Burning and Destruction of the Khurrian Homeland East of the Tigris (In the First Half of the Second Millennium)

Abstract

The Hurrians are considered to be one of the indigenous peoples of ancient Kurdistan and the Zagros region. They covered a wide range from the Zagros Mountains to northern Mesopotamia and the Near Eastern. The Hurrians had civilizations and kingdoms of their own. Due to the vastness of the region and several political and economic aspects of the national Hurrian, were part of these areas, that have been attacked and occupied by other nations of the region, especially the Sumerian, Akkadian and Assyrian kings. The wars were so brutal that the enemies of the Hurrians not only conquered the kingdoms and cities but often burned the conquered cities and their agricultural lands to destroy the basis of life and agricultural economies. The invading kings proudly recorded this incident of invasion and burning in their date formulas letters, and Royal inscriptions. Of course, the Hurrians tried to defend their country and prevent the burning of their territory, but the dangers were greater and more terrible, so sometimes their enemies achieved their goals and destroyed and burned the city and territory of the Hurrians. In this paper, we try to highlight the invasions and the burning of the Hurrian lands from the perspective of the cuneiform texts of the second millennium B.C.