They spoke the Hurrian language, and lived throughout northern Syria, upper Mesopotamia and southeastern Anatolia.

[6] There is evidence that they were initially allied with the Akkadian Empire of Mesopotamia, indicating they had a firm hold on the area by the reign of Naram-Sin of Akkad (c. 2254–2218 BC).

[7] Hurrian names occur sporadically in northwestern Mesopotamia and the area of Kirkuk in modern Iraq by the Middle Bronze Age.

They eventually occupied a broad arc of fertile farmland stretching from the Khabur River valley in the west to the foothills of the Zagros Mountains in the east.

By this point, during the Old Babylonian period in the early second millennium BC, the Amorite kingdom of Mari to the south had subdued Urkesh and made it a vassal state.

The mixed Amorite–Hurrian kingdom of Yamhad is recorded as struggling for this area with the early Hittite king Hattusilis I around 1600 BC.

Yamhad eventually weakened vis-a-vis the powerful Hittites, but this also opened Anatolia for Hurrian cultural influences.

[11] The Mitanni Empire was a strong regional power limited by the Hittites to the north, Egyptians to the southwest, Kassites to the southeast, and later by the Assyrians to the east.

At its maximum extent Mitanni ranged as far as west as Kizzuwatna by the Taurus mountains, Tunip in the south, Arraphe in the east, and north to Lake Van.

Domestically, Mitanni records have been found at a number of places in the region including several Hittite sites as well as Tell Bazi, Alalakh, Nuzi, Mardaman, Kemune, and Müslümantepe among others.

[22] At the end of the second millennium BC the Urartians around Lake Van and Mount Ararat rose in power forming the Kingdom of Urartu.

Some scientists consider Urartu to be a re-consolidation of earlier Hurrian populations mainly due to linguistic factors, but this view is not universally held.

The term is related to Shubria, the name of a country located north of the upper Tigris River valley.

According to Radner, a letter from the king of Shubria to an Assyrian magnate from the time of Sargon II was composed in the Hurrian language.

Their pottery is commonly found in Mesopotamia and in the lands west of the Euphrates; it was highly valued in distant Egypt, by the time of the New Kingdom.

The Khabur Valley had a central position in the metal trade, and copper, silver and even tin were accessible from the Hurrian-dominated countries Kizzuwatna and Ishuwa situated in the Anatolian highland.

Harran was at least later a religious centre for the moon god, and Shauskha had an important temple in Nineve, when the city was under Hurrian rule.

Texts in the Hurrian language in cuneiform have been found at Hattusa, Ugarit (Ras Shamra), as well as in one of the longest of the Amarna letters (EA 27), written by King Tushratta of Mitanni to Pharaoh Amenhotep III.

Recent excavations and surveys in progress are conducted by American, Belgian, Danish, Dutch, French, German and Italian teams of archaeologists, with international participants, in cooperation with the Syrian Department of Antiquities.

The tells, or city mounds, often reveal a long occupation beginning in the Neolithic and ending in the Roman period or later.

As noted above, important discoveries of Hurrian culture and history were also made at Alalakh, Amarna, Hattusa and Ugarit.