Narrative Literature of Hurrian Origin: Moving Treasures from the Ancient Near East

By: Mauro Giorgieri

The Hurrians were one of the most important civilizations of the Ancient Near East but we have far less linguistic, historical and archaeological information about them than the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, or Hittites. Hurrian epic poems are also a fascinating but lesser known aspect of Ancient Near Eastern literary traditions. But Hurrians played another critical role, creating and transmitting Mesopotamian traditions across the ancient world, even as far as Greece.

Who were the Hurrians?

Over a thousand years of history (ca. 2500-1300 BCE) Hurrian civilization occupied a vast area from the Lower Zab, east of the Tigris, to southeast Anatolia, embracing all of northern Mesopotamia and Syria. This helps us to understand how Hurrian culture embodied the convergence of different cultural traditions. The modern name of the people –Hurrians – and their language is based on the ancient geographical term Hurri, attested in cuneiform sources of the 2nd millennium BCE, and presumably denoted most of Upper Mesopotamia. The Hurrian language was neither Semitic nor Indo-European, and had only one relative, Urartian, attested in the 1st millennium BCE.

The oldest historical and archaeological evidence for Hurrian civilization dates to the latter 3rd millennium BCE and small kingdoms across northern Mesopotamia were governed by rulers with Hurrian names. One of these, the ancient city of Urkesh was recently excavated at Mozan in the Khabur Valley of northeast Syria. A foundation inscription of Tish-atal, a ruler of Urkesh who bore the Hurrian regal title endan, is the oldest document in the Hurrian language. A distinctive feature of Hurrian culture and civilization is the coexistence of Sumero-Akkadian influences and original Hurrian elements. In effect, Hurrians were intermediaries, passing Mesopotamian traditions to the western areas of the ancient Near East.

During the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE solid Hurrian element in the population of Syria between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates is attested by the many Hurrian personal names in texts, and is likely a result of movements at the end of the previous millennium. During their movements towards more western regions of Syria and southeast Anatolia, Hurrians encountered Northwest Semitic cultural and religious traditions, which henceforth played a fundamental role in Hurrian culture.

The largest and most important Hurrian state, the Mittani kingdom (named Hanigalbat in Akkadian sources), flourished during the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE and occupied a wide area between Nuzi in eastern Iraq and Kizzuwatna in southeastern Anatolia. Mittani was one of the Great Kingdoms of the Late Bronze Age and for a century fought with Egypt for supremacy over Syria. In the first half of the fourteenth century stability was reached between the Great Kings of Mittani and the Egyptian pharaohs. Dynastic marriages between princesses of Mittani and Egyptian pharaohs resulted, attested in the copious diplomatic correspondence between the two courts, discovered in the Egyptian archives at the capital city of el Amarna. But Mittanian state could not resist the military expansion of the Hittite empire under king Suppiluliuma I, who conquered most of Mitanni’s Syrian territory and decreed the end of this great kingdom in 1340 BCE.

The Hurrian-Hittite cultural symbiosis

The Hittites proved fatal to the Hurrians from a political perspective, but the relationship was nevertheless culturally significant. By about 1450 BCE the Hittite dynasty had already adopted cultural traditions from the Hurrian-speaking parts of southern Anatolia. Later, Hittite kings supported Hurrian cults and introduced them into their capital Hattusa (modern Boğazköy) and other Anatolian towns. Between 1400 and 1200 BC, Hurrian became a language of cult and learning in Hittite Anatolia, far removed from the original Hurrian-speaking areas.

Hurrian religious and literary texts such as rituals, prayers, and epics were written down and revised by the Hittites. This was crucial for the written transmission and conservation of Hurrian religious and literary traditions to the present. It is mainly thanks to the Hittites that we are now acquainted with Hurrian religious culture, and their epic-mythological narrative literature, since no Hurrian archives have yet been unearthed in their core regions.

The Hurrian songs

The term “narrative literature”, as well as “myths,” “epic,” and “poem,” are modern classifications with no counterparts in Hurrian or Hittite. The ancient definition Hittite scribes employed to classify literary compositions of Hurrian origin was the Sumerian logogram ŠÌR “song”. It is not clear whether they actually were sung, but “Let me sing” (in Hurrian) or “I will sing” (in Hittite) is found at the beginning of several texts. Other stylistic elements show the strong influence of the Sumerian and Akkadian literary models on the Hurrian-Hittite tradition.

