Historical Overview of the Kurds and the Assyrians and the Relationship Between Them (10) – Ancestors of the Kurds: The Hurrians – The Mitannis

By Mehdî Kakeyî

In the previous episode, we discussed the establishment of the Mitanni Empire in the fifteenth century BC. It was a strong and vast empire in the region, with its borders extending from Lake Van in the north to middle Mesopotamia in the south, and from Lake Urmia and the Zagros Mountains in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. It incorporated present-day Syria, extended its influence to Palestine, and Assyria became part of this empire. In this episode, we follow the events and developments that occurred in this empire until weakness prevailed and it collapsed after a rule that lasted about 200 years (1475–1275 BC). The fall of the Mitanni Empire occurred as a result of the struggle for power that broke out among members of the ruling Mitanni family, as well as a result of the invasions it was subjected to by its Egyptian, Hittite, and Assyrian neighbors.

Hurrian archaeological discoveries indicate that the Mitannis played a major role in the emergence of diplomatic relations between the states of the ancient Near East, as they established strong relations with the pharaohs of Egypt and exchanged messengers and gifts with them. At the beginning of the establishment of the Kingdom of Mitanni, Egypt was the main rival state to the Mitannis when the Pharaonic king (Thutmose III) was in power. After a few battles fought by the Mitannis against the pharaohs in order to control western Kurdistan, the Mitannis concluded a peace treaty with Egypt, and an alliance was formed between the two parties to protect their interests from the threats posed by the Hittite Empire, which emerged in the region at the time.

Crowning the friendly relationship that prevailed between the Mitanni kings and the pharaohs of Egypt, the Egyptian pharaoh (Amenhotep III) (reigned 1391–1353 BC) married (Gilu-Hepa), who was the sister of the Mitanni king (Tushratta) (reigned from around 1382 to 1342 BC) (Source 1). Likewise, the Egyptian pharaoh (Amenhotep IV) (reigned from 1353 to 1337 BC), who later changed his name to (Akhenaten), married the daughter of the Mitanni king (Tushratta), whose name was (Tadu-Hepa) (1370–1330 BC). (Tadu-Hepa) is herself (Nefertiti), the Pharaonic queen famous in history for her beauty and her pivotal role in ruling Pharaonic Egypt (Sources 2, 3). (Nefertiti) means in the ancient Egyptian language “The beautiful one has come.” The statue of (Nefertiti) is located in the Berlin Museum in Germany.

Pharaoh Akhenaten was influenced by the Hurrian solar religious beliefs that his wife (Nefertiti) believed in. Together with his wife, he spread these religious beliefs in Egypt and created a monotheistic religion that believed in one god, which was (Aten), meaning (the sun disk). (Akhenaten) imposed the worship of the god (Aten) instead of the god (Amun), thereby conducting a major religious revolution that in turn reflected on life in Egypt, especially its cultural and artistic life. Thus, Hurrian religious beliefs began to prevail in Pharaonic Egypt. After creating the new religion, Pharaoh (Amenhotep IV) changed his name to (Akhenaten), which means “Living Spirit of Aten.” His wife (Tadu-Hepa), in turn, changed her name after the creation of the new religion to “Neferneferuaten Nefertiti,” which means “Aten shines because the beautiful one has come.”

Upon the death of King (Shuttarna), the Kingdom of Mitanni had been exhausted by the struggle for power that broke out among members of the royal family. (Tushratta), son of King (Shuttarna), assumed power after the death of his father, but the kingdom was hit by severe weakness, and Hittite and Assyrian threats increased. At the same time, Mitanni–Egyptian diplomatic relations cooled, as the Egyptians were fearful of the steady growth of Hittite and Assyrian power.

In the middle of the fourteenth century, the Hittite Empire regained its strength under the rule of its king (Suppiluliuma I), who invaded the Mitanni-vassal kingdoms in western Kurdistan and appointed pro-Hittite rulers in place of the rulers who used to govern those kingdoms.

In the capital Washukanni, a new struggle for power broke out among members of the Mitanni royal family. The Hittites and Assyrians supported different individuals within the ruling Mitanni family who were claiming the Mitanni throne. Eventually, at the end of the fourteenth century BC, the Hittite army invaded the capital Washukanni, and (Shattiwaza), son of King (Tushratta), was appointed king of the Kingdom of Mitanni as a vassal to the Hittites. At that point, the Kingdom of Mitanni shrank and came to include only the Khabur Valley.

