Hourrites

The Hourrites or Hurrites are people living the Asia Mineure during the Antiquité.

Origins

The origins of Hourrites are badly known. It seems that it is about people originating in the areas located at the south in the the Caucasus, pertaining to the same group as Urartéens. They appear in the history in the sources of Ebla with, when they migrate towards the south, in the mountains located at the north of the Mésopotamie, the Kurdistan and in the Zagros, where they form small kingdoms. They constitute savage adversaries for the sovereigns of Akkad, and those of IIIe Dynastie of Ur.

Expansion

In the current of first half of, Hourrites spread in Syria North (one finds some in the files of Mari). After the fall of the kingdoms Amorrites, they become the dominant ethnos group in this area, and their kingdoms face the expansionism hittite with powerful kingdoms hourrites appear then, like the Kizzuwatna (in Cilicie), but especially the Mitanni, which is centered around the triangle of the Khabur in Syria of North. This kingdom, directed originally by an Indo-European elite, but populated mainly from Hourrites, extends its domination on its neighbors between, in Syria and Assyrie. This expansionism makes him face successively the Égyptien S, then Hittites, and finally the Assyrians which, after being itself released of the yoke mitannien definitively destroy the kingdom with the last dynasty of the kingdom hittite, that of Suppiluliuma Ier, are according to any probability itself of origin hourrite, and however strongly contributed to the weakening of the kingdom of Mitanni.

Religion

The religion hourrite is very close to the religious bottom Anatolian. Its principal god is Teshub, the god of the Storm, who has for parèdre Hebat, and for wire Sharruma. Other important divinities hourrites were Kushukh, the God-Moon, Shimegi, the God-Sun, and Shaushka, the goddess of the Love. The Pantheon hourrite also included/understood Hepit, the god of the Sky, Kumarbi (Nature), or Astabis (the War) and Ishara (the Writing). Mythology hourrite worked out myths such as the Cycle of Kumarbi , (the " Théogonie hourrite").

Language

The language hourrite is known little about, because its translation could be improved only recently by the discovery of bilingual texts hourrite-hittite. But documentation in hourrite (written in Wedge-shaped) is weak in quantity.

Random links: