Misplaced Pages

#89910

45-511: Excavations revealed that the town was already inhabited during the ancient Assyrian trading colonies period ( Karum period ). Two residences (House of Tamura and House of Tatali) have been excavated. This period ended with the big fire in the settlement. After the Karum period city was destroyed, the Hittites built a new city with a palace complex. Samuha was a primary base of field operations for

90-416: A , /f/ becomes diphthongised to /u/, e.g. tānōšau (<*tān-ōš-af)) "I did". /s/ is traditionally transcribed by /š/, because the cuneiform script adapted the sign indicating /š/ for this phoneme. /ts/ is regularly transcribed by z , and /x/ by ḫ or h . In Hurrian, /r/ and /l/ do not occur at the beginning of a word. Vowels, just like consonants, can be either long or short. In the cuneiform script, this

135-500: A certain order. The resulting "morpheme chain" is as follows: Note: (SA) indicates morphemes added through Suffixaufnahme , described below. These elements are not all obligatory, and in fact a noun can occur as a single root followed by nothing except zero-suffixes for case and number. Despite the general agglutinative structure of the language, the plural marker (5) merges with the case morphemes (6) in ways which do not seem to be entirely predictable, so singular and plural forms of

180-456: A few Hurrian ones. This stem-final vowel disappears when certain endings are attached to it, such as case endings that begin with a vowel, certain derivational suffixes, or the article suffix. Examples: kāz-ōš (like a cup) from kāzi (cup), awarra (the fields) from awari (field). A minority of Hurrian noun roots have athematic stem vowels, such as šen (brother) in the forms šena and -šenni , mad (wisdom; later becomes i -stem in

225-515: A harbor), break-water" ) is the name given to ancient Old Assyrian period trade posts in Anatolia (modern Turkey ) from the 20th to 18th centuries BC. The main centre of karum trading was at the ancient town of Kanesh . Early references to karu come from the Ebla tablets ; in particular, a vizier known as Ebrium concluded the earliest treaty fully known to archaeology, known variously as

270-422: A large number of suffixes could be attached to existing stems to form new words. For example, attardi (ancestor) from attai (father), futki (son) from fut (to beget), aštohhe (feminine) from ašti (woman). Hurrian also provided many verbal suffixes, which often changed the valency of the verb they modify. The nominal morphology of Hurrian employs numerous suffixes and/or enclitics, which always follow

315-520: A location on or near the Euphrates. Already in 1959, Gurney and Garstang provided a very extended discussion about how Hittite documents seem to contradict a location for Samuha along the Euphrates, locating it instead along the Kizilirmak near modern Sivas, perhaps at Zara. They further pointed out that the town of Pittiyariga, often mentioned in the same texts as Samuha, which is associated with

360-445: A noun in the genitive modifying another noun, in which case the following nouns takes a possessive pronoun. šēniffufenefe šēn-iffu-fe-ne-fe brother-my- GEN . SG - ART . SG - GEN . SG ōmīnīfe ōmīni-i-fe land-his- GEN . SG šēniffufenefe ōmīnīfe šēn-iffu-fe-ne-fe ōmīni-i-fe brother-my-GEN.SG-ART.SG-GEN.SG land-his-GEN.SG "of the land of my brother" (lit, "of my brother his land") The phenomenon

405-552: A voiced consonant is written in these situations, i.e. b (for p ), d (for t ), g (for k ), v (for f ) or ž (for š ), and, very rarely, ǧ (for h , ḫ ). All consonants except /w/ and /j/ can be long or short. The long ( geminate ) consonants occur only between vowels. In the cuneiform, as in the Latin transcription, geminated consonants are indicated by doubling the corresponding symbol, so ...VC-CV.. . Short consonants are written ...V-CV... , for example mānnatta ("I am")

450-589: Is given the name Ankuva . That is also a reference to archaeological discoveries of various karu in Central Anatolia. Hurrian language Hurrian is an extinct Hurro-Urartian language spoken by the Hurrians (Khurrites), a people who entered northern Mesopotamia around 2300 BC and had mostly vanished by 1000 BC. Hurrian was the language of the Mitanni kingdom in northern Mesopotamia and

495-540: Is indicated by placing an additional vowel symbol between the CV and VC syllables, giving CV-V-VC . Short vowels are indicated by a simple CV-VC pairing. In the Latin transcription, long vowels are indicated with a macron, ā , ē , ī , ō , and ū . For /o/, which is absent in the Sumerian script, the sign for U is used, whereas /u/ is represented by Ú . While Hurrian could not combine multiple stems to form new stems,