With the advent of the rule of the Assyrian king (Eriba-Adad I) (1390–1366 BC), Mitanni influence in Assyria diminished significantly. The Assyrian king (Eriba-Adad I) began interfering in the bitter battles that broke out between the Mitanni king (Tushratta) and his brother (Artatama II). Fighting later broke out between the latter and his nephew (Shuttarna II), who proclaimed himself king over the Kingdom of Mitanni and simultaneously requested assistance from the Assyrians to consolidate his rule. At that time, a group of Mitanni royal family members emerged supporting the Mitanni–Assyrian alliance. The Assyrian king (Eriba-Adad I) managed to eliminate Mitanni influence in Assyria; in fact, he gained influence in the Mitanni lands and began to interfere in the affairs of the Kingdom of Mitanni (Source 4).

The Assyrian king (Ashur-uballit I) (1365–1330 BC) attacked the Mitanni king (Shuttarna) and annexed the Kingdom of Mitanni to the Assyrian state, thereby ending the political role of the Mitannis in the region after a rule that lasted about 200 years, making the Kingdom of Assyria more powerful and influential (Muhammad Amin Zaki: Summary of the History of the Kurds and Kurdistan – History of Kurdish States and Emirates in the Islamic Era, translated by Muhammad Ali Awni, Part Two, 1945, page 14; Gernot Wilhelm: The Hurrians: Their History and Civilization, translated by Farouk Ismail, Dar Jadal, Aleppo, 1st Edition, 2000 AD, page 44).

After the Assyrian occupation of the Kingdom of Mitanni, the Assyrians deported part of the population of the Mitanni Empire, most of whom were Hurrians, from their regions, and they were used as cheap labor in Assyria. There are Assyrian administrative documents indicating that barley was distributed to the deported “uprooted Hurrian men” from the Kingdom of Mitanni. For example, the Assyrian governor (Meli-Sah), who was the governor of the city of (Nahur), received barley to distribute to the Hurrians deported from the city of (Shuduhu) to be used as seeds and food for themselves and their oxen.

The Assyrians built a line of border fortifications on the Balikh River to face the Hittites. The Assyrian king (Tukulti-Ninurta I) says in commemoration of his military campaign against the Hurrian kingdom of (Katmuhu) the following: I cut off their heads (the heads of enemy soldiers) and put them on stakes like heaps of grain around their cities (Dr. Safwan Sami Saeed: Simile in Assyrian Royal Annals, Journal of Qadisiya for Human Sciences, Issue 2, 2009, Volume 12, University of Mosul, Iraq).

The Kingdom of Mitanni under Assyrian occupation was ruled by the grand vizier (Ili-ippada), who was a member of the royal family and titled himself King of Hanigalbat. This king resided in the newly constructed Assyrian administrative center at Tell Sabi Abyad (Tepe Spi) located in the Balikh River Valley in western Kurdistan. In addition to Assyrian political and military control over the Kingdom of Mitanni, it appears that the Assyrians also dominated trade in this kingdom, as no Hurrian or Mitanni names appear in personal records dating back to the reign of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser.

During the reign of the Assyrian king (Tukulti-Ninurta) (c. 1243–1207 BC), several waves of deportations of Hurrians from the east of the Kingdom of Mitanni to Assyria occurred once again. The purpose of this deportation may have been to use them as labor in building a new palace that the Assyrians wanted to construct. Royal inscriptions also indicate an invasion of the Kingdom of Mitanni by the Hittites, and it is possible that a new uprising took place by the Mitannis against the Assyrian occupation, or at least that the Mitannis supported the Hittite invasion, which is why they were deported. There are evidences supporting the theory of a Mitanni uprising against the Assyrian occupation, as traces of destruction were found in some excavations of Mitanni cities indicating that those Mitanni cities were subjected to destruction and looting during that uprising; however, archaeologists have not been able to accurately determine the date of that looting and destruction. Tell Sabi Abyad, which was the seat of the Assyrian government in the Kingdom of Mitanni during the reign of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser, was abandoned between 1200 and 1150 BC.

During the reign of the Assyrian king (Ashur-nirari III) (c. 1200 BC, the beginning of the Bronze Age Collapse), the Phrygians (the Phrygians were an Indo-Aryan people who established the Kingdom of Phrygia in central-western Anatolia) and others invaded and destroyed the Hittite Empire, which was weak at the time due to its defeats against the Assyrians. The Assyrians temporarily lost some parts of the Kingdom of Mitanni, as the Phrygians occupied them, but the Assyrians were able to defeat the Phrygians and regain control over their Mitanni colonies once again. Nevertheless, the Hurrians managed to retain the Kingdom of (Katmuhu) and the Kingdom of (Paphu). (Paphu) means (Citizen of the Mountain Country), which is further evidence of the mountainous origin of the Hurrians, whose homeland was the Kurdish Zagros Mountains.

