[2] The earliest Hurrian text fragments consist of lists of names and places from the end of the third millennium BC.

The first full texts date to the reign of King Tish-atal of Urkesh, at the start of the second millennium BC, and were found on a stone tablet accompanying the Hurrian foundation pegs known as the "Urkish lions".

[3] Archeologists have discovered the texts of numerous spells, incantations, prophecies and letters at sites including Hattusha, Mari, Tuttul, Babylon, Ugarit and others.

Early study of the language, however, was entirely based on the Mitanni letter, found in 1887 at Amarna in Egypt, written by the Hurrian King Tushratta to the Pharaoh Amenhotep III.

After the fall of the Akkadian Empire, Hurrians began to settle in northern Syria,[4] and by 1725 BC they constituted a sizable portion of the population of Yamhad.

[7]In the thirteenth century BC, invasions from the west by the Hittites and from the south by the Assyrians brought the end of the Mitanni empire, which was divided between the two conquering powers.

In the following century, attacks by the Sea Peoples brought a swift end to the last vestiges of the Hurrian language.

Since the late 1980s, significant progress was made due to the discovery of a Hurrian-Hittite bilingual, edited by E. Neu (StBoT 32).

In the cuneiform script, this is indicated by placing an additional vowel symbol between the CV and VC syllables, giving CV-V-VC.

In the Latin transcription, long vowels are indicated with a macron, ā, ē, ī, ō, and ū.

For example, attardi (ancestor) from attai (father), futki (son) from fut (to beget), aštohhe (feminine) from ašti (woman).

While the absolutive pronoun clitics (10) attached to a noun are not necessarily connected to it syntactically, typically designating the object or intransitive subject of a nearby verb, the third plural pronoun clitic -lla can be used to signal the plural of the host noun in the absolutive.

The f of the genitive and dative endings merges with a preceding p or t giving pp and tt respectively, e.g. Teššuppe (of Teššup), Hepat-te (of Hepat).

The so-called essive case can convey the meaning "as" and a condition, but also to express direction, the aim of a demand, the transition from one condition to another, the direct object in antipassive constructions (where the transitive subject receives the absolutive case instead of the ergative), and, in the variety of Nuzi, also the dative.

In these cases, the stem-final vowel /i/ has been dropped; the singulars of these words are ēni (god), ōli (another), awari (field).

One prominent feature of Hurrian is the phenomenon of Suffixaufnahme, or suffix absorption, which it shares with Urartian and the geographically proximate Kartvelian languages.

When more than two genitives occur, they are merged, so Suffixaufnahme only occurs on the innermost genitive, as in the following example: ōmīniōmīnicountryMizrinefenefeMizri-ne-fe-ne-feEgypt-ART.SG-GEN.SG-ART.SG-GEN.SGefrīfeefri-i-feruler-its-GEN.SGaštīnnaašti-i=nnalady-his=sheōmīni Mizrinefenefe efrīfe aštīnnaōmīni Mizri-ne-fe-ne-fe efri-i-fe ašti-i=nnacountry Egypt-ART.SG-GEN.SG-ART.SG-GEN.SG ruler-its-GEN.SG lady-his=she"she is the lady of the ruler of the country Egypt"The verbal morphology of Hurrian is extremely complex, but it is constructed only through the affixation of suffixes (indicated by '-') and clitics (indicated by '=').

Moreover, suffixes can be added to the verb stem that modify its meaning, including valency-changing morphemes such as -an(n)-- (causative), -ant (applicative) and -ukar (reciprocative).

Wishes and commands are formed with an optative system, whose principal characteristic is the element -i, which is attached directly to the verb stem.

When an enclitic personal pronoun is attached to a noun, an extensive system of sound changes determines the final form.

Hurrian contains many expressions that denote spatial and abstract relations and serve as adpositions, most of them built on the dative and genitive cases.

In contract with nouns, which also end in /i/, the final vowel of the conjunctions ai (when) and anammi (therefore) is not dropped before an enclitic personal pronoun.

The following table gives an overview of the numeral system: Distributive numbers carry the suffix -ate, e.g. kikate (by threes), tumnate (by fours).

For this reason, Speiser says that Hurrian's word order can be more accurately described as "goal–agent–action", with the absolutive case corresponding to the "grammatical subject" (i.e.

[19] šeniffšen-iff-Øbrother-my-ABSišašiša-šme-ERG.SGtatautat-aulove-1.SGšeniff išaš tataušen-iff-Ø iša-š tat-aubrother-my-ABS me-ERG.SG love-1.SG"I love my brother"Geoffrey K. Pullum (1977) is doubtful of Speiser's analysis.

He argues that the available corpus of Hurrian text is not large enough to definitively determine its word order, and that it can only be identified as generally verb-final (i.e. either OSV or SOV).

olaffaola-Ø=ffaother-ABS=2.PL.ABSkatullekatul-lesay-OPT.1.SGolaffa katulleola-Ø=ffa katul-leother-ABS=2.PL.ABS say-OPT.1.SG"I want to tell youabs something elseabs"The attested Hurrian lexicon is quite homogeneous, containing only a small number of loanwords (e.g. tuppi ('clay tablet'), Mizri ('Egypt'; cf.

The relative pronouns iya and iye may be a loan from the Indo-Aryan language of the Mitanni people who had lived in the region before the Hurrians; cf.

From the Mitanni-Letter, Column IV, Lines 30–32 Untomānunto=mānnow=butiyallēnīniya=llē=nīnREL.PRO=3.PL.ABS=trulytiwēnatiwē-na-Øthing-ART.PL-ABSšūallamānšū-a=lla=mānevery-LOC=3.PL.ABS=butšēniffuššēn-iffu-šbrother-my-ERG.SGkatōšāššenakat-ōš-ā-šše-na-Øsay-PRT.TR-3.SG.SUBJ-NMZ-ART.PL-ABSūriāššena,ūr-i-ā-šše-na-Øwant-TR-3.SG.SUBJ-NMZ-ART.PL-ABSantillānanti=lla=anthose=PL.ABS=andēmanāmḫaēman-āmḫaten-MULtānōšau.tān-ōš-audo-PRT.TR-1.SG.SUBJUntomān iyallēnīn tiwēna šūallamān šēniffuš katōšāššena ūriāššena, antillān ēmanāmḫa tānōšau.unto=mān iya=llē=nīn tiwē-na-Ø šū-a=lla=mān šēn-iffu-š kat-ōš-ā-šše-na-Ø ūr-i-ā-šše-na-Ø anti=lla=an ēman-āmḫa tān-ōš-aunow=but REL.PRO=3.PL.ABS=truly thing-ART.PL-ABS every-LOC=3.PL.ABS=but brother-my-ERG.SG say-PRT.TR-3.SG.SUBJ-NMZ-ART.PL-ABS want-TR-3.SG.SUBJ-NMZ-ART.PL-ABS those=PL.ABS=and ten-MUL do-PRT.TR-1.SG.SUBJ"Those things, which my brother truly said and wanted as a whole, now I have done them, but tenfold.

Also, one of the longest of the Amarna letters is Hurrian; written by King Tushratta of Mitanni to Pharaoh Amenhotep III.