By Shreepal Singh, Advocate, Supreme Court
We most of the time at this website talk about the future – the unfolding future of human race – and the present times, which should consciously help shape that future; in fact, our central point of focus is the unfolding future of humanity.
But we also go into the past of our race, our origin on this planet; we are not much concerned with nations and nationalism. When we do so, we deal with the past only as a part of history. In this spirit, let us go into the past – the remote past around 3500 BC – and know about the people living in areas that are now known as Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey etc., and their connection with India of that time.
What is the source of our information when talking of that antiquity? We have some information about Sumerian civilization, Masopotamia, Babylonian that were existing around that time. What is the source of our information about those ancient people?
The source of our information are the documents that were written by those ancient people on clay tablets in a language, which is called Cunieform (wedge-like script). With much labor and ingenuity of European scholars this language has been deciffered. Some of the pioneers who decoded this ancient language were Georg Friedrich Grotefend, Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, Reverend Edward Hincks, Jules Oppert, George Smith, Winckler etc. These clay tablets have been excavated by archeologists in many places of these modern countries.
These ancient written documents reveal that there were business contracts between individuals, legal documents (like Hammurabi’s Code), epic literature (like epic of Gilgamesh), treaties between kings, lists of kings, names of kingdoms, names of persons, names of tribes or people, and many other things like them.
What we get from these clay tablets is that around 3500 BC in the vast area spread in these modern-day countries there was a succession of kings belonging to a people with the name of Subraneans who were ruling over the native population of Semitic origin.
We find much information about these ancient people in scholarly books like ‘The Five Great Monarchies of the Eastern World – the History, Geography and Antiquities of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media and Persia’ by George Rawllinson; ‘A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology’ by Gwendolyn Leick; ‘Early History of Assyria to 1000 BC’ by Sydney Smith; ‘Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia’ by Stephen Bertman; ‘The Records of the Early Hittite Empire (C. 1450-13 80 B.C.) by Philo H.J. Houwink Ten Cate; ‘The Asia Minor Connexion: Studies on the Pre-Greek Languages in Memory of Charles Carter Edited by Yoel L. Arbeitman; ‘Chronicles Concerning Early Babylonians Including Kings, Records of the Early History of the Kassites and the Country of the Sea’ by L. W. King; etc. Let us proceed.
Sidney Smith in his book “Early History of Assyria to 1000 BC” informs us, “This Subaraean population, which spread across from the district properly called Mesopotamia to the Zagros hills in the middle of the second millennium, was the chief element in the early population of the land of Assyria, for both Assyrian and Babylonian tradition agreed that in the time of the Agade dynasty the northern and eastern part of Assyria was called Subartu. It is true that this is, in the absence of contemporary inscriptions of the early Sumerian period, an assumption; but it is based on two sound lines of reasoning. The scattered nature of this population in the second millennium BC points to the Subaraeans having been split up and driven into outlying localities by successive invasions; the original area they inhabited must then have included part of the land of Assyria. Further, the astrological and historical literature of the New Babylonian period is hardly “ tradition” in the strictest sense, as it is understood in regard to the early history of the Latins or Persians.
“Wherever it can be tested by contemporary documents of the early period, it can be proved fairly accurate, and dependent upon precise written information. Сопfusion occasionally creeps in, but the soberest historical records are liable to confusion ; and where the Assyrian astrologers and the New Babylonian chroniclers agree, as is the case in regard to Subartu including the land of Assyria in the early Sumerian period, the modern historian must accept the statement. Of the small Subaraean kingdoms at the end of the third millennium BC, such as Namar, ruled for a time by Arisen, little is known.
“The historical evidence then points to the population of the land of Assyria in the early Sumerian period being Subaraean as clearly as the archaeological evidence shows that the civilisation was Sumerian іп character. There is indeed no conflict between these two kinds of evidence, but rather the one explains the other.
“There is some material in the various kinds of evidence described above for basing a few general conclusions which must serve as the only extant indications of the state of Assyria in the early Sumerian period. The main stock of the population, both in the northern plain of Arbela and along the valley of the Tigris to the mouth of the lower Zab, was Subaraean, and the land of Assyria formed part of a tribal dominion which extended as far to the south-east as Kirkük, and as far west as the Sinjar hills, or even the Habur valley.
“Тhe Subaraean people were in constant conflict with the Sumerians, and therefore in constant contact with Sumerian civilisation. Тһе result upon them, as upon their Gutian neighbours and the people of Elam, was, in the main, that they were directly influenced by the superior civilisation. To a large extent this prevalence of the Sumerian element, at present only proved for the site at Ashur, but perhaps to be assumed in the north also, was due to the conquest of this territory by Sumerian kings and governors of the southern cities, concerning the extent of whose dominions we at present lack information.
“But the Subaraean people, who had come down from the hills north and north-east of Assyria, brought with them certain elements which testify to a connection with peoples in western Asia Minor. Thus the model houses which present so strange a feature at Ashur may have been the type of house naturally used in the wooded districts of the Taurus range, just as it was in central Cappadocia.”
Let us ask: Who were these “Subaraneans” people? Why they were called “Subraneans”? We find from the above quoted sources that in this word Subraneans, -neans is a suffix to Subra, which means “those who are Subra”. One can instantly connect “Subra” to the Sanskrit word “Subhra = शुभ्र”, which means fair complexion or of white color.
We find that, ethnically, these “Subra” people were one but had three political entities or states, which were ruled by their kings in succession and were contending with each other for political dominance in the vast region. These three entities were “Mitanni”. “Hurri” and “Hittite”. All these three groups belonged to an Indo-European ethnic stock, spoke some ancient form of Sanskrit language, worshipped Vedic gods “Indira (Indra)”, “Mithira (Mitra)” and “Varun” and concluded treaties of peace in the name of these common gods.
“About Hittite language Brian D Joseph observes in ‘The Asia Minor Connexion’ thus: “Hittite attests an adverbial form “andurza” with the basic meaning “inside; indoors”. It is often found opposed in ritual texts to askiiz (ablative of aska-“gate”) “out of the gate, outdoors”; it also occurs in treaties with reference to rebellions in the meaning “in the interior, internally”, and is therein opposed to araiJza “from the outside”, which refers to attacks. As Puhvel notes, a form “andurza” presupposes a base “andur-” (Sanskrit “अंतर = antar = inside”), which is suggested also by the derivative adjective “anduriya”-“situated within”.
Kenneth Shields, Jr writes about Indo-European numeral 3 in Hittite in ‘The Minor Asia Connection’ thus: “Research into the phonological structure of Hittite numerals and their implications for reconstruction of Indo-European is complicated by the fact that ‘the numerals in the texts in HL (Hittite-Luvian) languages are mostly represented by “ideograms”. Thus, apart from such ideogramatic representation, the Hittie numeral 3 is only scantily attested, being manifested in the in the forms teriyas ‘three’, teriyalla (-tariyalla-) ‘triple’, (designation of a drink offering), tarriyanalli – ‘third’, [teri-] -yanna ‘thirdly’ (Sanskrit “तृतीय = tritiya = three”).
Sydney Smith informs us that the word “Mitanni” is intended in the sense of “people who belong to Mitha”. One can logically take this word “Mitanni” to mean the people who worshipped “Mithira or Mitra” as their god.
Sydney Smith says, “But another group of tablets, business documents written in Assyrian of about the middle of the second millennium BC, have thrown welcome light on the question of this language. These documents, found on sites at and near the modern Kirkük, deal with the proceedings of certain families dwelling in that area, and the names are in part Assyrian of a usual type, in part certainly not Semitie.
“Now the elements of which these names are composed can be definitely associated with the language in which Dushratta’s letter is composed. There was, therefore, about the middle of the second millennium, a population which spread from the state of Mitanni to the district of Kirkük speaking this distinctive language.
“There is, then, a coincidence of two facts: the geographical distribution of the Shubari according to the historical texts corresponds to the distribution of а people speaking а comparatively unknown but quite distinctive tongue. It is safe to infer that the language of Dushratta’s letter is Subaraean, and that the names in the Kirkük document are of Subaraean origin.
“The affinities of this Subaraean language seem to be with an ill-defined group of languages sometimes called “Caucasian”; it shares some of the peculiarities of Elamite and Urartian, but the connection would appear to be very loose, and is by no means absolutely proved.