In the transition period of the Early Iron Age (1200–1000 BC), the invading Semitic Aramean tribes eliminated the Mitannis, whereupon the name of the Hurrians disappeared, and the Hurrians established another kingdom, which was the Kingdom of (Urartu) (Source 5).

After the fall of the Kingdom of Mitanni, the Hurrian language and culture continued in the Assyrian and Hittite kingdoms until the early first millennium BC; however, after this date, the Aramaic language became dominant in the Kingdom of Mitanni, and the use of the Hurrian language began facing obstacles during the Neo-Assyrian Empire period (934–609 BC). Nonetheless, the Urartian language managed to survive in the Urartian Kingdom, which was established by the descendants of the Hurrians. Inscriptions belonging to the Assyrian king (Adad-nirari II) and (Shalmaneser III) indicate that in the period extending from the tenth to the ninth century BC, the term “Kingdom of Mitanni” was still being used at that time as a geographical term.

During the era of the Mitanni Empire, the Hurrians constituted the largest demographic group (Georges Roux: Ancient Iraq, translated and annotated by Hussein Alwan Hussein, Baghdad, Ministry of Culture and Information, 2nd Edition, 1986). Despite the political subjection of the Hurrians, the Hurrian ethnic and cultural presence continued in present-day Syria and in (Kizzuwadna). The Hittites were influenced by Hurrian culture, language, and beliefs; for example, inscriptions at (Yazılıkaya) indicate that Hurrian deities officially became deities of the Hittite Empire, Hittite queens bore Hurrian names, and Hittite poems incorporated Hurrian myths, with the exception of the Principality of (Hayasha) located in the Armenian mountains, where the Hurrian ethnic presence seems to have disappeared in the late second millennium BC. The Hittite language also borrowed many Hurrian words, including most religious terms.

Dr. Pakiza Rafiq Hilmi mentions that through comparative linguistic studies, the Hurrian language can be considered the beginning of the emergence of the Aryan language family, which is the second millennium BC (Roshanbiri Nwe, 1986). Dr. Jamal Rashid Ahmad mentions that most of the vocabulary of the Hurrian language is currently used in the present Kurdish language on a wide scale (Dr. Jamal Rashid Ahmad: A Linguistic Study on the History of the Land of the Kurds, Dar Al-Hurriya for Printing, Baghdad, 1980, page 99). From this, it appears that the language of the Medes (the language of the Avesta) and the current Kurdish language are an extension of the Hurrian language, as the Kurdistan thinker Masoud Muhammad points out in his research published in his book titled “The Tongue of the Kurds,” published in 1987, that the holy book of the Zoroastrian religion (Avesta) is written in an ancient Kurdish language, where the Mukriani dialect is itself the language of the Avesta, and the Mukrianis in eastern Kurdistan still preserve the language of the Avesta and speak it. Subarian vocabulary—which is the vocabulary in which the Mitanni letter was written—has also been found; accordingly, the Hurrian–Mitanni language is an extension of the Subarian language, as the Hurrians are descendants of the Subarians (Source 6). Georges Roux also mentions that the Hurrians–Mitannis and the Kassites belong to one ethno-linguistic group (Indo-European), meaning that they are Aryans (Georges Roux: Ancient Iraq, translated by Hussein Alwan Hussein, Baghdad, 1984, page 306).

The scholar Muhammad Amin Zaki states that the orientalist Jensen mentions that the term “Mitanni” was a title exclusive to the royal family only, while the name “Subari” was the name indicating the people, and their land was called “Hanigalbat,” as it is mentioned in document texts from among thousands of Subarian and Mitanni documents that were discovered in the Kirkuk region and at (Bogazköy) (Muhammad Amin Zaki: Summary of the History of the Kurds and Kurdistan from the Oldest Historical Eras to the Present, translated by Muhammad Ali Awni, Part One, 2nd Edition, 1961, page 97). On the other hand, Professor Kamal Mazhar Ahmad mentions that the Hurrians merged with the Aryans coming to Kurdistan, and therefore the Hurrian Kingdom is named the “Kingdom of Mitanni,” as Mitannis is a derived surname that was applied to the Aryans (Dr. Kamal Mazhar Ahmad: Kirkuk and Its Dependencies – The Judgment of History and Conscience – A Documentary Study on the Kurdish Issue in Iraq, Ministry of Culture, Kurdistan, 2004, page 10).

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