Mitanni
state in northern Syria and south-east Anatolia from ca. 1500 BC–1300 BC
Mitanni, also called Hanigalbat (Hanigalbat, Khanigalbat) in Assyrian or Naharin in Egyptian texts, was a Hurrian-speaking state in northern Syria and Southeast Anatolia from c. 1500 to 1300 BCE. Mitanni came to be a regional power after the Hittite destruction of Amorite, Babylon and a series of ineffectual Assyrian kings created a power vacuum in Mesopotamia.
Quotes
edit- The Nuzi archives, from the Mitanni vassal state of Arraphe (Kirkuk), contain the only sources on Hurrian society in Mesopotamia. These texts, which date to the late fifteenth and fourteenth centuries BC, provide glimpses of peasants and craftsmen working for the king and paid in rations, and of rich individuals in possession of estates, the latter often acquired by fictive inheritance under the terms of adoption in return for a gift. In Nuzi, women held a special position and enjoyed extensive rights.
- Sigfried J. de Laet (ed.), History of Humanity: From the Third Millennium to the Seventh Century BC (UNESCO Publishing, 1996), p. 483
