Hurrians

ancient tribes linguistically related to the Urartians. The Hurrians are generally linked with the culture of the Kura-Araks Aeneolithic, which corresponds to the Khirbet-Kerak culture in Syria and Palestine. It is believed that the Hurrians were centered in Transcaucasia. In Syria and Mesopotamia they lived together with the Semites. In the 16th century B.C., they founded the Mitanni state in northern Mesopotamia, which flourished until the 13th century B.C., and exerted a strong influence on the Hittite Kingdom (seeMITANNI). In the first millennium B.C., the Hurrians were scattered along the western, southern, and eastern edges of the Armenian Highland.

Materials for the study of the Hurrian language include an inscription from the city of Urkish by Tisari, believed to be a Hurrian priestess (third millennium B.C.), religious texts from Mari and Babylonia, Akkadian-Hurrian bilingual texts and fragments of a Sumerian-Hurrian dictionary from Ugarit, religious literary texts from Hattusas, and other texts from the second millennium B.C. The Hurrians used various forms of cuneiform writing.