Hurrians. Subarians. Assyrians.

The following is mainly written for UB readers concerning the Vanites. The question is, who are the descendants of the Vanites that contributed to the Assyrian stock? Are the Hurrians or the Subarians the Vanites much later descendants? I think we can figure this out based on several statements from the Book and what we historically know about them. We know that they, the Vanites who are comprised of the Amandonites and those Nodites who chose to follow Van, lived in northwestern and northern Mesopotamia starting after the rebellion all the way down to the times of the Assyrians. The following is my understanding of the historical material, with its various viewpoints, which varies somewhat from what has been published by academia.

First is, where did the Vanites live? "Some of the early associates of Van settled about the shores of the lake which still bears his name, and their traditions grew up about this locality." (UB 860) These Vanites were later joined by the western or Syrian Nodites. "The remnants of the nationalistic or racial memorialists journeyed northward, uniting with the Andonites to form the later Nodite centers to the northwest of Mesopotamia. This was the largest group of the dispersing Nodites, and they contributed much to the later appearing Assyrian stock." (UB 859) "Ten thousand years ago the Vanite ancestors of the Assyrians taught that their moral law of seven commandments had been given to Van by the Gods upon Mount Ararat." (UB 860) So, it is clear that the ancestors of the Assyrians are predominately Nodite both from the Vanite and the western Syrian group. Now the question is, can we identify these Nodite descendants?

As far as archaeology is concerned it begins with the grouping together, under an umbrella term, the people of Mesopotamia - the various prehistoric tribes, clans and associations as a starting point for the historic where different peoples can then be identified. The three terms I have read for these people are the "Pan-Subarian", "Japhetic" and "Proto-Hurrian." From this prehistoric group emerge four main groups that are interrelated. They would be the Hurrians, Sabarians, Mitanni and the Urartians. The location for the Mitanni and the Urartians is fairly well documented. The location for the Hurrians and the Sabarians is a considerable expanse of territory across northern Mesopotamia. Different historians put them anywhere from eastern Anatolia (adjacent to the Hittites) and (later) east to the Caspian Sea and beyond into Central Asia. These last two are the two main groups we will be looking at. The Hittites who lived more westward in Anatolia "stemmed directly from the Andonite tribes which had long inhabited these central regions." (UB 896)

The greatest evidence for these people is linguistic and in particular their proper names. Some archaeologists consider the Sabarian and Hurrian as the same people. E. A. Speiser considers them as the same with his preference for the term Hurrian as their most fitting designation. His work on the origin of the Hurrians is now considered the standard. Ignace Gelb, a contemporary, considers them as different but his argument has been eclipsed by Speiser. But Gelb has a lot of valuable information concerning this history (see below). Although I agree that the Sabarians are ethnically of the Hurrians, I think that because they appear as a specific people in the Greek (Sabirs/Sapirs), Akkadian (Subartu), Assyrian (Supri/Sapar-da/Subartu/Subarri), Persian (Sabarda/Matiene/Mada), Old Babylonian (Subar), Neo-Babylonian (Subartu), Egyptian (Subari) and Sumerian Ur III texts (Shubir/Subar/Subartu/Shubur) that they are a distinct political entity living in a land with definite boundaries. The Babylonians separated the Subarians from the Assyrians because both are mentioned as attacking Babylon. Even the Assyrians warred with the Subarians but then the Assyrians warred with just about everyone. Sometimes they are understood as the Hurrites or Horites. They most likely are the forerunners to the Scythians and the Hungarians. The important point to remember is that Subarians equate with Hurrians. They are the same people but politically different. It is important to discuss the Sabarians because of what is said about them and what is said of them also applies to the Hurrians who I believe are the later descendants of the Vanites.

Ignace J. Gelb:

"He [Ungnad] found Subarian merchants and slaves living in Babylonia as early as 2500-2000 B.C; he believed that Assur, the early capital of the Assyrian Empire, was built by Uspia and Kikia, whose names according to him are Subarian.

