Mitanni: A Visual History

Mitanni was a Hurrian-speaking kingdom that dominated northern Mesopotamia and Syria from about 1500 to 1300 BC, with its capital Washukanni somewhere on the Khabur. Its rulers bore Indo-Aryan throne names and invoked Mitra, Varuna and Indra in treaties; its charioteers, the maryannu, were the finest of the age. It fought Thutmose III, then allied with Egypt, sending princesses to Thutmose IV and Amenhotep III. Suppiluliuma I of the Hittites sacked Washukanni around 1340 BC and Assyria, its former vassal, absorbed the remnant as Hanigalbat by about 1260.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Mitanni. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Mitanni territory

Timeline of the Mitanni

1. 1,500 BC
   Mitanni unified
2. 1,450 BC
   Thutmose III's Euphrates campaign
3. 1,430 BC
   Saushtatar's peakAshur sacked.
4. 1,380 BC
   Peace and marriage with Egypt
5. 1,350 BC
   Tushratta's letters to Amarna
6. 1,340 BC
   Suppiluliuma sacks Washukanni
7. 1,260 BC
   Assyria annexes Hanigalbat

Origins

Hurrians had lived in the Khabur region for centuries; around 1500 BC a ruling class with Indo-Aryan names (Parattarna, Saushtatar, Artatama) united them into a kingdom stretching from the Zagros to the Mediterranean, with Assyria, Arrapha, Nuzi and Alalakh as vassals. Whether the elite were Indo-Aryan migrants or Hurrians who adopted an Indo-Aryan warrior culture is debated. Saushtatar sacked Ashur and took its gold door to Washukanni.

Great power

Thutmose III crossed the Euphrates against Mitanni around 1450; his grandson made peace, and Mitannian princesses joined the harems of three pharaohs, including Tadukhipa, sent by Tushratta to Amenhotep III. The Amarna letters preserve Tushratta's long, complaining letters about gold. Kikkuli of Mitanni wrote the horse-training manual found at Hattusa, and Mitannian glass and seals spread across the Near East.

Destruction

Tushratta faced a rival branch backed by the Hittites and Assyria. Suppiluliuma I crossed the Euphrates, sacked Washukanni and took Syria; Tushratta was murdered by his son around 1340. The Hittites installed his other son Shattiwaza as a client, but Adad-nirari I and Shalmaneser I of Assyria conquered what was left, deporting the population, and Hanigalbat became an Assyrian province by about 1260.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• New Kingdom of Egypt (1,550 BC to 1,069 BC)
• New Hittite Kingdom (Hittite Empire) (1,400 BC to 1,180 BC)
• Middle Hittite Kingdom (1,500 BC to 1,400 BC)
• Middle Assyrian Empire (1,365 BC to 1,050 BC)
• First Babylonian Empire (1,894 BC to 1,595 BC)
• Old Assyrian period (2,025 BC to 1,364 BC)

8 surprising things about the Mitanni

1. A Mitanni-Hittite treaty of about 1380 BC is the earliest text to name Indra, Mitra, Varuna and the Nasatyas, gods of the Rigveda.
2. Kikkuli's manual uses Indo-Aryan words for numbers of laps: aika (one), tera (three), panza (five), satta (seven).
3. Mitanni's capital Washukanni has never been definitely located; a 2019 excavation at Kemune revealed a Mitanni palace on the Tigris.
4. Tushratta wrote to the pharaoh that gold was 'as common as dust' in Egypt and asked for a lot of it.
5. The Mitannian princess Tadukhipa may have been the same person as Nefertiti, though most scholars doubt it.
6. The kingdom's charioteers, the maryannu, gave their name to a warrior class across the Levant.
7. Mitanni is known from other people's archives; almost none of its own records survive.
8. The Hurrian language was unrelated to any major family and is preserved partly in Mitannian religious songs found at Ugarit.

Sources

• Mitanni Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Mitanni Wikipedia
• Mitanni World History Encyclopedia
• Marc Van De Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East (2004) Blackwell

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