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Revision as of 04:10, 7 December 2003 by Damion (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)The Mitanni were a people of Indic origin who ruled a vast kingdom in West Asia in the second millennium BC. They seem to have venerated Vedic deities and their nobility used Indo-Aryan names, and worshipped Indo-Aryan gods.
Tadukhipa, the second queen of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten was a Mitanni princess, the daughter of the King Tushratta (Tushyaratha or Dasharatha).
The first Mitanni king was Sutarna I ("good sun"). He was followed by Paratarna I ("great sun"), Parashukshatra ("ruler with axe"), Saukshatra ("son of Sukshatra, the good ruler"), Paratarna II, Artatama or Ritadhama ("abiding in cosmic law"), Sutarna II, Dasharatha, and finally Mativaja (Matiwazza, "whose wealth is prayer") during whose lifetime the Mitanni state appears to have become a vassal to Assyria.
The daughter of King Artatama was married to Thutmose IV, Akhenaten's grandfather, and the daughter of Sutarna II (Gilukhipa) was married to his father, Amenhotep III, the great builder of temples who ruled during 1390-1352 BC ("khipa" of these names is the Sanskrit "kshipa," night). In his old age, Amenhotep wrote to Dasharatha many times wishing to marry his daughter, Tadukhipa. It appears that by the time she arrived Amenhotep III was dead. Tadukhipa married the new king Akhenaten and she became famous as the queen Kiya (short for Khipa).
After catastrophic earthquakes dried up the Sarasvati river around 1900 BC, many groups of Indic people started moving West. We see Kassites, a somewhat shadowy aristocracy with Indic names and worshiping Surya and the Maruts, in Western Iran about 1800 BC. They captured power in Babylon in 1600 BC, which they were to rule for over 500 years.
The Mitanni ruled northern Mesopotamia (including Syria) for about 300 years, starting 1600 BC, out of their capital of Vasukhani, "a mine of wealth." Their warriors were called marya, which is the proper Sanskrit term for it.
By approximately 1350 BC, the Mitanni kingdom had weakened, and had become practically dependent on the Hittite ruler Shuppiluliuma I. Assyria, previously under Mitanni control, was able to assert its independence during the reign of Ashuruballit I in approximately 1330 BC.
In a treaty between the Hittites and the Mitanni, Indic deities Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and Nasatya (Ashvins) are invoked. A text by a Mitannian named Kikkuli uses words such as aika (eka, one), tera (tri, three), panza (pancha, five), satta (sapta, seven), na (nava, nine), vartana (vartana, round). Another text has babru (babhru, brown), parita (palita, grey), and pinkara (pingala, red). Their chief festival was the celebration of vishuva (solstice) very much like in India. It is not only the kings who had Sanskrit names; a large number of other Sanskrit names have been unearthed in the records from the area.
EXTERNAL LINKS
- http://ancientneareast.tripod.com/Hurrian_Kingdom_of_Mitanni.html : History of Ancient Near East
- http://www.ece.lsu.edu/kak/akhena.pdf : Mitanni and their influence on Egypt