HURRIANS hōōr’ ĭ ənz (חֹרִ֔י֙, Horites; LXX Χορραῖοι).

1. Origin and geographic distribution. Groups either designating themselves as Hurrians (cuneiform Hurri) or writing a language identified elsewhere with the Hurri, have been identified all over the ancient Near E, from ancient Nuzi, E of the Tigris River, to Hattusha, in central Asia Minor, to Pal. and even Lower (i.e., northern) Egypt. In the Hitt. texts from ancient Hattusha, the term for the people of Huri was hurlas. The term for the language that they spoke and wrote, of which many samples were found at Hattusha, was hurlili. In Akkad. sources, whether from Nuzi, Mari, Hattusha, Alalakh, Ugarit, or Egypt (El Amarna), the people and their language were termed hurri. At Ugarit, the native (W Sem.) term must also have been pronounced hurrī, although we have only the consonantal writing hry. The Egyptians called the land of Pal. hurri/u, but spelled it in consonants, hr. In the Mitanni Letter found at El Amarna, the native Hurrian term was hurw-ohe or hurr-ohe. In the OT, the corresponding term is חֹרִ֔י֙ (LXX Χορραῖοι) from earlier Hurrī. The language of the Hurrians, which is still only partially understood, seems related to only one other known language—Urartian, in which the kings of Urartu around Lake Van composed inscrs. during the first half of the 1st millennium b.c. (c. 900-600 b.c.). It is believed by some that both Hurrian and Urartian belong to languages of the Caucasus (ancient Armenia). Although Hurrian shares some structural features with members of the Caucasic family’s modern representatives, no convincing case for relationship between the two has been made.

2. History. Hurrians appeared in the Near E as early as the middle of the 3rd millennium b.c., c. 2300. Hurrians occupied the great half-circle of the Taurus Mountains from Urkish, N of Carchemish, to the country of Namar, around Lake Van, and perhaps as far S as the Upper Zab River. Hurrian kings (at least kings whose names appear to be of a Hurrian type) reigned in Assyria c. 2200-2000 b.c. The so-called Assyrian King List found at Khorsabad includes the names Tudia, Ushpia, Sulili, and Kikkia, which are neither Semitic nor Hurrian. During the reign of the Hitt. king Hattushili I (c. 1700 b.c.), Hurrians appeared along the Upper Euphrates to the E of the Hitt. heartland and carried out occasional raids to the W to harass the Hittites. When Hattushili’s successor, Murshili I (c. 1595 b.c.), led his armies through Syria to sack Babylon, he recorded military encounters with Hurrians. But it was during the following few centuries (c. 1600-1400 b.c.) that the great Hurrian buildup in Syria transpired. Hurrians dominated, if not actually ruled, the kingdom of Kizzuwatna (Cilicia), as well as the kingdom of Alalakh to the S. Indeed, the new dynasty of the Hittites, of which Suppiluliuma I is the most illustrious representative, seems to have been of Hurrian extraction. It is from c. 1400 b.c. that the great influx of Hurrian deities and Hurrian myths in the Hitt. corpus is dated. The greatest political achievement of the Hurrians was the kingdom of Mitanni, whose capital was Washukkanni in the Middle Euphrates Valley. At its height, c. 1400 b.c., Mitanni dominated Kizzuwatna and N Syria on the W, Assyria in the central region, and Nuzi in the E. During this period (c. 1500-1400 b.c.), Mitanni was ruled by kings who bore Indo-Aryan (i.e., not Hurrian-names): Shuttarna, Parsashatar, Shaushshatar, Artatama, and Tushratta. They carried on royal corresponden ce and international trade with the pharaohs of 18th dynasty of Egypt as equals. Several Mitannian princesses became wives of the pharaohs. It is through the royal correspondence between Tushratta of Mitanni and Amenophis III of Egypt that we possess in the El Amarna archive the famous Mitanni Letter, still the primary source for the Hurrian language. King Suppiluliuma I of Hatti put an end to the kingdom of Mitanni c. 1380 b.c. But the principal contribution of the Hurrians was not in their organized political authority; it was the cultural infusion that they brought into Hittite, Babylonian, Ugaritian, and Heb. societies that left its permanent mark.

3. Hurrians and Hurrian culture in the OT. The degree of Hurrian cultural influence on the peoples of southern and central Pal. was far less than that in Syria and northern Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. Since Abraham emigrated into Pal. from the E via the Haran region in Upper Mesopotamia, he brought with him many customs acquired while he lived in Haran. Many hitherto obscure aspects of the patriarchal narratives, chiefly having to do with legal customs, have been remarkably clarified by the tablets from Nuzi, a Hurrian settlement in northern Iraq, E of the Tigris. The presence in Pal. proper of Hurrians can be shown by Hurrian names. The El Amarna tablets indicate that the Jebusite ruler of Jerusalem bore a name that means “servant of (the goddess) Hepa.” Hepa is a shortened form of the name Hepat, or Hebat, the name of the leading goddess in the Hurrian pantheon, the consort of the god Teshub. A Jebusite successor to “Servant of Hepa” is the king from whom David purchased the site for the future temple of Yahweh (2 Sam 24:18ff.; cf., 1 Chron 21:18ff.). English VSS call this king either Araunah or Ornan. The Heb. consonantal text renders it either ’rwnh, ’wrnh (2 Sam 24:16), or ’rnn (1 Chron 21:18). The name (or perhaps, title) is Hurrian. The correct consonantal pattern is the second (’wrnh) and the meaning is supplied by a recently recovered Hurrian-Akkadian dictionary tablet from Ugarit, which contains the following two entries:

(1) (Hurrian) ewri = (Akkadian) bēlu (“lord”),

(2) (Hurrian) ewir-ne = (Akkadian) sharru (“king”).

Hurrian ewir-ne is clearly the origin of the Jebusite king of Jerusalem’s name ’wrnh. Clay tablets found in Taanach and Shechem in central Pal. contain Hurrian personal names. In the OT, several groups that appear to be Hurrian bear the names “Jebusite,” “Horite,” and even “Hivite.” It is possible that Hamor the Hivite, who is connected with the town of Shechem, was a Hurrian. Other Hivite centers were at Gibeon, of Jerusalem (Josh 3-7; 11:19), and in the Lebanon (Judg 3:3) and Hermon (Josh 11:3) mountains. It has been suggested that the Heb. form hwy arose from hry by accidental replacement of the r with w, since both letters resemble each other. In Genesis 36:2 and Joshua 9:7, the LXX preserves Χορραῖοι, “Horites,” whereas the Heb. text has the altered form hwy. See Hivites.

Bibliography E. A. Speiser, “Ethnic Movements in the Near East in the Second Millennium b.c.,” AASOR, XIII (1933), 13-54; A. Götze, Hethiter, Churriter und Assyrer (1936); I. J. Gelb, Hurrians and Subarians (1944); R. T. O’Callaghan, Aram Naharaim (1948); H. G. Güterbock, “The Hurrian Element in the Hittite Empire,” Journal of World History, II (1954), 383-394.