Washukanni

Washukanni (also spelled Waššukanni or Vasukhani) was the capital of the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni, from around 1500 BCE to the 13th century BCE. Its precise location is unknown. A proposal locates it under the largely unexcavated mound of Tell el Fakhariya, near Tell Halaf in Syria, but this idea was rejected by Edward Lipinski,[1] however this identification received a new support by Stefano de Martino, Mirko Novák and Dominik Bonatz due to recent archaeological excavations by a German team.[2] Its etymology in Sanskrit, which was used by the Mitanni, is "Vasukhani", वसुखनी, the "mine of wealth" as the Vasu are the gods who are wealth-givers.[3]

A map of Mesopotamia showing Washukanni, Nineveh, Hatra, Assur, Nuzi, Palmyra, Mari, Sippar, Babylon, Kish, Nippur, Isin, Lagash, Uruk, Charax Spasinu and Ur, from north to south.

The city is known to have been sacked by the Hittites under Suppiluliuma I (reigned c. 1344–1322 BCE) in the first years of his reign, whose treaty inscription[4] relates that he installed a Hurrian vassal king, Shattiwaza. The city was sacked again by the Assyrian king Adad-nirari I around 1290 BCE, but very little else is known of its history.

See also

References
  1. Lipiński, Edward (2000). The Aramaeans: Their Ancient History, Culture, Religion. Peeters Publishers. p. 120. ISBN 978-90-429-0859-8.
  2. De Martino, Stefano, 2018. "Political and Cultural Relations between the Kingdom of Mittani and its Subordinated Polities in Syria and Southeast Anatolia", in Changing Faces of Kingship in Syria-Palestine 1500-500 BCE, Ugarit Verlag, p. 38: "...the recent German archaeological excavations at Tell Fekheriye support the assumption that the capital of Mittani, Wassukkanni, was located there..." See also Novák (2013: 346) and Bonatz (2014).
  3. S. Kak, Akhenaten, Surya and the Rgveda, in "The Golden Chain", Govind Chandra Pande (editor), CRC, 2005.
  4. Suppiluliuma-Shattiwaza treaty excerpts. GeoCities, archived at webcitation.org and archive.org


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