“The connection of the lands of Subartu and Gutium in the texts arose from geographical considerations. But one notable physical trait the Subaraeans and Gutians shared. Documents of the period of the Babylonian Amorite or First Dynasty mention slaves from Gutium and Subir (that is, Subartu), and specify that they shall be of fair complexion; it appears therefore that fair complexion was typical of these countries, though racial admixture had already tended to debase the type.
“Both in language and physical appearance, then, the Subaraeans appear to be connected with the population of the Zagros hills ; in any ease they are sharply distinguished from the Sumerians, the ”black-headed,” who spoke an entirely different language.”
Sidney Smith further writes, ” In the nomenclature of Ashurbanipal’s astrologers the north-east is designated the land of Subartu; and a careful scribe has added the note “we are Subartu ” when reporting an old Babylonian omen from the stars which presaged an invasion from Subartu. Тһе identification of Subartu and Assyria is not confined to the astrological literature, for Nabopolassar uses it in historical texts. This nomenclature appears to be a deliberate archaism, for the land of Subartu and the Shubaraeans are referred to in New Babylonian chronicles which record the history of the dynasty of Agade, and if the land of Assyria was ever included in the land of Subartu, the period must lie during or before that time.
“In the thirteenth to the eleventh centuries Assyrian kings frequently refer to the land of the Shubari, a people often called “wide-spreading” ; it is impossible precisely to define its borders, for it is sometimes mentioned in connection with Alzi, which lay in the Taurus west of Lake Wan, and more often in connection with the land of the Gutii, whose territory was south or south-east of Hulwan. It would appear from this that a Subaraean population extended from the hills now called Tur Abdin round the north and east of Assyria; and in the time of the Kassite king Kashtiliash,’ the war of Kurigalzu “the little” with Assyria was referred to as “the war with Shubartu.”
“Тһе identification of Subartu and Shubartu, and the certainty that the word means the land in which the people called Shubaru lived, render it possible to draw a very important deduction concerning their language.
“In the fourteenth century Dushratta, king of Mitanni, was in close communication with the Pharaoh Amenophis III; his letters were generally couched in the Akkadian language, but in one case, for some unknown reason, another language was employed. It has been usual to call this language ”Mitannian” and to reckon it the native language of a ”Mitannian” people; but Mitanni was the name of a political, not a racial, entity. Тһе state was a factitious kingdom in which a ruling aristocracy, apparently of Iranian-Indian extraction, and their Hurri retainers, ruled over a mixed population formerly subject to quite different political divisions. The language in which the letter is written presents certain very distinctive features ; it is not “proto-Hittite ” or “ Hittite ” or “ Luvian ” or ” Hurri,” though the latter is only distinguished from it by dialectical differences.”
Further Smith says of these Subraneans, “In spite of the extent of this population and the occasional successes which, according to later omen texts, fell to their lot in the wars with the Sumerians, there is no proof that in the early period it formed a united realm, governed from a central city by a single ruler.
“It is far more probable that, as is generally the case with mountaineers, local jealousies prevented union, and lack of organisation deprived a Subaraean victory of any lasting significance. A Sumerian governor, once well established in a walled town, such as Ashur even then was, might well be able to maintain himself for many years. To this dominance of a more civilised and organised people the northern country probably owed at this period the comparatively high level of material culture exhibited during this period, as compared with the far less advanced stages revealed in the cities of Syria and Palestine by excavations in those lands.
“The Hurri against whom Murshilish I conducted his expedition were destined to be the great rivals of the Hittites for many centuries, more especially in the struggle for Syria. The land of the Hurri certainly lay in the mountain ranges which stretch from the Euphrates to Lake Wan; but on the exact limits of their territory there is no agreement. Some have assigned to them a spacious realm which stretched from Lake Waл to the borders of Pontus, and reached westwards to the Hittite boundary, while assuming that they gave their name to Harran ; to the present writer it seems more probable at present that their original home was that land Haria which Tiglathpileser I described as lying at the foot of the hills where the Euphrates debouches on to the plain.
“Тһе speech of the Hurri was a dialect — not a very strongly marked dialect — of the Subaraean language; and there need be little doubt that the Hurri and the Subaraeans were closely connected in origin and blood as well as by language. The remarkable feature about the history of the Hurri is to be found in their emergence from the disorganised state in which the other Subaraean tribes continued ; there was a special and immediate cause which made this people capable of meeting and persistently resisting the Hittites.
