Hurrians in N. Mesopotamia

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>-- Saggs places them there considerably earlier.

>"The native name for what we call the "Hurrian" language was the 'tongue of
>Su-bir', and third-millennium Sumerian texts mention Su-bir (hich we normally
>anglicize as 'Subarian') as what seems to have been a population element in
>north Mesopotamia, with no indication that they were thought of as immigrants.
>Moreover, Hurrians had already formed a small kingdom in the Habur river
>region of Syria as early as the twenty-fourth century BC, which implies a
>Hurrian presence in the Near East substantially earlier."

>-- in other words, Hurrians were established in the area at the earlies
>attested dates.

This is not what I gather from what I've been told by
Sumerologists/Akkadologists Piotr Michal/owski (on
sci.archaeology, IIRC) and Gonzalo Rubio.  In fact, according to
Gonzalo Rubio (p.c.), one theory about the name Sumer which is
accepted by *some* Sumerologists is that Shubur (Subaru) is in
fact the same word as Shumer (Steinkeller, footnote in "Early
Political Development in Mesopotamia...", in _Akkad: The first
World Empire_ ed. M. Liverani. Padova: Sargon srl, 1993).  The
modern consensus seems to be then that the Hurrians were
intrusive in Northern Mesopotamia.  Where they came from nobody
knows, maybe from the north (the related Urartian language is
later found in E. Anatolia), maybe from the east (Iran), which
would explain how the Mitanni had been in contact with
Indo-Iranians.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam