Mitanni

The Kingdom of Mittani (known to the people of the land, and the Assyrians, as Hanigalbat and to the Egyptians as Naharin and Metani) once stretched from present-day northern Iraq, down through Syria and into Turkey and was once considered a great nation. Few records of the people themselves exist today but correspondence between kings of Mitanni and those of Assyria and Egypt, as well as the world’s oldest horse training manual, give evidence of a prosperous nation which thrived between 1500 and 1240 BCE. In the year 1350 BCE Mitanni was powerful enough to be included in the 'Great Powers Club' along with Egypt, the Empire of the Hatti, Babylonia and Assyria.

The Mitanni dynasty ruled over the northern Euphrates-Tigris region between c. 1475 BCE and c. 1275 BCE. While the Mitanni kings were Indo-Iranians, they used the language of the local people which was at that time a non Indo-Iranian language, Hurrian (and so the land is sometimes referred to in ancient records as the Land of the Hurrians). The capital of Mitanni was Wassukanni, located on the headwaters of the River Habur, a tributary of the Euphrates.

The name Washukanni is similar to the Kurdish word 'bashkani', 'bash' meaning good and 'kanî' meaning well or source, and so is translated as 'source of good' but also as 'source of wealth'. Some scholars have claimed that the ancient city of Sikan was built on the site of Washukanni, and that its ruins may be located under the mound of Tell el Fakhariya near Gozan in Syria.

At its height, the Mitanni Dynasty controlled trade routes down the Habur to Mari and up the Euphrates from to Carchemish. They also controlled the upper Tigris and its headwaters at Nineveh. Their allies included Kizuwatna in south eastern Anatolia, Mukish, which stretched between Ugarit and Quatna west of the Orontes to the sea, and the Niya which controlled the east bank of the Orontes from Alalah down through Aleppo, Ebla and Hama to Quatna and Kadesh. To the east the Mitanni had good relations with the Hurrian-speaking Kassites whose territory corresponds to present-day Kurdistan. The lands of the Mitanni in northern Syria bordered eastern Anatolia to its west and extended east as far as Nuzi (present-day Kirkuk) and the river Tigris in the east. In the south it extended from Aleppo across to Mari on the Euphrates in the East. The entire region allowed agriculture without artificial irrigation. Herds of cattle, sheep, horses and goats were raised and the Mitanni were famed horsemen and charioteers. It is recorded that they were the innovators who spearheaded the development of the light war chariot with wheels that used spokes rather than the solid wood wheels, such as those used by the Sumerians, so that the chariots were faster and easier to maneuver. The Hittite archives of Hattusa, near present-day Boğazkale (Turkey), revealed in excavations what is considered the oldest surviving horse training manual in the world. The manual was written in 1345 BCE on four tablets and contains 1080 lines by a Mitanni horse trainer named Kikkuli, beginning with the words, "Thus speaks Kikkuli, master horse trainer of the land of Mitanni” and exhaustively describes the proper methods of training horses.

At some point (exactly when is not clear) Mittani fell under the yoke of the Assyrian Empire. While still an autonomous state, the kingdom now owed tribute and allegiance to Assyria and was no longer considered an equal of the other powers of the region. Ancient Assyrian records tell how, in the reign of King Shalmaneser I (1270s-1240s BCE) King Shattuara of Mitanni rebelled against Assyria with the aid of the Hittites and a nomadic tribe known as the Ahlamu around 1250 BCE. Shattuara’s forces were well organized, armed and had occupied all the mountain passes and waterholes to effectively cut off the Assyrian army’s water supply and severely hamper their attempts at foraging. Even so, hungry and thirsty, Shalmaneser’s army won a crushing victory. He claims in the records to have slain 14,400 men while the survivors were blinded and carried away. His inscriptions mention the conquest of nine fortified temples, 180 Hurrian cities were "turned into rubble mounds" and Shalmaneser "…slaughtered like sheep the armies of the Hittites and the Ahlamu his allies…". The cities from Taidu to Irridu were captured, as well as all of mount Kashiar to Eluhat and the fortresses of Sudu and Harranu to Carchemish on the Euphrates. A large part of the population was sold into slavery and deported, and Mitanni was absorbed into the Assyrian Empire and was gradually forgotten by history.

Written by Joshua J. Mark, published on 28 April 2011 under the following license: Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms.