The Turukkaeans were a

Bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals (such as phosphorus) or metalloid ...

and

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

people of

Zagros Mountains The Zagros Mountains are a mountain range in Iran, northern Iraq, and southeastern Turkey. The mountain range has a total length of . The Zagros range begins in northwestern Iran and roughly follows Iran's western border while covering much of s ...

. Their

endonym An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...

has sometimes been reconstructed as Tukri.

History

Middle Bronze

Turukkum was regarded by the Kingdoms of

Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , ''māt Aššur'') was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization that existed as a city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC and eventually expanded into an empire from the 14th century BC t ...

and

Eshnunna Eshnunna (also Esnunak) (modern Tell Asmar in Diyala Governorate, Iraq) was an ancient Sumerian (and later Akkadian) city and city-state in central Mesopotamia 12.6 miles northwest of Tell Agrab and 15 miles northwest of Tell Ishchali. Althou ...

as a constant threat, during the reign of

Shamshi-Adad I Shamshi-Adad (; Amorite: ''Shamshi-Addu''), ruled 1813–1776 BC, was an Amorite warlord and conqueror who had conquered lands across much of Syria, Anatolia, and Upper Mesopotamia.Some of the Mari letters addressed to Shamsi-Adad by his son ca ...

(1813-1782 BCE) and his son and successor

Ishme-Dagan Ishme-Dagan (, Diš-me- Dda-gan, ''Išme-Dagān''; c. 1953-1935 BC ( MC) was the 4th king of the First Dynasty of Isin, according to the "''Sumerian King List''" (''SKL''). Also according to the ''SKL'': he was both the son and successor of I ...

(1781-1750 BCE). The Turukkaeans were allied to the Land of Ahazum, and they gathered at the town of Ikkallum to face the army of Ishme-Dagan, as Shamshi-Adad wrote in a letter to his other son Yasmah-Adad. Ishme-Dagan destroyed the army, reporting "Not one man escaped". Turukkum seems to have been made up of a collection of tribes with mixed populations, mostly

Hurrian The Hurrians (; ; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri) were a people who inhabited the Ancient Near East during the Bronze Age. They spoke the Hurro-Urartian language, Hurrian language, and lived throughout northern Syria (region) ...

speaking but also heavily Semitic. The Turukkaeans were reported to have sacked the city of Mardaman, apparently under Hurrian rule, around the year 1769/68 BCE. Babylon's defeat of Turukku was celebrated in the 37th year of Hammurabi's reign (c. 1773 BCE). A significant early reference to them is an inscription by the Babylonian king

Hammurabi Hammurabi (; ; ), also spelled Hammurapi, was the sixth Amorite king of the Old Babylonian Empire, reigning from to BC. He was preceded by his father, Sin-Muballit, who abdicated due to failing health. During his reign, he conquered the ci ...

, (r. circa 1792 – c. 1752 BCE) that mentions a kingdom named ''Tukriš'' (UET I l. 46, iii–iv, 1–4), alongside

Gutium The Guti (), also known by the derived exonyms Gutians or Guteans, were a people of the ancient Near East who both appeared and disappeared during the Bronze Age. Their homeland was known as Gutium ( Sumerian: , ''GutūmKI'' or , ''GutiumKI''). ...

Subartu The land of Subartu (, Assyrian: '' mât Šubarri'') or Subar (, ) is mentioned in Bronze Age literature. The name also appears as ''Subari'' in the Amarna letters, and, in the form ''Šbr'', in Ugarit. Subartu was apparently a kingdom in Uppe ...

and another name that is usually reconstructed as

Elam Elam () was an ancient civilization centered in the far west and southwest of Iran, stretching from the lowlands of what is now Khuzestan and Ilam Province as well as a small part of modern-day southern Iraq. The modern name ''Elam'' stems fr ...

. Other texts from the same period refer to the kingdom as ''Tukru''.

Iron Age

By the early part of the 1st millennium BCE, names such as ''Turukkum'', ''Turukku'' and ''ti-ru-ki-i'' are being used for the same region in Assyrian and Babylonian records. In a broader sense, names such as Turukkaean been used in a generic sense to mean "mountain people" or "highlanders", and like "Gutian", no longer with reference to any specific ethnic group. Elam1

''Tukru'' or ''Turukkum'' was said to have spanned the north-east border of Mesopotamia and an adjoining part of the Zagros Mountains. In particular, they were associated with the

Lake Urmia Lake Urmia is an endorheic salt lake in Iran. The lake is located between the provinces of East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan in Iran, and west of the southern portion of the Caspian Sea. At its greatest extent, it was the largest lake in th ...

basin and the valleys of the north-east Zagros. They were therefore located north of ancient

Lullubi Lullubi, Lulubi (: ''Lu-lu-bi'', : ''Lu-lu-biki'' "Country of the Lullubi"), more commonly known as Lullu, were a group of Bronze Age tribes of Hurrian and Semitic languages, Semitic origin who existed and disappeared during the 3rd millennium BC ...

, and at least one Neo-Assyrian (10th to 7th centuries BCE) text refers to the whole area and its peoples as "Lullubi-Turukki" (VAT 8006).

Hurrians

In terms of cultural and linguistic characteristics, little is known about the Tukri. They are described by their contemporaries as a semi-

nomad Nomads are communities without fixed habitation who regularly move to and from areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the population of nomadic pa ...

ic, mountain tribe, who wore animal skins. Some scholars believe they may have been

-speaking or subject to a Hurrian elite. According to , "''The Turukka people evidently belonged to those late-gentile groups in which the primitive social conditions had already decayed and tribal leaders exercised a permanent function due to close contact, partly established through economic pressure, with the state-organized population practicing rain-fed agriculture in the Rania Plain and the Zagros foothills.''" The Turukkeans were closely associated with the Lullubi, and attacked the Hurrian city Madraman.

Footnotes

Bibliography

*German Archaeological Institute
Department of Tehran Archaeological releases from Iran, Volume 19
Dietrich Reimer, 1986 * Wayne Horowitz, ''Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography''. Winona Lake; Eisenbrauns, 1998. *Jesper Eidem, Jørgen Læssøe, ''The Shemshara archives, Volume 23''. Copenhagen, Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, 2001. *Jörgen Laessøe, ''The Shemshāra Tablets''. Copenhagen, 1959. *Jörgen Laessøe, "The Quest for the Country of *Utûm", ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'', 1968, vol. 88 , no. 1, pp. 120–122. * * Victor Harold Matthews, Pastoral nomadism in the Mari Kingdom (ca. 1830-1760 B.C.). American Schools of Oriental Research, 1978. * Peter Pfälzner
''Keilschrifttafeln von Bassetki lüften Geheimnis um Königsstadt Mardaman''
(webpage; German language), University of Tubingen, 2018. * Daniel T. Potts, ''Nomadism in Iran: From Antiquity to the Modern Era''. Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2014. {{AncientNearEast-stub Ancient peoples of the Near East Ancient history of Iran States and territories established in the 2nd millennium BC States and territories disestablished in the 1st millennium BC Ancient Mesopotamia History of Mesopotamia

History

Middle Bronze

Iron Age

Hurrians

See also

Footnotes

Bibliography