SECTION 10

#1732771840090

540-662: Is known as the Bronze Age collapse . In the texts of these languages, as well as those of Akkadian or Urartian, many Hurrian names and places can be found. Renewed interest in Hurrian was triggered by texts discovered in Boğazköy in the 1910s and Ugarit in the 1930s. Speiser (1941) published the first comprehensive grammar of Hurrian. Since the 1980s, the Nuzi corpus from the archive of Silwa-tessup has been edited by G. Wilhelm. Since

585-510: Is written ma-a-a n-n a-a t-t a . Since /f/ was not found in the Sumerian cuneiform script, the Hurrians used the symbols representing /p/, /b/ or /w/. An /f/ can be recognised in words where this transcription varies from text to text. In cases where a word occurs only once, with a p , it cannot be known if it was originally meant to represent a /p/ or an /f/. In final syllables containing

630-566: The Northeast Caucasian languages , Indo-European languages , or Kartvelian languages which are spoken in Georgia ). It has also been speculated that it is related to " Sino-Caucasian ". However, none of these proposals are generally accepted. The earliest Hurrian text fragments consist of lists of names and places from the end of the third millennium BC. The first full texts date to the reign of king Tish-atal of Urkesh , at

675-460: The direct object in antipassive constructions (where the transitive subject receives the absolutive case instead of the ergative), and, in the variety of Nuzi , also the dative. In Hurrian, the function of the so-called " article " is not entirely clear, inasmuch as its use does not seem to resemble closely a typical definite article . It is attached directly to the noun, but before any case endings, e.g. tiwē-na-še (object. art . gen.pl ) (of

720-458: The equative case , has a different form in both of the main dialects. In Hattusha and Mari, the usual ending is -oš , termed equative I, whereas in the Mitanni letter we find the form -nna , called equative II. Another case, the so-called 'e-case', is very rare, and carries a genitive or allative meaning. Like many languages in the region, Hurrian is an ergative language, which means that

765-481: The "Treaty between Ebla and Aššur " or the "Treaty with Abarsal " (scholars have disputed whether the text refers to Aššur or to Abarsal, an unknown location). In either case, the other city contracted to establish karu in Eblaite territory (Syria), among other things. “The word derives from the mercantile quarter of Mesopotamian cities, which were usually just beyond the city walls, at a convenient landing place by

810-592: The Black Sea. More recently (2021) there's more consensus that Samuha was located in Kayalipinar on the Kizilirmak river. This location is reflected in the coordinates given in this article. Hittite records indicate that Samuha was located on a navigable river, which tends to support the Euphrates location. Oliver Gurney notes in the above-cited work that the Halys river is also navigable in sections. He favored

855-722: The Euphrates location, noting that the Murad Su, the present day Murat River had river traffic in 1866. The Murat river is a tributary of the Euphrates river. Both proposed locations are south of the Kaskian incursion that overtook Hattusa and required the Hittite leadership to move to Samuha. Mursili II talks of stopping in Samuha on his way home from the Kaska lands in his Ten Year Annals (KBo 34 iii 45), which would argue strongly against

900-506: The Hittites while the Kaskas were plundering the Hatti heartland, including the historic capital Hattusa , during the 14th century BC under kings Tudhaliya I-III and Suppiluliuma I . During this period, the religions of Samuha and Sapinuwa became influenced by the faith of the Hurrians. Excavations at Sapinuwa have revealed that at the beginning of this time, Sapinuwa held the archives for

945-529: The Hurrian king Tushratta to the pharaoh Amenhotep III . The Hurro-Urartian relation was recognized as early as 1890 by Sayce (ZA 5, 1890, 260–274) and Jensen (ZA 6, 1891, 34–72). After the fall of the Akkadian Empire , Hurrians began to settle in northern Syria , and by 1725 BC they constituted a sizable portion of the population of Yamhad . The presence of a large Hurrian population brought Hurrian culture and religion to Aleppo , as evidenced by

SECTION 20

#1732771840090

990-474: The case endings are usually listed separately. The anaphoric marker (7) is formally identical to the article and anchors the Suffixaufnahme suffixes (8) and (9). While the absolutive pronoun clitics (10) attached to a noun are not necessarily connected to it syntactically, typically designating the object or intransitive subject of a nearby verb, the third plural pronoun clitic -lla can be used to signal

1035-671: The designation Old Hurrian . Whereas in Mitanni the vowel pairs i / e and u / o are differentiated, in the Hattusha dialect they have merged into i and u respectively. There are also differences in morphology, some of which are mentioned in the course of the exposition below. Nonetheless, it is clear that these represent dialects of one language. Another Hurrian dialect is likely represented in several texts from Ugarit, but they are so poorly preserved that little can be said about them, save that spelling patterns used elsewhere to represent Hurrian phonemes are virtually ignored in them. There

