HURRIAN LANGUAGE

extinct language spoken from the last centuries of the 3rd millennium BC until at least the latter years of the Hittite Empire (c. 1400c. 1190 BC); it is neither an Indo-European nor a Semitic language. Many sources for the language exist, including the numerous passages marked hurlili (Hurrian) in cuneiform tablets discovered in the ruins of the Hittite archives at Bogazky (the ancient Hattusa, in modern Turkey). It is generally believed that the speakers of this language originally came from the Armenian mountains and spread over southeast Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. Before the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, parts of Hurrian territory were under the control of an Indo-Aryan ruling class, the Mitanni, whose name was incorrectly applied to the Hurrians by early researchers. The later Urartian language is thought to be descended from the same parent language as Hurrian. See also Urartian language.