SYRIA IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY B.C.

The march of Murshilish I and his Hittite army down the Euphrates, and pillage and destruction of Babylon, in the early years of the sixteenth century, marked the end of an epoch, and ushered in an era of great political change. Governments were overthrown and dynasties ended, and in the confusion which ensued, new peoples moved into the area which at one time used to be known as the Fertile Crescent. During the seventeenth century, a time when archaeology shows a decline in civilization and almost no written evidence has survived, the ethnic map of the Ancient Near East was redrawn, new city states were founded, and old ones declined and were abandoned, or grew prosperous and increased their territory. Though the changes appear sudden, they must have happened gradually, and had begun much earlier. Chief and most vigorous of the newcomers were the Hurrians, whose appearances in the Near East as early as the third millennium have already been mentioned.

From their homeland in the southern Caucasus and the mountains of Armenia these vigorous warriors had spread gradually south and west during the course of the third millennium and the first centuries of the second; they are found as the ruling class at Urkish in the time of the Akkadian kings, and this hilly region somewhere south of Diyarbakr remained a stronghold of Hurrian civilization throughout their history. In the mythological text known as the Song of Ullikummi, Urkish is named as the seat of Kumarbi, one of the great deities of the Hurrian pantheon.