ABSTRACT
From as early as the mid-third millennium bc, Upper Mesopotamia had experienced the development of a series of Hurrian city-states and several attempts at political unification, from the kings of Urkish and Nawar to the empire of Shamshi-Adad. However, by the end of the seventeenth century bc, the region was finally unified under a single kingdom. The latter was defined in the sources as Mitanni (or Mittani/ Maitani), its political name, as Hurri, which refers to the name of its people, or as Hanigalbat, the name of the region (Figure 17.1). Even before 1600 bc, in Hattusili I’s annals, the Hurrians who invaded Anatolia appear as a politically unified group (the Akkadian version uses Hanigalbat, the geographic term). Similarly, the Hurrians fighting the Hittites in northern Syria were considered a distinct political entity.
