs of Ullikummi", preserved among the Hittites, is a parallel to 's ; the castration of Uranus by may be derived from the castration of by , while 's overthrow of Cronus and Cronus's regurgitation of the swallowed gods is like the Hurrian myth of Teshub and Kumarbi.Güterbock, Hans Gustav: "Hittite Religion"; in Forgotten Religions: Including Some Living Primitive Religions (ed. Vergilius Ferm) (NY, Philosophical Library, 1950), pp. 88–89, 103–104 It has been argued that the worship of drew on Hurrian myth.Suggested by in the Times Literary Supplement 22 July 2005 p 27, in her account of Philippe Borgeaud, Mother of the Gods: from Cybele to the Virgin Mary, Johns Hopkins 2005 .

Language
The agglutinating and highly ergative Hurrian language is related to the Urartian language, the language of the ancient kingdom of Urartu.Grekyan, Yervand, "Two Hurro-Urartian Lexical Parallels", Altorientalische Forschungen 49.1, pp. 48-52, 2022 Together they form the Hurro-Urartian language family. The external connections of the Hurro-Urartian languages are disputed. There exist various proposals for a genetic relationship to other language families (e.g., the Northeast Caucasian languages), but none of these are generally accepted.

The Hurrians adopted the Akkadian language and for their own writing about 2000 BC. Texts in the Hurrian language in cuneiform have been found at , (Ras Shamra), as well as in one of the longest of the (EA 27), written by King of Mitanni to Pharaoh .William L. Moran, "The Amarna Letters", Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992 It was the only long Hurrian text known until a multi-tablet collection of literature in Hurrian with a Hittite translation was discovered at Hattusa in 1983.[18] Dennis R. M. Campbell, "Mood and Modality in Hurrian", Disertation, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations University of Chicago, 2007

Archaeology
Hurrian settlements are distributed over three modern countries, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The heart of the Hurrian world is bisected by the modern border between Syria and Turkey. Several sites are situated within the border zone, making access for excavations problematic. A threat to the ancient sites are the many dam projects in the , and Khabur valleys. Several rescue operations have already been undertaken when the construction of dams put entire river valleys under water.

The first major excavations of Hurrian sites in Iraq and Syria began in the 1920s and 1930s. They were led by the American archaeologist at Yorghan Tepe (Nuzi), and the British archaeologist at and Tell Brak. Recent excavations and surveys in progress are conducted by American, Belgian, Danish, Dutch, French, German and Italian teams of archaeologists, with international participants, in cooperation with the Syrian Department of Antiquities. The tells, or city mounds, often reveal a long occupation beginning in the and ending in the Roman period or later. The characteristic Hurrian pottery, the Khabur ware, is helpful in determining the different strata of occupation within the mounds. The Hurrian settlements are usually identified from the Middle Bronze Age to the end of the Late Bronze Age, with Tell Mozan (Urkesh) being the main exception.

Important sites
The list includes some important ancient sites from the area dominated by the Hurrians. Excavation reports and images are found at the websites linked. As noted above, important discoveries of Hurrian culture and history were also made at Alalakh, Amarna, Hattusa and Ugarit.

See also

Further reading
  • [19] Buccellati, Giorgio, and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati. “Urkesh: The First Hurrian Capital.” The Biblical Archaeologist, vol. 60, no. 2, 1997, pp. 77–96
  • Campbell, Dennis R. M., and Sebastian Fischer, "A HURRIAN RITUAL AGAINST TOOTHACHE: A REANALYSIS OF MARI 5", Revue d’Assyriologie et d’archéologie Orientale, vol. 112, pp. 31–48, 2018
  • Fournet, Arnaud, "About Eni, the Hurrian Word for ‘God.’", Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 71, no. 1, pp. 91–94, 2012
  • Greene, Joseph A., "‘Nuzi and the Hurrians: Fragments from a Forgotten Past’: A Slice of Mesopotamian Life in the Fourteenth Century BCE", Near Eastern Archaeology, vol. 61, no. 1, pp. 66–66, 1998
  • Güterbock, Hans Gustav, "The Hittite Version of the Hurrian Kumarbi Myths: Oriental Forerunners of Hesiod", American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 52, no. 1, pp. 123–34, 1948
  • Hawkes, Jacquetta, The First Great Civilizations: Life in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and Egypt, Knopf, 1973
  • Kilmer, Anne Draffkorn. "The Discovery of an Ancient Mesopotamian Theory of Music". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association 115, no. 2 (April 1971): 131–49.
  • Kilmer, Anne Draffkorn, Richard L. Crocker, and Robert R. Brown. Sounds from Silence: Recent Discoveries in Ancient Near Eastern Music. Berkeley: Bit Enki Publications, 1976. (booklet and LP record, Bit Enki Records BTNK 101, reissued s.d. with CD).
  • Speiser, E. A., Introduction to Hurrian, New Haven, ASOR 1941.
  • Vitale, Raoul. "La Musique suméro-accadienne: gamme et notation musicale". Ugarit-Forschungen 14 (1982): 241–63.
  • Wilhelm, Gernot (ed.). Nuzi at Seventy-five. Studies in the Civilization and Culture of Nuzi and the Hurrians. Bethesda: Capital Decisions, Ltd., 1999
  • Wilhelm, G, "A Hurrian Letter from Tell Brak", Iraq, vol. 53, pp. 159–68, 1991
  • Wegner, Ilse. Einführung in die hurritische Sprache, 2. überarbeitete Aufl. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007.
  • Wulstan, David. "The Tuning of the Babylonian Harp", Iraq 30 (1968): 215–28.

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