The name (Mitanni) was found for the first time in the war memoirs in Western Kurdistan, written around 1480 BC by the astronomer and clockmaker (Amememhet), who returned from the Kingdom of Mitanni during the reign of the Egyptian Pharaoh (Thutmose I) (1506–1493 BC) (Source 1). At the beginning of the reign of the Egyptian Pharaoh (Thutmosis I), the military campaign against the Kingdom of Mitanni was announced (Source 2), which may have taken place during the previous reign of the Egyptian Pharaoh (Amenhotep I) (1525–1504 BC) (Source 3), where the German scholar Professor (Hans Wolfgang Helck), who is considered the most famous 20th-century historian specializing in ancient Egyptian history, believes that this campaign was the one referred to by Pharaoh Amenhotep II (Source 2).
The Egyptians called the Kingdom of Mitanni (Maryannu) or (Nahrin), derived from the Assyrian-Akkadian word (Nahar/River) or (Mitanni) (Source 4). The Hittites called this kingdom (Hurri), while the Assyrians called it (Hanigalbat) (Source 5). (Tushratta), who titled himself “King of Mitanni”, refers to his kingdom by the name (Hanigalbat) in his letters written on clay tablets in the Akkadian language and cuneiform script found in the palace archive of the Egyptian King Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV) at his seat of rule (Akhetaten) in Amarna, Egypt (Source 6).
Some researchers say that the Hurrian language is neither an Indo-European language nor a Semitic language, but rather related to the Urartian language, the language of the people of Urartu, as these two languages belong to the Hurro-Urartian language family. A number of Russian researchers, such as (Diakonov) and (Starostin), say that the Hurrian language belongs to the Northeast Caucasian languages group (Source 7), while other researchers state that the Hurrian language is one of the Indo-European languages and is related to the Kassite language (the language of the ancestors of the Kassite Kurds) (Sources 8, 9).
To clarify the reality of the affiliation of the Hurrian language and to judge the contradictions drawn from the research of linguists on this matter, one can rely on the historical facts related to the Hurrians – Mitannis:
The Zagros Mountains are the original homeland of the Hurrians (Dr. Jamal Ahmad Rashid: The Emergence of the Kurds in History, Aras Printing and Publishing House, Erbil, Kurdistan, 1st Edition, 2003, page 147, Sources 8, 10, 11). Thus, the Hurrians are the indigenous inhabitants of Kurdistan and did not come to Kurdistan from the Caucasus for their language to be Caucasian.
The Mitannis are Indo-Aryans, as in the previous installment of this series of articles, reference was made to many pieces of evidence indicating that the Mitannis who came to Kurdistan at the beginning of the second millennium BC were Indo-Aryans; therefore, their language has no connection to the Caucasian languages. The Mitannis assimilated into the Hurrian people, and the Hurrian language became their language as well.
The borders of the Mitanni Empire reached the Caucasus region, and if there is a relationship between the Hurrian language and the “Caucasian language group”, it is the result of the great linguistic and cultural influence of the Hurrians on the Caucasian population to the extent that they adopted the Hurrian language and it became their mother tongue. Furthermore, a section of the Hurrians may have moved to the Caucasus region, settled there, and their culture and language prevailed in the region. From this, it appears that the “Caucasian language group” spoken of by some linguists and researchers, who view the Hurrian language as belonging to it, is in fact not Caucasian, but Zagrosian—the languages of the ancestors of the Kurds to which the Hurrian language belongs.
Professor (Izady), in a lecture at Harvard University in the United States, also believes that the spread of the Hurrian language among the inhabitants of the Caucasus regions through the Hurrians is not ruled out (the text of the lecture can be viewed via the link at the end of the article).