“To the Indo European element in the “ Hittites,” which was very strong, the achievements which led to the predominant position of that race in Asia Minor has already been attributed; there similarly appears amongst the Hurri during the second millennium B.C. an element which must provisionally be described as belonging to a civilisation distinctive of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European race.
“This Indo-Iranian element, which was never numerous enough to affect the native dialect, can only be clearly traced by three means ; firstly, by the names of the rulers of the Mitanni state, which was created and maintained by the Hurri nobles ; secondly, by the fact that in the Mitanni treaty with the Hittites the deities Indar (Indra), the gods with Mitra (Mithra), the gods with Varuna, апd Našatianna (the twins) are mentioned; and thirdly, by the use of certain Sanskrit words of a technical kind in a work concerned with chariot-racing or horsetraining.
“The exact bearing of these facts upon ancient history can hardly yet be said to have been explored; and our ignorance of the whereabouts of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family is not really lessened by acute guesses based on the early religious works.
“In all probability the Indo-Iranian elements
noted amongst the Hurri are to be explained as due to the intrusion of a small offshoot from a parent stock, which was able to impose its own military organisation upon a people which needed only organising ability to gain power. In part the military successes of the Hurri were doubtless due to the superior management of the horse, which from this time on played a capital part in warfare. The horse
was certainly known in Babylonia as early as the time of Hammurabi; the omen texts which record the accidents that may befall a king when he ascends a chariot continually mention the horse, and these texts traditionally referred to Sargon of Agade, so that the Babylonians believed the horse was known so early as 2500 B.C.
“There is evidence in a seal impression on а Cappadocian tablet of the use of the four-horse chariot in Asia Minor at about 2100-1900 BC (Plate VII, b). Cappadocian horses were indeed to become famous in subsequent ages. Тһе superiority of the Hurri, who had a treatise on horse-training, over other peoples lay in their superior horse-mastership.
“This Indo-Iranian aristocracy which led the Hurri to suecess, spread itself for a time over the cities of Syria and the coast, and finally disappeared completely about the end of the thirteenth century BC. Efforts have been made to prove that the Assyrians in Sargonid times were acquainted with the god Mithra, but these efforts are based upon a misunderstanding. Тһе slight infusion of this new strain in а Subaraean tribe — and it must be remembered that Mitanni, the state created and maintained by the Hurri in Mesopotamia, was regarded by the Assyrians as Subaraean, for they did not trouble to distinguish eastern and western branches—was sufficient to establish a new balance of power, much to the disadvantage of both Assyria and Babylonia.
“If the Hittites held the lands where mineral wealth was most plentiful, the Hurri held the districts where flax growing and the cloth industry flourished. Owing to the fortunate chance which led to the discovery of the Hittite records, some part of the history of this struggle between the Hurri and Hittites, and its effect on Assyria in later times, can now be understood. Whether the Hittite raid in the reign of Samsuditana was conducted by Murshilish I or not, it is probable that the end of the First Dynasty at Babylon was directly due to this event.
“The Hittite raid had, then, a direct effect upon Babylonia and Assyria. But the indirect result of the new circumstances in Syria was no less important. The chain of cause and effect can no longer be directly followed in the lands of the Mediterranean coast; but an event of the first importance which occurred perhaps about the middle of the eighteenth century BC must certainly be attributed to the new conditions created by the Hittites, namely the foundation of the Hyksos rule in Egypt. ”
“The dramatic fortunes of the Mitannian royal family form the central point of the history of Western Asia for about a century, not because these princes were the greatest in their world; they were far from that. But themselves adventurers, they engaged the fortunes of an important people in a difficult political adventure.
“The names of the kings show that they were of Indo-Iranian extraction, and to a slight admixture of similar blood the other elements of Indo-Iranian civilisation in Mitanni, the Indian gods and the method of horse-training, must be assigned. They ruled, not by virtue of their own numerical power, but owing to their leadership and organisation of the Hurri, the Subaraean stock which has already been discussed.
“Тһе main population of Mitanni probably remained as it had been; but now it was ruled by landed nobles, whose personal loyalty and family interest bound them for ever to a dynastic prince. The experiment and adventure in which the nobility were engaged was the holding of the outlet of the Euphrates and the mountains westwards to Cilicia against the Hittites while they themselves exploited the rich lands of Syria and the sea-coast.
