Charles River Editors - The Kingdom of Mitanni: The Mysterious History of the Short-Lived Mesopotamian Civilization during the Late Bronze Age

By Charles River Editors

A map of the Kingdom of Matanni in the Near East

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A Mitanni cylinder seal

The Late Bronze Age Near East (c. 1500-1200 BCE) was a time and place where great kingdoms and empires vied for land and influence, playing high stakes diplomatic games, trading, and occasionally going to war with each other in the process. The Egyptians, Hittites, Babylonians, Assyrians, and several smaller Canaanite kingdoms were all part of this system, which was one of the first true global systems in world history and also one of the most materially prosperous eras in antiquity. The major kingdoms are well-known to most people, but among them, for about 150 years, was another great kingdom that is often overlooked or forgotten.

When scholars study the history of the ancient Near East, several wars that had extremely brutal consequences (at least by modern standards) often stand out. Forced removal of entire populations, sieges that decimated entire cities, and wanton destruction of property were all tactics used by the various peoples of the ancient Near East against each other, but the Assyrians were the first people to make war a science. When the Assyrians are mentioned, images of war and brutality are among the first that come to mind, despite the fact that their culture prospered for nearly 2,000 years. The Assyrians, like their other neighbors in Mesopotamia, were literate and developed their own dialect of the Akkadian language that they used to write tens of thousands of documents in the cuneiform script (Kuhrt 2010, 1:84). Furthermore, the Assyrians prospered for so long that their culture is often broken down by historians into the Old, Middle, and Neo Assyrian periods, even though the Assyrians themselves viewed their history as a long succession of rulers from an archaic period until the collapse of the neo-Assyrian Empire in the 7th century BCE. In fact, the current divisions have been made by modern scholars based on linguistic changes, not on political dynasties (van de Mieroop 2007, 179).

One of the successor states that bridged the gap between the Old Assyrian Empire and Middle Assyrian Empire was the Kingdom of Mitanni, which remains somewhat of an enigma to modern scholars and has therefore so far failed to gain the attention of wider, popular audiences. However, while it existed, Mitanni affected the course of history in the Near East just as much as any of the other major kingdoms, and there is little doubt that the kingdom was just as powerful and technologically advanced as its peers during its apex.

The kingdom had a number of unique features in the region. The ethnic composition of Mitanni is relatively well-known, but the background of the rulers remains a source of debate. The physical extent of the empire is also another problem historians face because the capital has never been positively identified and details of the nature of the Mitanni government remain in question. Furthermore, since few monumental structures have been uncovered, details about Mitanni religion and court life are mostly unknown.

Thankfully, many of the Mitannis contemporaries kept detailed records, and thanks to Egyptian, Hittite, and Assyrian historical annals, along with Hurrian and Akkadian-Mitanni administrative and legal texts, a picture of this brief Bronze Age empire can be painted. The Mitanni kingdom sprung from the Hurrian people to rule over the disparate Canaanites of the northern Levant, but within a few short generations its powerful neighbors to the west and east had obliterated it and all but erased its memory from history.

The Kingdom of Mitanni: The Mysterious History of the Short-Lived Mesopotamian Civilization during the Late Bronze Age examines the history of the kingdom, and what life was like there. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Mitanni like never before.

The name Assyria is actually a modern derivation of the name of the ancient city of Aur (Ashur in English), which is where Assyrian culture began (Kuhrt 2010, 1:82). The ancient city of Ashur was located approximately 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of modern Mosul, located along the banks of the Tigris River in what is today the state of Iraq (Kuhrt 2010, 1:81). As such, Ashur was part of greater Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent region, which allowed the city to grow in terms of both culture and population. Assyria was provided with plenty of water from the Tigris River, and it was also on the fringes of the rainfall zone, which meant that it was not totally dependent on irrigation (Kuhrt 2010, 1:81).

Location allowed the population of Assyria to grow, but its culture flourished due to its proximity to southern Mesopotamia, particularly cities such as Babylon, Ur, and Larsa. The Assyrians encountered and adopted concepts already in use by their neighbors, including writing, which spurred the Assyrians advancement and has since made it much easier for people to study them.

Joey Hewitts map of Mesopotamia during the 2 nd millennium BCE

A letter sent circa 2400 BCE by the high-priest Luenna to the king of Lagash informing him of his son's death in combat.

The Assyrians development of writing allows current historians to read about the empires affairs, but it also allowed the Assyrians themselves the ability to document their own history. The Assyrians idea of history was essentially the same as that of their Babylonian neighbors to the south and involved ideas such as destiny that were manifested in the past and projected forward into the future (Speiser 1983, 38-39). As such, the Assyrians view of history was fundamentally different than the modern view. Modern notions of history are largely derived from the ancient Greeks, who believed that history should be written as a narrative and serve to teach those who read it. Modern views of history are largely divorced from ideas such as divine intervention, but to the Assyrians, it was the divine that made history, and as a result, they believed mortal failures were the result of not following divine law. In other words, history to the Assyrians was a theocratic history (Speiser 1983, 55-56).