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Mitanni

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mitanni was an Indo aryan Hurrian speaking kingdom in northern Mesopotamia from ca. 1500 BC. Since no histories, royal annals or chronicles have yet been found in its excavated sites, knowledge about Mitanni is sparse compared to the other powers in the area, and dependent on what its neighbours commented in their texts.

Kingdom of Mitanni
c. 1600 BC – c. 1260 BC
Kingdom of Mitanni at its greatest extent under Barratarna c. 1490 BC
Kingdom of Mitanni at its greatest extent under Barratarna c. 1490 BC
CapitalWashukanni
Common languagesHurrian
Akkadian
Amorite
Religion
  • Historical Vedic religion[1][2]
  • Hurrian religion
  • Ancient Mesopotamian religion
GovernmentMonarchy
King 
• c. 1540 BC
Kirta (first known)
• c. 1260 BC
Shattuara II (last)
Historical eraBronze Age
• Established
c. 1600 BC 
• Disestablished
 c. 1260 BC
Preceded by		 Succeeded by
Hittite Empire
Yamhad
Middle Assyrian Empire


A number of proper names and glosses (technical terminology) of the Mitanni are of Indo-Aryan or Proto-Indo-Aryan origins.[3] Starting from Shuttarna I who is the first Mitanni ruler historically attested to have existed, the Mitanni had Indo-Aryan throne names.[4] The Kikkuli's horse training text includes technical terms of Indo-Aryan origin,[5] and the Indo-Aryan deities Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and Nasatya (Ashvins) are listed and invoked in two treaties found in Hattusa, between the kings Sattiwaza of Mitanni and Šuppiluliuma I the Hittite: (treaty KBo I 3) and (treaty KBo I 1 and its duplicates).[6][7] The toponym of the Mitanni capital of Washukanni is also "unanimously accepted" to have been derived from an Indo-Aryan dialect.[3] Annelies Kammenhuber (1968) suggested that this vocabulary was derived from the still undivided Indo-Iranian language,[8][9] but Mayrhofer has shown that specifically Indo-Aryan features are present.[10][11]

It is generally believed that Indo-Aryan peoples settled in Upper Mesopotamia and northern Syria, and established the Kingdom of Mitanni following a period of political vacuum, while also adopting Hurrian. This is considered a part of the Indo-Aryan migrations.[12][13][14] Since the late 20th century, the view that the Mitanni kingdom was ruled by royal house and aristocracy of Indo-Aryan origin has been prevalent among the scholars;[a] accordingly, a branch of Indo-Aryans separated from the other Indo-Iranians around the turn of second millennium BCE and migrated into West Asia, hence giving rise to the Mitanni kingdom, while also adopting Hurrian language.[21][22][13] Some of the recent studies such as those by Eva von Dassow (2022) and Cotticelli-Kurras and Pisaniello (2023), while noting the modern identification of Mittani as Indo-Aryan and the role of Indo-Aryan speakers in establishing its dynasty, have disputed the significance of Indo-Aryan vocabulary in an otherwise Hurrian-speaking state stating that it does not indicate any Indo-Aryan origins for Mitanni kings.[23][3] According to Alexander Lubotsky (2023), however, the military elite of Mitanni kingdom (see Maryannu) was of Aryan descent and that their language displays a clear Indo-Aryan character.[19]

Jasper Eidem in 2014 reported on Farouk Ismail's earlier study,[24] in reference to the word marijannu that was found in a letter from Tell Leilan in northeastern Syria dating to a period slightly before 1761 BC, which is the time when the reign of Zimri-Lim ended in the region of Mari. Kroonen et al. (2018) consider this as an early Indo-Aryan linguistic presence in Syria two centuries prior to the formation of the Mitanni realm, as mariannu is generally seen as a Hurrianized form of the Indo-Aryan *marya, which means 'man' or 'youth', associated to military affairs and chariots.[25]

Other websites[change | change source]

