Hurrians in the context of "Hurrian language"

This is a list of peoples who inhabited Anatolia in antiquity. The essential purpose of the list is to identify prehistoric cultures in the region but many of the peoples continued to inhabit Anatolia into and through classical and late antiquity, so the actual scope of the list encompasses the history of Anatolia from prehistory to the Eastern Roman Empire (4th to 7th centuries AD), during which transition to the early medieval occurred.

Anatolia was inhabited by numerous peoples and its history is characterised by different waves of population movement. The earliest recorded inhabitants of Anatolia were the Hattians and Hurrians, non-Indo-European peoples who lived in Anatolia as early as c. 2300 BC. Indo-European Hittites came to Anatolia and gradually absorbed the Hattians and Hurrians c. 2000 – c. 1700 BC. Besides Hittites, Anatolian peoples included Luwians, Palaic peoples and Lydians. They spoke Anatolian languages. Other incoming people include Armenians, Greeks, Phrygians and Thracians.

Shubria or Shupria was a kingdom in the southern Armenian highlands, known from Assyrian sources in the first half of the 1st millennium BC. It was located north of the upper Tigris River and to the southwest of Lake Van, extending eastwards to the frontiers of Urartu. It appears in the 1st millennium BC as an independent kingdom, succeeding the people earlier called Shubaru in Assyrian sources in the later centuries of the 2nd millennium BC. It was located between the powerful states of Assyria and Urartu and came into conflict with both. It was conquered by Assyria in 673–672 BC but likely regained its independence towards the end of the 7th century BC with the collapse of Assyrian power.

Some scholars have concluded from the Hurrian etymology of some Shubrian names that Shubria was mainly populated by Hurrians. Some have suggested that it was the last remnant of Hurrian civilization, or even constituted the original homeland of the Hurrians. However, other Shubrian names have been identified as Aramean by origin. Bradley J. Parker writes that the existing evidence indicates that Shubria had a heterogeneous population including Hurrians, Arameans, and likely also Urartians, Assyrians and others. According to some scholars, Shubria was inhabited, at least in part, by speakers of the Proto-Armenian language and played an important role in the formation of the later Armenian state and ethnic group.

Mitanni or Mittani (c. 1550–1260 BC), earlier called Ḫabigalbat in old Babylonian texts, c. 1600 BC; Hanigalbat or Hani-Rabbat in Assyrian records, or Naharin in Egyptian texts, was a Hurrian-speaking state in northern Syria and southeast Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) with Indo-Aryan linguistic and political influences. 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.

The Hurrians were in the region as of the late 3rd millennium BC. A king of Urkesh with a Hurrian name, Tupkish, was found on a clay sealing dated c. 2300 BC at Tell Mozan. The first recorded inscription of their language was of Tish-atal (c. 21st century BC), king of Urkesh. Later on, Hurrians made up the main population of Mitanni, which was firstly known as Ḫabigalbat, at Babylonia, in two texts of the late Old Babylonian period, during the reign of Ammi-Saduqa, (c. 1638–1618 BC), in low middle chronology.

Humbaba (Ḫumbaba; 𒄷𒌝𒁀𒁀, Ḫumbāba, with an optional determinative 𒀭), originally known as Ḫuwawa in Sumerian (𒄷𒉿𒉿, Ḫuwāwa), was a figure in Mesopotamian mythology. The origin and meaning of his name are unknown. He was portrayed as an anthropomorphic figure comparable to an ogre or giant. He is best known from Sumerian and Akkadian narratives focused on the hero Gilgamesh, including short compositions belonging to the curriculum of scribal schools, various versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and several Hurrian and Hittite adaptations. He is invariably portrayed as the inhabitant or guardian of the cedar forest, to which Gilgamesh ventures with his companion Enkidu. The subsequent encounter leads to the death of Humbaba, which provokes the anger of the gods. Humbaba is also attested in other works of Mesopotamian literature. Multiple depictions of him have also been identified, including combat scenes and apotropaic clay heads.

