Editing Hurrians (section)

==Language==
{{main|Hurrian language|Hurro-Urartian languages}}
[[File:Hurrian foundation document-AO 19937-IMG 3470-gradient.jpg|thumb|right|The [[Hurrian foundation pegs|Louvre lion]] and accompanying stone tablet bearing the earliest known text in [[Hurrian language|Hurrian]]]]

The agglutinating and highly ergative Hurrian language is related to the Urartian language, the language of the ancient kingdom of Urartu.<ref>Grekyan, Yervand, "Two Hurro-Urartian Lexical Parallels", Altorientalische Forschungen 49.1, pp. 48-52, 2022</ref> Together they form the [[Hurro-Urartian languages|Hurro-Urartian language family]]. The external connections of the Hurro-Urartian languages are disputed. There exist various proposals for a [[Hurro-Urartian languages#classification|genetic relationship to other language families]] (e.g., the [[Northeast Caucasian languages]]), but none of these are generally accepted.<ref>{{cite book |last=Wilhelm |first=Gernot |year=2008 |chapter=Hurrian |editor-last=Woodard |editor-first=Roger D. |title=The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor |pages=81–104 |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press}}</ref>

The Hurrians adopted the [[Akkadian language|Akkadian]] language and [[Cuneiform script]] for their own writing about 2000 BC. 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]].<ref>William L. Moran, "The Amarna Letters", Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992 {{ISBN|978-0801842511}}</ref> It was the only long Hurrian text known until a multi-tablet collection of literature in Hurrian with a Hittite translation was discovered at Hattusa in 1983.<ref>[https://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/shared/docs/campbell_dissertation.pdf] Dennis R. M. Campbell, "Mood and Modality in Hurrian", Disertation, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations University of Chicago, 2007</ref>