  1. ↑ Fournet, Arnaud, (2010). "About the Mitanni Aryan Gods", in Journal of Indo-European Studies 38 (1-2), pp. 26-40. See [in this pdf version] pp. 3, 5, and 10.
  2. ↑ Devecchi, Elena, (2018). “Details That Make the Difference: The Akkadian Manuscripts of the ‘Šattiwaza Treaties.’”, in: Die Welt Des Orients, vol. 48, no. 1, 2018, pp. 72–95. See p. 72: "...The so-called 'Šattiwaza treaties' are a set of two documents (CTH 51 and CTH 52) ratifying the subjugation of Šattiwaza of Mittani to the Hittite king Šuppiluliuma I, an event dated to the 2nd half of the 14th century BCE..."
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Cotticelli-Kurras, P.; Pisaniello, V. (2023), "Indo-Aryans in the Ancient Near East", Contacts of Languages and Peoples in the Hittite and Post-Hittite World, Brill, pp. 332–345, doi:10.1163/9789004548633_014, ISBN 978-90-04-54863-3
  4. ↑ Cite error: The named reference De Martino, Stefano, (2014) was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  5. ↑ Thieme, Paul (1960). "The 'Aryan' Gods of the Mitanni Treaties". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 80 (4): 301–17. doi:10.2307/595878. JSTOR 595878.
  6. ↑ Fournet, Arnaud, (2010). "About the Mitanni Aryan Gods", in Journal of Indo-European Studies 38 (1-2), pp. 26-40. See [in this pdf version] pp. 3, 5, and 10.
  7. ↑ Devecchi, Elena, (2018). “Details That Make the Difference: The Akkadian Manuscripts of the ‘Šattiwaza Treaties.’”, in: Die Welt Des Orients, vol. 48, no. 1, 2018, pp. 72–95. See p. 72: "...The so-called 'Šattiwaza treaties' are a set of two documents (CTH 51 and CTH 52) ratifying the subjugation of Šattiwaza of Mittani to the Hittite king Šuppiluliuma I, an event dated to the 2nd half of the 14th century BCE..."
  8. ↑ Kammenhuber, Annelies (1968). Die Arier im vorderen Orient. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag. p. 238. On p. 238 she indicates they spoke a "noch ungeteiltes Indo-Iranisch".
  9. ↑ Drews, Robert (1989). "Chariot Warfare". The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East. Princeton University Press. p. 61. ISBN 0-691-02951-2.
  10. ↑ Mayrhofer, M. (1974). "Die Arier im Vorderen Orient – ein Mythos?". Sitzungsberichte der Oesterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. 294 (3). Vienna.
  11. ↑ Mayrhofer, M. (1986–2000). Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen. Vol. IV. Heidelberg.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  12. ↑ Sigfried J. de Laet 1996, p. 562.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Beckwith 2009, pp. 39–41.
  14. ↑ Bryce 2005, p. 55.
  15. ↑ Beckwith, Christopher I. (2009). Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. Princeton University Press. pp. 39–41. ISBN 978-0-691-13589-2.
  16. ↑ Kelekna, Pita (2009). The Horse in Human History. Cambridge University Press. p. 95. ISBN 978-0-521-51659-4.
  17. ↑ Parpola, Asko (2015), "The BMAC of Central Asia and the Mitanni of Syria", The Roots of Hinduism, Oxford University Press, pp. 69–91, doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190226909.003.0008, ISBN 978-0-19-022690-9
  18. ↑ Kuz’Mina, E. E.; Mallory, J. P. (2007), "Chapter Twenty-Five. The genesis of the indo-aryans", The Origin of the Indo-Iranians, Brill, pp. 321–346, doi:10.1163/ej.9789004160545.i-763.91, ISBN 978-90-474-2071-2
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Lubotsky, Alexander (2023), Willerslev, Eske; Kroonen, Guus; Kristiansen, Kristian (eds.), "Indo-European and Indo-Iranian Wagon Terminology and the Date of the Indo-Iranian Split", The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited: Integrating Archaeology, Genetics, and Linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 257–262, doi:10.1017/9781009261753.021, ISBN 978-1-009-26175-3
  20. ↑ Koppen, Frans van (2017), "The Early Kassite Period", Volume 1 Karduniaš. Babylonia under the Kassites, De Gruyter, pp. 45–92, doi:10.1515/9781501503566-002, ISBN 978-1-5015-0356-6
  21. ↑ Lubotsky 2023.
  22. ↑ Parpola 2015, p. 69–91.
  23. ↑ von Dassow, Eva (2022), "Mittani and Its Empire", The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East: Volume III, Oxford University Press, pp. 455–528, doi:10.1093/oso/9780190687601.003.0029, ISBN 978-0-19-068760-1
  24. ↑ Eidem, Jasper, (2014). "The Kingdom of Šamšī-Adad and its Legacies", in Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum, Nicole Brisch and Jesper Eidem (eds.), Constituent, Confederate, and Conquered Space: The Emergence of the Mittani State, p. 142, and footnote 16.
  25. ↑ Kroonen, Guus, Gojko Barjamovic, and Michaël Peyrot, (2018). "Linguistic supplement to Damgaard et al. 2018: Early Indo-European languages, Anatolian, Tocharian and Indo-Iranian", in Zenodo 2018, p. 11.


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