HURRITES (HURRI). - An ancient Near Eastern people with their own language (and literature), their own religion, and probably their own art. The term "Hurrian" therefore expresses a linguistic and ethnographic concept. By contrast, Subartu is a geographical name denoting a region whose centre is later Assyria; as a geographical concept it spans the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE and includes various peoples (among them the H., inhabitants of that area).
The earliest documents for the H. are: 1) the tablet of Tišari, king of Urkiš (probably in the region of the Habur river), written in Hurrian and containing the names of the Hurrian god Šimige and of the “earth-goddess” of Nagar. This document dates to the 24th/23rd century BCE. 2) A little later, but still before the Third Dynasty of Ur (2070–1960 BCE), another tablet in Akkadian records King Arišen dedicating a temple in the (Akkadianized) land of Hawilum to the “venerable god Nergal,” a Sumerian-Akkadian deity. This text also mentions the geographical names Urkeš and Nawar. 3) Around 2000 BCE the name of the land and of the “Hur-ri-um mountain” appears in a Sumerian mythological poem. This territory is probably to be located in the Zagros mountain zone (east of the Tigris). 4) Already in the names of the Third Dynasty of Ur, however, Hurrian elements appear (which later recur at Nuzi) such as ar, haš, itb, nan, šen, etc. By contrast, such names do not occur at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE either at Susa (Elam) or at Mari (where Hurrian-language tablets have been found) or in Syria. In this period Syria is largely inhabited by Amorites (v.), but in the northern sector at Alalah (Tell Atchana) Hurrian nobles are already attested. All this documentation extends roughly to c. 1700 BCE.
From 1700 to 1550 BCE there is no direct documentation, but after 1550 the following facts emerge: 1) Assyria is under H. rule, i.e., under the kingdom of Mitanni; 2) east of the Tigris a Hurrian centre exists at Nuzi; 3) in the very capital of the Hittites, Ḫattušaš (Boghazköy), many Hurrian deities are worshipped; 4) the H. have spread from northern Syria as far as Palestine and Edom (e.g., the Horites, Vulg. Horrai: Gen 36:20–22; Deut 2:12, 22).
There is consequently an initial Hurrian diffusion into Mesopotamia in the 22nd–20th centuries BCE, during which the Hurrian god Kumarbi was inserted into the Babylonian pantheon as “king of the gods” in a period of political weakness in Babylonia. Later there was another great Hurrian migration and infiltration between 1700 and 1550 BCE, in which Hurrian tribes created the kingdom of Mitanni. In this kingdom the H. formed the predominant and principal element, though they were not the rulers. The rulers were the Indo-Aryans, especially the Mariannu, a noble caste of horsemen.
Traces of the H. are still found in the 1st millennium BCE among the Urarteans (between 600 and 600) between Lake Urmia and Lake Van.
The language of the H. is written in cuneiform and has the peculiarity of a strange passive construction, so that scribes at Nuzi in their Akkadian texts occasionally interchange subject and object. The importance of the H. in literature is shown by the “Poem of Kumarbi” (preserved in Hittite), actually a cycle of different myths.
As for religion, the gods of the H. (through which, at least in part, Hurrian personal names can be distinguished from others) include Teššub (the storm-god) with his wife Ḫepa (the sun-goddess), Šimige (the sun-god), etc.
In art, many motifs both in glyptic and in pottery are now regarded as more Hurrian than Hittite in origin.