1080-423: The existence of certain religious festivals that bear Hurrian names. Of Nergal the lord of Hawalum, Atal-shen, the caring shepherd, the king of Urkesh and Nawar, the son of Sadar-mat the king, is the builder of the temple of Nergal, the one who overcomes opposition. Let Shamash and Ishtar destroy the seeds of whoever removes this tablet. Shaum-shen is the craftsman. In the thirteenth century BC, invasions from

1125-480: The faith of Kizzuwatna to Samuha. Mursili appointed his youngest son Hattusili III priest of the local goddess, referred to as 'Ishtar of Samuha', identified in scholarship as either Sausga or the similar deity DINGIR.GE 6 The Hittites of Hattusa worshipped the goddess of Samuha as a protective deity. Samuha was an important cult site of this goddess. Samuha disappears from the historical record after Hattusili III. In years past, scholars have been divided on

1170-404: The final /i/, an epenthetic vowel /u/ is inserted between them, e.g. hafur u n-ne-ta (heaven- art - all.sg , to heaven), the stem of which is hafurni (heaven). One prominent feature of Hurrian is the phenomenon of Suffixaufnahme , or suffix absorption, which it shares with Urartian and the geographically proximate Kartvelian languages . In this process, the dependent modifiers of a noun share

1215-501: The form madi ), and muž (divine name). Some names of gods, heroes, persons, and places are also athematic, e.g. Teššob (Teššobi/a), Gilgaamiž, Hurriž (later Hurri). These nouns seem to occur more frequently in the earliest Hurrian texts (end of the third millennium BC ). Note: This type of thematic stem vowel is completely different in function to Indo-European stem vowels. For a discussion of those, see here and here . Hurrian has 13 cases in its system of declension. One of these,

1260-444: The genitive and dative endings merges with a preceding p or t giving pp and tt respectively, e.g. Teššuppe (of Teššup), Hepat-te (of Hepat). The associative can be combined with the instrumental, as in šēna-nn-ae (brother- ass-instr ), meaning 'brotherly'. The so-called essive case can convey the meaning "as" and a condition, but also to express direction, the aim of a demand, the transition from one condition to another,

1305-467: The kingdom. Under either Tudhaliya I or Tudhaliya II , Sapinuwa was burnt. Hattusili III later recorded of this time that Azzi had "made Samuha its frontier". Samuha then became the base for the reconquests of Tudhaliya III and his then-general Suppiluliuma. The Deeds of Suppiluliuma report that he brought Kaska captives back to Samuha after a campaign toward Hayasa (connected somehow with Azzi) on Tudhaliya's behalf. Tudhaliya III himself centralised

1350-410: The late 1980s, significant progress was made due to the discovery of a Hurrian-Hittite bilingual, edited by E. Neu ( StBoT 32). The Hurrian of the Mitanni letter differs significantly from that used in the texts at Hattusha and other Hittite centres, as well as from earlier Hurrian texts from various locations. The non-Mitanni letter varieties, while not entirely homogeneous, are commonly subsumed under

1395-515: The location of Samuha. Some maintained it was on the banks of the Euphrates river . Others believe it was located on the Halys river, presently called the Kızılırmak River . The Kızılırmak River is closer to Hattusa . Its headwaters are near the city of Sivas , 130 miles (209 km) away. The river flows to the east, south of Hattusa, then turns north to the west of Hattusa, discharging into

Šamuḫa - Misplaced Pages Continue

1440-570: The main waterway.” Sargon the Great (of Akkadia) who likely destroyed Ebla soon afterward, is said in a much-later Hittite account to have invaded Anatolia to punish Nurdaggal, the king of Purushanda (in Anatolia), for mistreating the Akkadian and Assyrian merchant class in the karu there. However, no contemporary source mentions that to be the case. During the 2nd millennium BC, Anatolia

1485-605: The newly discovered iron and was forty times more valuable than silver. The most important Anatolian export was copper, and the Assyrian merchants sold tin and clothing to Anatolia. The name Karum is given to an upscale shopping mall in Çankaya district of modern-day Ankara , Turkey. It is a reference to the presence of karu in Asia Minor since the very early days of history. Another mall in Ankara's Bilkent district

1530-515: The noun's case suffixes. Between the suffix of the dependent noun and the case ending comes the article, which agrees with the referent in number, for example, with an adjective: ḫurwoḫḫeneš ḫurw-oḫḫe-ne-š Hurrian- ADJ - ART . SG - ERG . SG ōmīnneš ōmīn-ne-š land- ADJ - ART . SG - ERG . SG ḫurwoḫḫeneš ōmīnneš ḫurw-oḫḫe-ne-š ōmīn-ne-š Hurrian-ADJ-ART.SG-ERG.SG land-ADJ-ART.SG-ERG.SG "the Hurrian land" Suffixaufnahme also occurs with other modifiers, such as