In Akkadian times, it was known that the Hurrians lived in the area east of the Tigris on the northern edge of Mesopotamia. Members of the group who became Mitannis gradually moved south into Mesopotamia before the seventeenth century BC. The Mitannis are the Aryan branch of the Hurrians who migrated to Kurdistan at the beginning of the second millennium BC, merged with the indigenous Zagros peoples, and assumed power (André Aymard and Jeannine Auboyer: General History of Civilizations – The Ancient East and Greece, supervised by Maurice Crouzet, translated by Farid M. Dagher and Fuad J. Abu Raihan, Volume One, Oueidat Publications House, Beirut – Paris, 2nd Edition, 1986, page 204). The historians (Gelb) and (Speiser) believe that the ancestors of the Subarian Kurds had inhabited northern Mesopotamia since ancient times and that the Hurrians are the descendants of the Subarians (Sources 10, 12).
The warring Hurrian tribes and city-states united under the rule of a ruling dynasty and established the Kingdom of Mitanni. Subjective and objective factors helped the Mitannis in unifying the Hurrian tribes and establishing their kingdom. The Mitannis were fierce warriors and used horses and war chariots in their wars, which were advanced military weapons at that time. The combat expertise of the Mitannis and the advanced weapons used were among the main factors that helped the Mitannis take leadership of the Hurrians and establish a kingdom for themselves. External factors also contributed to the success of the Mitannis in building their empire. The Hittites plundered Babylon during the reign of the Hittite King (Mursili I), and the Kassites also controlled and ruled Babylon. These two factors led to the collapse of Babylonian rule. The Hittite occupation of Aleppo (Yamkhad), the weakness of the Kings of Assyria who assumed power after King Puzur-Ashur III, and internal conflicts among the Hittites all created a vacuum in upper Mesopotamia that led to the establishment of the Kingdom of Mitanni (Dr. Tawfiq Sulaiman: Studies in Ancient West Asian Civilizations, 1st Edition, Dar Damascus for Printing, Press and Publishing, 1985, page 312; Sources 13, 14). The legendary founder of the ruling Mitanni dynasty was King (Kirta), after whom King (Shuttarna) assumed power.
The Kingdom of Mitanni was established in present-day Western and Northern Kurdistan and existed between approximately 1500 BC and 1300 BC. The Hurrian language was the language of its inhabitants, as the Hurrians constituted the majority of the population of this kingdom (Source 13).
The Kingdom of Mitanni controlled the areas extending from the Khabur to Mari and the Upper Euphrates, and from there the kingdom extended to (Charchamesh). For a period of about a century, Assyria was under the rule of the Kingdom of Mitanni. The allies of the Mitannis included the Kingdom of (Kizuwatna) located in northeastern Anatolia, the Kingdom of (Mukish) located between (Ugarit) and (Qatna) west of the Orontes River, and the Kingdom of (Niya) which controlled the eastern bank of the Orontes River, from the city of (Alalakh) downwards, passing through Aleppo, Ebla, and Hama to (Qatna) (18 kilometers northeast of the city of Homs) and (Kadesh) near the banks of the Orontes River, 15 miles southwest of the city of Homs. From the east, the Mitannis had good relations with their eastern neighbors, the Kassites (Source 15).
In present-day Western Kurdistan, the Mitanni Kingdom extended from the Taurus Mountain range to the west of the aforementioned Kurdistan Region, and from the east, it extended to the city of Nuzi (present-day Kirkuk) and the Tigris River. From the south, the Mitanni Kingdom extended from Aleppo, crossing the Levant to the Kingdom of (Mari) located on the Euphrates River to the east. The center of the Mitanni Kingdom was in the Khabur River Valley and had two capitals, (Taite) and (Washshukanni), which are named in Assyrian sources as (Taidu) and (Ushshukana) respectively. The site of the ruins of the city of (Taite) is located at (Tell Hamidiya) in the Khabur region and was discovered by the Italian scholar (Mirjo Salvini) (Source 16).
