MESOPOTAMIANUZI
Carlo Zaccagnini
- S L
1.1 The Archives of Nuzi
Some seven thousand tablets, from both official and illicit excava-
tions at the sites of Yorghan Tepe (= ancient Nuzi), Kirkuk (= ancient
Arraphe/àl ilàni), and Tell el-Fahhar (= ancient Kurruhanni), in a
small region east of the Tigris and south of the Lower Zab, provide
the major documentary evidence for reconstructing the legal insti-
tutions and practice of northern Mesopotamia. The ethnic, linguis-
tic, and cultural features of the region were marked to a greater or
lesser extent by the presence of the Hurrians. The period covered
by the Nuzi and related archives extends over some five or six gen-
erations during the third quarter of the second millennium (ca.
1450–1340), corresponding in archaeological terms to the central
phase of the Late Bronze Age.
Nuzi was a provincial town in the kingdom of Arraphe, but the
site of its capital, the present mound of Kirkuk, has to date yielded
only a few scattered documents. The site of Washshukanni, the cap-
ital of Mittani, the Hurrian suzerain, has not yet been found. The
Nuzi documentation^1 is therefore of exceptional significance, insofar
as it provides a unique basis for reconstructing the complex legal
situation in a predominantly Hurrian cultural milieu.^2565
(^1) For the sake of simplicity, the term “Nuzi” is henceforward used with refer-
ence to the entire set of documents retrieved at Yorghan Tepe, Kirkuk, and Tell
el-Fahhar.
(^2) The peculiar features displayed by the Nuzi archives are only partially mir-
rored in the more or less contemporary Syrian archives of Alalakh (Level IV),
Ugarit, and Emar.
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