It has been suggested that the iconography of Humbaba influenced depictions of the gorgons in Greece, in particular scenes of Perseus slaying Medusa with the help of Athena. A late derivative of Humbaba also seems to be found in both Jewish and Manichaean versions of the Book of Giants, where one of the eponymous beings is referred to as Ḥôbabiš, Ḥôbabis or Ḥōbāīš. While it is agreed the name is derived from his own, the context in which it appears shows no similarity to known myths involving him. Traces of Ḥôbabiš have also been identified in a number of later works belonging to Islamic tradition, such as religious polemics. A number of connections have also been proposed between Humbaba and figures such as Kombabos from the works of Lucian or biblical Hobab, but they are not regarded as plausible.

The Early Assyrian period was the earliest stage of Assyrian history, preceding the Old Assyrian period and covering the history of the city of Assur, tge surrounding area of Upper Mesopotamia and its people and culture, prior to the foundation of Assyria as an independent city-state under Ushpia c. 2086 BC. Very little material and textual evidence survives from this period. The earliest archaeological evidence at Assur dates to the Early Dynastic Period, c. 2600 BC, but the city may have been founded even earlier since the area had been inhabited for thousands of years prior and other nearby Assyrian cities, such as Nineveh and Arbela are significantly older.

The archaeological evidence suggests that Assur was originally inhabited by both Semites and Hurrians and was the site of a fertility cult devoted to the Assyro-Babylonian goddess Ishtar. The name "Assur" is not historically attested prior to the age of the Akkadian Empire in the 24th century BC; it is possible that the city was originally named Baltil, used in later times to refer to its oldest portion. In tge centuries before the rise of the Akkadian Empire, the Semitic-speaking ancestors of the Assyrians, Akkadians and Babylonians settled in Assur and the surrounding area, either displacing or assimilating the original population. Founded in a both holy and strategic location, the city itself was gradually deified during the Early Assyrian period and eventually became personified as the god Ashur, firmly established as the Assyrian national deity by the time of Puzur-Ashur I in 2025 BC.

The Assyrian homeland or Assyria (Classical Syriac: ܐܬܘܪ, romanized: Āṯōr or Classical Syriac: ܒܝܬ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, romanized: Bêṯ Nahrin) is the homeland of the Assyrian people within which Assyrian civilisation developed, located in the Upper Mesopotamia of West Asia. The territory that forms the Assyrian homeland is, similarly to the rest of Mesopotamia, currently divided between present-day Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. In Iran, the Urmia Plain forms a thin margin of the ancestral Assyrian homeland in the north-west, and the only section of the Assyrian homeland beyond the Mesopotamian region. The majority of Assyrians in Iran currently reside in the capital city, Tehran.

The Assyrians are indigenous Mesopotamians, descended from the Akkadians, Sumerians and Hurrians who developed independent civilisation in the city of Assur on the eastern border of northern Mesopotamia. The territory that would encompass the Assyrian homeland was divided through the centre by the Tigris River, with their indigenous Mesopotamia on the west and western margins of the Urmia Plains, which they occupied in 2000 BCE prior to the arrival of the modern Iranians, to the east. In modern times, Assyrians largely only recognise Assyrian towns and cities immediately neighbouring the Tigris to the east as their indigenous territory, in addition to Mesopotamia, with the homeland only expanding beyond the borders due to the major centres of Assyrian civilisation, such as the cities of Nineveh, Assur and Nimrud, being built on the banks of the Tigris itself.

Urkesh, also transliterated Urkish (Akkadian: 𒌨𒆧𒆠 UR.KIŠ, 𒌨𒋙𒀭𒄲𒆠 UR.KEŠ₃; modern Tell Mozan; Arabic: تل موزان), is a tell, or settlement mound, located in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains in Al-Hasakah Governorate, northeastern Syria. It was founded during the fourth millennium BC, possibly by the Hurrians, on a site which appears to have been inhabited previously for a few centuries. The city god of Urkesh was Kumarbi, father of Teshup.

Urarteans were an ancient people who spoke the Urartian language. The territory of the ancient kingdom of Urartu extended over the modern frontiers of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Armenia. Its kings left behind cuneiform inscriptions in the Urartian language, a member of the Hurro-Urartian language family. A related people to the Urarteans are the Hurrians.