1575-437: The objects). The article is unmarked in the absolutive singular – e.g. kāzi 'cup'. The /n/ of the article merges with a preceding /n/, /l/ or /r/ giving /nn/, /ll/ and /rr/ respectively, e.g. ēn-na (the gods), ōl-la (the others), awar-ra (the fields). In these cases, the stem-final vowel /i/ has been dropped; the singulars of these words are ēni (god), ōli (another), awari (field). If there are two consonants preceding

1620-472: The plural of the host noun in the absolutive. Almost all Hurrian nouns end in a vowel, known as a thematic vowel or stem vowel . This vowel will always appear on the word, and will not switch between types. Most nouns end with /i/; a few end with /a/ (mostly words for relatives and divine names) and /e/ (a few suffix derivations, possibly the same as /i/-stems). As well, in texts from Nuzi , stems of /u/ (or /o/?) are found, mainly on non-Hurrian names and

1665-471: The same case is used for the subject of an intransitive verb as for the object of a transitive one; this case is called the absolutive . For the subject of a transitive verb, however, the ergative case is used. Hurrian has two numbers, singular and plural. The following table outlines the case endings (the terms used for some of the more obscure cases vary between different authors). In certain phonological environments, these endings can vary. The f of

1710-557: The start of the second millennium BC, and were found on a stone tablet accompanying the Hurrian foundation pegs known as the "Urkish lions". Archeologists have discovered the texts of numerous spells, incantations, prophecies and letters at sites including Hattusha , Mari , Tuttul , Babylon , Ugarit and others. Early study of the language, however, was entirely based on the Mitanni letter , found in 1887 at Amarna in Egypt, written by

1755-647: The upper Euphrates areas, must be further east yet. This whole issue was discussed in a great detail by Gurney and Garstang in their 1959 book, which was written long before the recent excavations at Kayalipinar provided more clarity on the matter. As of 2020, excavations by Andreas and Vuslat Müller-Karpe in Kayalıpınar, Yıldızeli have revealed cuneiform archives that strongly connect the site's identity with Samuha. Numerous important cuneiform texts were found in recent excavations. The first tablet fragment in Kayalıpınar

1800-627: The west by the Hittites and the south by the Assyrians brought the end of the Mitanni empire, which was divided between the two conquering powers. In the following century, attacks by the Sea Peoples brought a swift end to the last vestiges of the Hurrian language. It is around this time that other languages, such as the Hittite language and the Ugaritic language also became extinct, in what

1845-542: Was also a Hurrian-Akkadian creole, called Nuzi , spoken in the Mitanni provincial capital of Arrapha . As can be seen from the table, Hurrian did not possess a voiced - voiceless distinction. There is no voiced consonant with an unvoiced counterpart, nor vice versa. However, based on evidence from the cuneiform script, there seem to have been voiced allophones of consonants other than /ts/, which occurred in certain environments: between two voiced phonemes (sonorants or vowels), and, surprisingly, also word-finally. Sometimes

Šamuḫa - Misplaced Pages Continue

1890-768: Was found in 1999, which prompted more archaeological research on the settlement mound. Already in the first year of renewed excavations in 2005, further fragments of cuneiform tablets were found, which multiplied from year to year. Over a hundred tablets were found in 2015. Most of the texts are written in Hittite; they often contain Luwian glosses and Hurrian expressions. Seven texts found are in Hurrian language . There are also two karum period commercial documents written in Old Assyrian. Karum (trade post) Karum ( Akkadian : kārum "quay, port, commercial district", plural kārū , from Sumerian kar "fortification (of

1935-528: Was likely spoken at least initially in Hurrian settlements in modern-day Syria . Hurrian is closely related to Urartian , the language of the ancient kingdom of Urartu . Together they constitute the Hurro-Urartian language family . The external connections of the Hurro-Urartian languages are disputed. There exist various proposals for a genetic relationship to other language families (e.g.

1980-479: Was probably a mabartum .) However, after the establishment of the Hittite Empire , the karu disappeared from Anatolian history. In the 2nd millennium BC money was not yet in use, and Assyrian merchants used gold for wholesale trade and silver for retail trade. Gold was considered eight times more valuable than silver. However, another metal, amutum , was even more valuable than gold. It is thought to be

2025-677: Was under the sovereignty of Hatti city-states and later the Hittites . By 1960 BC, Assyrian merchants had established the karu , small colonial settlements next to Anatolian cities, which paid taxes to the rulers of the cities. There were also smaller trade stations which were called mabartū (singular mabartum ). The number of karu and mabartu was probably around 20. Among them were Kültepe (Kanesh in antiquity) in modern Kayseri Province ; Alişar Hüyük (Ankuva (?) in antiquity) in modern Yozgat Province ; and Boğazköy ( Hattusa in antiquity) in modern Çorum Province . (However, Alişar Hüyük

#89910