“The basis of their power was the political state of Mitanni, which has no real geographical borders, though such might be marked along physical features on a map. In details neither few nor unimportant, speculation, especially of a linguistic kind, has been unfortunately rife in the matter of Mitanni. Since Winckler guessed that the Hurri were Aryans, other Aryan etymologies have been advanced, for the name applied to a class of the nobility or officialdom, mariannu, for Mitanni itself (Mita’s men), and for Washshukkanni,’ neglecting the obvious and significant fact that the termination -annu is a nominal formation in the dialect of Subaraean the Hurri spoke. Equally baseless is the view which would trace a dominance of the Mitanni country over Assyria in the earliest period on the basis of two personal names. The land of Mitanni does not appear in history until the end of the sixteenth century; it disappears at the end of the second millennium even as а geographical term. It cannot be too clearly stated that the state of Mitanni was a creation of the foreign leaders of a section of the Subaraeans.
“The manifold weaknesses in the position of the Mitanni kings will immediately be obvious. They depended for their position on а powerful nobility, whose claims they could not well refuse; ruling by force of superior character and energy, they encountered the gravest disasters when family dissensions arose. Surrounded by states of a greater homogeneity than their own, they had to defend frontiers against the Hittites, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, whilst dealing with the constant internal plague of bedouin tribes from the desert.
“Тһе final failure that awaited their house need rouse no feelings of surprise; it is rather а cause for wonder that they succeeded in maintaining themselves so long, and in planting men of Mitannian nationality, of whatever racial origin, Indo-Iranian, Hurri, or even Semitic, оп so many of the thrones of small but important Syrian principalities.
“Of Artatama I, the second king, there is no record extant, but it is obvious from the position held by his grandson Dushratta, that he was able to establish the Mitannian power over a very large area. In part, his strength was due to his opponent’s weakness. The Pharaohs Amenophis П and Thothmes IV left the administration of their Asiatic empire very much in the hands of their Egyptian representatives at the native courts, satisfied with the reception of revenue and the absence of further open revolt.
“The energy of the Mitanni ruler was sufficient to deal with this situation without bringing down upon himself immediate retribution in the form of an Egyptian army. Assyria to the east was crippled for other reasons, as has been seen. The Hittites had difficulties peculiar to Asia Minor, where geographical conditions favoured the continual appearance of mushroom states, and there was a constant pressure from the peoples living east of the Upper Euphrates towards the Halys basin. The chronology and history of the Hittites during most of the fifteenth century BC remain so obscure that little use can be made of what is known.
((( “Campaigns against Arzawa, Aleppo, and even Hanigalbat are mentioned. Arzawa was a state which comprised Western Cilicia, and was founded by men of a dialect similar to that of the kings of the Hittites. The campaigns against Aleppo must have preceded the Egyptian domination over that city from the time of Thothmes onwards. The campaigns against Hanigalbat are more difficult to understand, and may indicate that a prince of Nisibis attempted to establish some sort of rule up to the Euphrates in Asia Minor. After these campaigns the Hittites suffered some severe blows at the hands of Thothmes, who may even have reached the sacred city of Arinna in Eastern Cilicia. Moreover, the Hittites themselves, though stronger in numbers than the royal element in Mitanni, were numerically inferior to the vast mass of the population with which they had to deal.
“Their time had not yet come when Saushshatar established himself in Mitanni. Apart from the weakness of their enemies, the rulers of Mitanni must have possessed some elements of strength. One source of that strength has already been mentioned, their superior horsemastership. It is also clear that they possessed adequate material for equipment; they had access to the mineral wealth of the hills, and their supply of bronze weapons never failed. Their organisation for war must have been on а more permanent footing than that of most Asiatic states. Every prince was surrounded by a number of mariannu nobles, each of whom apparently possessed his own retainers, so that this class formed a military body capable of being used as a standing army. But, above all, the kings of Mitanni were able, and probably
unscrupulous, men of affairs; life in that
cosmopolitan age, as always since in Western Asia, was a battle of wits. Тһе king who could most successfully play one power off against the other was the most likely to succeed ; and the king of Mitanni possessed many pawns for the possession of which he could set the Egyptians and the Hittites at odds.”