An important point is that “Hurrian songs” does not mean that all narrative texts are in the Hurrian language but rather have their origin within Hurrian culture. We can distinguish three levels:

1. Hurrian monolingual texts (mostly very fragmentary and difficult to understand);
2. Hurrian-Hittite bilingual tablets, containing both the Hurrian original and a literal Hittite translation, which renders the Hurrian text with minor adaptations or variations;
3. Hittite monolingual texts that are partial adaptations and reworkings of narratives of Hurrian origin (the bulk of the corpus).

The following scenario can be reconstructed. As Hurrian literary compositions were first received, Hittite scribes fixed them in written form. Some tablets were given to Hurrian speaking literati well acquainted with Hittite language for translation, to acquire better knowledge of the contents and style. Later, the Hittites reworked the Hurrian compositions in their own language, offering new versions of the “Songs” that were quite different from the Hurrian originals.

The “Kumarbi Cycle” and the “Song of Release”

We can divide the compositions into two main groups: stories about gods, and stories about humans and gods.

Stories about gods are mythological narratives of the origins of the gods and the cosmos, and the struggle for power between gods. Most scholars believe these songs were organized as a “cycle”, whose central theme is the competion between the god Kumarbi, the ancient god of Urkesh, and his son, the Storm-god Teshub, for kingship over the gods; hence the label “Cycle of Kumarbi”.

The first song of this “cycle” is apparently the “Song of coming-out/forth”, known only in a Hittite translation. The title refers to the birth of different gods, among them Teshub, from Kumarbi. The story opens by describing the passage of kingship between different divine generations and has striking parallels with Hesiod’s Theogony – which it probably influenced. Teshub obtains kingship over the gods the same way as Zeus in the Greek epic.

In the other narratives of the “cycle” Kumarbi tries to regain kingship by generating opponents for Teshub, among them a sea-dragon, Hedammu, and a stone-giant, Ullikummi. These compositions, received and reworked by the Hittites, have different origins. The “Song of coming-out”, for example, appears older and was probably composed in Northern Mesopotamia or Eastern Syria under the influence of Sumerian and Babylonian epic. Other songs are later, composed in Western Syria, under influence of West Semitic culture.

In the second group of texts, the divine and the human are mixed together and both participate in the story. The poorly preserved Hurrian version of the epic of Gilgamesh, for example, is of Babylonian origin. But it is important to observe that the Hittite versions of this epic are clearly influenced by the Hurrian version (shown, for example, by the Hurrian divine names), and not directly by Babylonian originals. Hurrian culture held a particular fascination for the Hittites, to the extent that it became the preferred means by which Babylonian elements reached Hittite Anatolia.

The most interesting composition of Hurrian origin in this group is the poem “Song of Release,” preserved on several very fragmentary bilingual tablets dating to 1450-1400 BCE. The original Hurrian text is on the left column and the Hittite translation (probably by a Hurrian speaker), is on the right – like a Loeb classical edition!

The elaborate poem describes Teshub’s demand that the Syrian city of Ebla release captives from the neighboring city of Ikinkalish, and the subsequent refusal by Ebla’s assembly to obey the god’s will. The final part of the poem is missing but it probably ended with the destruction of Ebla. Another topic of the narrative is the descent of the storm-god Teshub into the netherworld, where the goddess Allani, mistress of the netherworld, prepares a sumptuous feast.

Here in translation is the first part of the very fragmentary poem’s preamble:

I will sing the god Teshub, the great Lord of the city Kumme!

I will praise the goddess Allani, the maid, the bolt of the Netherworld!

And together with them I will speak of the goddess Išhara, the maid […],

unattainable wisdom, the goddess!

I will speak of the man Pizikarra, who […] Ebla […] Pizzikarra from Ninive […]

This small clay fragment portrays how rich the Hurrian literary tradition was, and at the same time, how much of it has unfortunately been lost. Created under the influence of Sumerian and Babylonian models, enriched with North-Syrian elements, adepte and reworked by the very appreciative Hitittes, the narrative literature of Hurrian origin is a fascinating phenomenon. The product of these complex interactions between regions of the ancient Near East still reverberates in ancient Greek literature.

Mauro Giorgieri is Associate Professor of Anatolian Philology at the University of Pavia.