Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati 2007

“Urkesh and the Question of the Hurrian Homeland,”
Bulletin of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences 75/2, pp. 141-150.

The quest for Hurrian homeland is the basic question of this contribution.

Paragraph 1 briefly describes the site of Urkesh (from the major expansion in the third millennium BC, ca. 130-150 hectares, until the abandonment around 1300 BC, when the Assyrian came) and its main structures: 1) the Palace of Tupkish (with its Serving and Formal wings) [see The palace]; 2) the ābi [see The ābi]; The Temple Terrace with a temple pre-dating Tupkish’s Palace [see The temple], the Plaza [see JP] and the monumental access [see JP2].

Paragraph 2 describes the connections of the site with the North and mostly with the Northern Early Transcaucasian culture and Anatolia in general: characteristics in glyptic style are stressed (connecting Urkesh to other Anatolian sites, e.g. Kültepe) and similarities with Early Transcaucasian pottery are presented; furthermore, this connection is strengthened by the presence at Urkesh of some andirons, typical of Khabur period [see Kelly-Buccellati 2004; a picture of one of this items can be found at the following link: A11.34]; all these elements could allegedly suggest a question: “Were the people identified with the Early Transcaucasian culture Hurrians?” (p. 146); and subsequently, the following answer is proposed: “Our andirons used in the Hurrian city of Urkesh are the clearest evidence thus far of the link between the two” (p. 146).

Paragraph 3 discusses the Hurrian identity of Urkesh, moving from a historical question to its following historiographical interpretation, defining methodological criteria and data connected to semiotics, linguistics, onomastics, cults and mythology.

Paragraph 4 presents the major evidences for a fourth millennium Hurrian Urkesh: ceramics and seal impressions (sub-paragraph 4.1); stratigraphy (sub-paragraph 4.2); the following sub-paragraph 4.3 further investigates the significance for the ethnic question, moving from common inferences about Hurrian ethnicity towards facts deriving from Urkesh’s excavation: 1) Urkesh was Hurrian from the mid third millennium BC; 2) the city’s history started for sure at least a thousand years earlier; 3) there was no solution in continuity; 4) the third millennium Temple Terrace rested on an earlier (forth millennium) structure; 5) the presence of the the ābi, which is uncontrovertibly Hurrian.

Paragraph 5 focuses on the identification of the earliest Hurrian homeland: the hinterland and the homeland of Urkesh are investigated, presenting connections with both the North and the South, reaching the following final conclusions: 1) “the archaeology of Mozan shows […] a city already by the middle of the fourth millennium, and […] this city is indeed Urkesh” 2) “the city has clear and distinctive links with the north, which is its real hinterland” 3) Urkesh can be shown to have a specific ethnic affiliation with the Hurrians” (p. 150).

[As for this topic, cf. Buccellati 1999; Buccellati 2010; Buccellati 2013 and Buccellati and Kelly-Buccellati 1997].