GONE,
BUT NOT FORGOTTEN:
THE HURRIANS AND THEIR KINGDOM OF THE
LION

Gary A. Byers

While Hurrians are not mentioned by that name in the Bible, scholars suggest they had contact with the Israelites during the second millennium BC. When Abraham stayed in Haran of northwest Mesopotamia, he was living in the major region of Hurrian influence. Some scholars also suggest Hurrians lived in Canaan before and during the Israelite period. On linguistic grounds the Hurrians, also known as Horites, are connected with two of the seven nations of Canaan-the Hivites and Jebusites (Dt 7:1). Thus, when the Jebusites of Jebus (Jerusalem -2 Sm 24:16), and the Hivites of Shechem (Gn 34:2) and Gibeon (Jos 9:7) were called Horites in some textual variants, they are possibly Hurrians living in the land of Canaan.

Richard Hess (1997:34–6) has noted four Hurrian names in the Conquest narrative, demonstrating the antiquity and accuracy of the account. Piram (king of Jarmuth) and Hoham (king of Hebron) (Jos 10:3), Sheshai and Talmai (sons of Anak-Jos 15:14) all have Hurrian-based names. A latter Talmai (king of Geshur and father-in-law to David; 2 Sm 3:3, 13:37; and 1 Chr 3:2) is the last Hurrian name in the Bible. Piram, Sheshai and Talmai are all common Hurrian names and are found in 15th century BC cuneiform tablets at Nuzi.

Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Akkadians and Hittites – all are familiar to students of ancient history. After 150 years of archaeological discovery, their cities, houses, daily habits and languages have been revealed. Yet, one of their ancient contemporaries has managed to keep hidden from modern eyes-the Hurrians. The first modern glimpse of the Hurrians came at the turn of the century when scholars found an unknown language on one of the clay tablets from Tell el-Amarna, Egypt. Yet, not until the 1920’s, was an actual reference to the Hurrians found on a Hittite tablet.

Hurrian Here and Hurrian There

Discovery of additional ancient texts began to fill in the picture. Egyptian pharaohs corresponded with Hurrian kings. The Hittites, whose kingdom lay in what is today Turkey, dreaded the approach of Hurrian armies. Court musicians in the Syrian coastal kingdom of Ugarit performed Hurrian compositions.

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Kumarbi chief god of the Hurrian pantheon, ruled from the Hurrian capital city of Urkesh.

Yet, beyond textual evidence, there was no real archaeological evidence explaining who the Hurrians were and where they came from. Recent studies even suggested there was little hope of identifying a distinctive culture for the Hurrian people. After more than 70 years of searching for its remains, archaeologists generally agreed that Urkesh, the Hurrian capital, was either destroyed in antiquity or had never been more than a mythical home of the Hurrian gods.

Picnic on a Tell

All that changed beginning in 1983, with a picnic. Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati, a husband-and-wife archaeological team, had been excavating in the region since 1976. They stopped to eat on Tell Mozan, in northwest Syria. Surprisingly, the large mound rising 90 ft above the surrounding plain and covering some 300 acres, had never been excavated.

Yet, the site had not gone unnoticed. Sir Max Mallowan and his wife, mystery writer Agatha Christie, visited Tell Mozan in 1937. Mallowan even dug three test trenches on the mound. Believing the pottery he found to be Roman, he determined the earlier layers were deep beneath the surface. The Buccellatis, on their picnic, also saw the pottery Mallowan called Roman. They recognized it for what it really was.

“The pottery recovered at Tell Mozan is very sophisticated, and does somewhat resemble certain Roman pottery,” says Kelly-Buccellati. “No other sites excavated at that time had yielded this type, so it’s not surprising that Mallowan associated it with Roman ware.” In the 1930’s, the pottery’s metallic cast was considered diagnostic for Roman manufacture. The Buccellatis, nonetheless, concluded that it was much earlier, from the third millennium BC. There would be no Roman layers through which to dig. Tell Mozan was obviously an important and very ancient site. Could it be the Hurrian capital city of Urkesh?

A few tantalizing hints of Urkesh’s historical reality had surfaced over the years. In 1948, two small bronze lions, each inscribed in cuneiform, had been sold in Amuda, Syria. The text on each lion, the oldest known Hurrian inscriptions, and probably dating to the third millennium BC, was translated as “The king of Urkesh built the temple of the lion.” One lion had been purchased by the Louvre, the other by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Though the lions had been sold in the marketplace of Amuda, there are no traces of third or second millennium occupation nearby. The Buccellatis reasoned that Tell Mozan

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Seal impression of Tupkish, King of Urkesh (2300 BC).

was the closest second-third millennium site and source of the lions. They began to excavate what they hoped was Urkesh, the ancient Hurrian capital.

Tales from the Tell

After nine excavation seasons, the ancient city’s basic plan has been uncovered. Among their first discoveries was the site’s outer defense wall. A building 30 x 50 ft, believed to be a temple, was also uncovered. A stone ramp leads to the building’s interior, which is surfaced with a thick, cement-like pavement. With no evidence of a drainage system, architects presume that the building had a roof, the lack of columns or post-holes, led engineers to conclude it had a pitched roof. The building’s foundations are of roughly-hewn limestone blocks, from which mud-brick walls probably once rose. A large stone block with a depression in its center appears to have been an altar.