The names of the Mitanni aristocracy are mostly of Indo-Aryan origin, but in particular, the names of the Mitanni deities show that they have Indo-Aryan roots (Mitra, Varuna, Indra, Nasatya), and therefore a section of researchers believes that they are directly related to the Kassites (Source 9). The (Amarna) letters show that members of the Mitanni royal family at that time spoke the Hurrian language. There are many holders of Hurrian names across vast areas of present-day Syria and the northern Levant that were outside the Mitanni political entity. There is no evidence that these persons were loyal to the Mitanni political entity, although the German term “Migrant Hurrians” was applied to these persons by some authors. In the fourteenth century BC, several city-states in Western Kurdistan and Canaan were ruled by persons bearing Hurrian names, and some of them had Indo-Aryan names. If this is taken into consideration, it means that the population of these kingdoms was also Hurrian. It would then be possible that these entities were part of a larger political system with a shared Hurrian identity.
The Mitannis were able to establish a powerful, vast empire known as the Hurro-Mitanni Empire, the majority of whose population was Hurrian, and its capital was (Washshukanni), located near the city of (Sare Kani) in Western Kurdistan. A number of researchers mention that the Mitanni state extended from Lake Van in the north to central Mesopotamia in the south, and from Lake Urmia and the Zagros Mountains in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, encompassing present-day Syria and reaching as far as Palestine (Taha Baqir: Introduction to the History of Ancient Civilizations, Part One, A Brief History of Mesopotamian Civilization, 1st Edition, Baghdad, 1973, page 489; Georges Roux: Ancient Iraq, translated and annotated by Hussein Alwan Hussein, Baghdad, Ministry of Culture and Information, 2nd Edition, 1986, page 129; Amer Sulaiman: Iraq in Ancient History, Mosul, Dar Al-Hikma for Printing and Publishing, 1992, page 131).
The Mitanni Kingdom was one of the four powerful kingdoms in the region at that time, which were Egypt, the Hittite Kingdom, Kurigalzu/Karduniash, and the Mitanni Kingdom (Muhammad Amin Zaki: Summary of the History of the Kurds and Kurdistan from the Earliest Historical Times to the Present, translated by Muhammad Ali Awni, Part One, 2nd Edition, 1961, page 97).
The Mitanni King (Barattarna) expanded his kingdom from the west to Aleppo and made the Canaanite King (Idrimi), King of (Alalakh), his vassal. The Kingdom of (Kizzuwatna) in the west also became loyal to Mitanni, and the Kingdom of Assyria in the east became a subject land to the Mitannis by the middle of the fifteenth century BC, where the land of Assyria became part of the Mitanni Empire for about 75 years (1450–1375 BC), and the Mitannis allowed Assyria to retain its monarchy during its period of subjection to the Mitanni Empire (Gernot Wilhelm: The Hurrians: Their History and Civilization, translated by Farouk Ismail, Dar Jadal, Aleppo, 1st Edition, 2000 AD, page 62; Dr. Jamal Ahmad Rashid: The Emergence of the Kurds in History, Aras Printing and Publishing House, Erbil, Kurdistan, 1st Edition, 2003, page 251; Muhammad Bayoumi Mehran: History of Ancient Iraq, Alexandria, 1990, pages 343–344).
The Mitanni nation became stronger during the reign of its King (Shaushtatar), and the Hurrians were determined to keep the Hittites confined within the Anatolian mountain regions. The Kingdom of (Kizzuwatna) in the west and (Ishuwa) in the north were important allies for the Mitannis against the Hittite rival. We suffice here with this amount of information about the Hurrian Empire, and in the next installment, we will continue with the ongoing events and developments in this empire.
Foreign Sources
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Faulkner, Raymond O. A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian. p.135. Griffith Institute, Oxford, 1962; [1] Egyptian New Kingdom Topographical lists], by Kenneth Kitchen, p.5 bottom paragraph, University of Memphis.
Astour, Michael C. “Ḫattusiliš, Ḫalab, and Ḫanigalbat” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 31.2 (April 1972:102–109) p 103.
Astour Michael C 1972:103, noting Amarna letters 18:9; 20:17; 29:49.
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