The building’s earliest phase was destroyed by fire, and resulting debris was piled in the back of the building. Amid the debris was found a small limestone statue of a lion, stylistically similar to the well-known bronze lions. The stone lion’s mane, like that of the bronze statues, is depicted using deeply incised, irregular patterns; the deeply-cut eyes

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may have been inlaid. Also like the two bronze lions, this limestone figure is more realistic in its representation than other mid-third millennium lion representations from the south.

Because the lion was found in the altar area, the Buccellatis named the building “The Temple of the Lion.” It cannot be certain, however, that this is the temple mentioned in the inscriptions on the bronze lions found in 1948. While they could name the building, the Buccellatis were not able to name the city. Could there be an archive, tablets or seals, that would positively identify the site and throw light on its history?

During the 1992–93 excavation seasons, a structure was opened near the city gate. Believed to be a storehouse, over 650 fragmentary clay seal impressions were found there. Finding the seals themselves would have been far easier to excavate than their delicate clay impressions. Nevertheless, the impressions were carefully removed, photographed and drawn. Disappointingly, nearly all had been broken in antiquity, when the containers they sealed were opened.

Sealed But Not Forgotten

Yet, careful excavation revealed one seal that could be read. “Tupkish, king of Urkesh” it proclaimed! At last, the name of a Hurrian king linked with the name of the capital city. The inscription’s archaic script indicated he lived around the 23rd century BC—centuries before

Seal impression of Uqnitum, wife of King Tupkish.

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any Hurrian rulers previously known.

Interestingly, the script of the seal impressions is often reversed in the clay. It can be read correctly by looking at the image in a mirror. Why Hurrians at Urkesh produced their seals in reverse—unlike almost every other Meso-potamian cylinder seal for millennia—is, Buccellati says, “the million-dollar question.”

To date, only one section of the storeroom has been excavated. Over 120 clay seal impressions read “Uqnitum, wife of King Tupkish,” or otherwise indicate members of the queen’s household. Apparently, the queen owned property in her own right and goods belonging to her were stored in this area. “Obviously, she wasn’t busy sealing jars in her storeroom,” Kelly-Buccellati says. “She had her own servants and one, the nanny, is even named.”

Produce from neighboring farms must have been shipped to the palace. Goods destined for the queen’s quarters were sealed with her name, as we address a package today. Naming Uqnitum as the wife of the king leads Kelly-Buccellati to believe special status was given to the consort of the king. This is contrary to the practice in Ugarit, where the king’s mother had special status. So far, there has been no mention of a queen-mother, nor any evidence of royal polygamy.

The Royal Storehouse of Tell Mozan. A=temple, B=queen’s storeroom, C=(king’s?) storeroom, D=large unidentified room.

Because many of the other seal impressions depict people preparing meals or serving banquets, the archaeologists presume this was a work area. The queen’s actual stone seals, along with her jewelry, were kept elsewhere.

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Hurrian Back Again

An estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people populated Urkesh, setting astride regional trade and mining routes. The Hurrians must have played an important economic role in the lives of their neighbors, the Sumerians and Eblaites. Urkesh must have prospered handsomely as trade brought gold and silver into its treasury while nearby fertile river valleys filled its granaries.

With no signs of cataclysm nor accounts of devastating war, Buccellati believes the city’s abandonment around 1500 BC was due to either climate change or depletion of the water table. Quietly passing into history, Urkesh only lived on in the cultures it influenced.

“The importance of the discovery of Urkesh can hardly be overstated,” says Piotr Steinkeller, professor of Near Eastern Languages at Harvard University. “It dramatically revises the picture of the historical geography of Mesopotamia.”

No longer a footnote among ancient peoples, the Hurrians are now a full-fledged and fascinating chapter in Mesopotamian history. Though finding Urkesh has been compared to finding the Mount Olympus of Greek mythology, it is far more revealing. Urkesh was the Hurrians’ political and economic capital. Gernot Wilhelm, Professor of Oriental philology at Wurzburg University in Bavaria, president of the German Oriental Society, and the world’s foremost authority on the Hurrian language, noted,

After nearly 30 years of research on the Hurrian language and history I appreciate very much that the Hurrians now enjoy the wider attention they deserve.

In coming seasons the Buccellatis will dig in a section of the storeroom adjoining the queen’s area, where they hope to find the king’s storeroom and perhaps more illuminating finds. Whether this hunch will prove as fruitful as their earlier ones is unclear, but with only one percent of Tell Mozan excavated to date, it appears the now-revised Hurrian chapter of early human civilization will need to be lengthened still.

(Adapted from The Kingdom of the Lion, by Pat and Samir Twair, Aramco World 48.3, 1997.)

Bibliography

Hess, R. S.

1997 Getting Personal: What Names in the Bible Teach Us. Bible Review 13.6: 30–37.