"Speiser's extensive interest in the Nuzi tablets soon led him to a further discussion of the Hurrian problem, this time, however, with entirely different results in relation to the oldest population of Mesopotamia and neighboring regions. As stated in his own words in his stimulating and attractively written book, "the central thesis of this essay is, briefly, that nearly all of the hitherto unclassified cultures and peoples of the ancient Near East can be organized into a single, genetically interrelated, group; the members of that group formed the basic population of Hither Asia, produced its earliest civilizations, and have continued to this day to furnish its ethnic background." For convenience he calls the whole group "Japhetic," utilizing a term first introduced by the Russian scholar Nicholas Marr, who applied it to the Caucasus.

"His book is dedicated mainly to the Eastern Japhethites, whom he further subdivided: "The peoples of the Zagros, among whom the Elamites, the Gutians, and the Kassites, were most prominent, have been found to constitute an eastern group, while the Hurrians formed the western division of the peoples under discussion." The chief representatives of the eastern group, "the Elamites, ....were the original, pre-Sumerian, population of Babylonia. The Hurrians furnished the substratum in Assyria with this essential difference: they entered more prominently into the make-up of the later Assyrians, than the Elamites appear to have done in the case of Sumer and Akkad. 
     Such, in brief, is Speiser's theory: Everything unknown or little known in the ancient Near East may be summed up as "Japhetic." Of the Japhethites in Mesopotamia and neighboring regions the Hurrians and Elamites played the most important roles. The Elamites in the south formed the basic population before the coming of the Sumerians, while the north was settled by the Hurrians before the Assyrians appeared." I think this is very insightful. There were four main groups of Nodites. For archaeologists to see a north and south division between them is impressive and it was mainly the northern group that served as the substratum for the Assyrians. Another term for Japhetic which is more neutral is "proto-Hurrian" which is the term I think is most appropriate for these people. "Ungnad arrived at the far-reaching conclusion that the Subarians formed the aboriginal population of the whole region extending from Palestine to Armenia or even to the Caucasus and that even in Babylonia they perhaps preceded the Sumerians. In much of the art usually considered to represent Hittites he was inclined to see Subarians; and he even suspected that the so-called "Hittite hieroglyphic" writing was really the oldest writing of the Subarians. Thus began Ungnad's Pan-Subarian theory, which was destined to exercise a permanent influence on the writings of many authors to come." (https://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/shared/docs/saoc22.pdf) Ungnad seems to have developed a theory slightly before and similar to Speiser for groups of indigenous people with the catchall description of Pan-Subarian just like Japhetic and proto-Hurrian.
(Ignace J. Gelb, Hurrians and Subarians, The University of Chicago Press © 1944
https://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/shared/docs/saoc22.pdf)

It is the country of Turkestan (above text), now Turkmenistan, that I find most surprising in this quote. It was in the most southwestern part of Turkmenistan, the Kopet Dagh, where Van's most eastern headquarters was located. 

"A casual reading of The URANTIA Book might give the impression that Van's headquarters were primarily in the Lake Van area (35). A more detailed analysis and comparison of statements in The URANTIA Book indicates, however, that Van's principal headquarters were in the foothills south of the Kopet Dagh, where Adamson subsequently settled (36). In this connection, The URANTIA Book explains that the Vanites (early followers of Van) and their descendants later settled about the shores of Lake Van and their subsequent traditions developed around this area (37)."
(http://www.starspring.com/copiedfromfacebook/UrartuCopiedFromFacebook.html © Troy Bishop)

The map of these northern kingdoms (the Mitanni, Urartian, Sabarian and Assyrian) vary, sometime a lot, according to the time frame as they expand and contract even disappear over time. This map shows the various locations based on an average size of their history. It is not based on dates. It is like all ancient maps - an approximation - and in this case I group all kingdoms on one map for easy reference to help explain where these kingdoms existed. As for the location of Subartu the general area would be northeastern Mesopotamia with the locations of Nuzi (Gasur) and part of Assyria within it (3,000 BC). Academically, its true location remains unknown. My location for Subartu is based on the cuneiform texts and coupled with natural barriers. It makes the most sense looking at the geography of the area. It is bounded by three rivers and a mountainous range. Although there are other locations, indicated very generally or sometimes just a name with no boundaries, I prefer this as that bounded location. You will find references that Subartu is Assyria. This is based on certain Sumerian texts which point to a common origin. Therefore Subartu must be at least adjacent to Assyria. The Assyrians are most certainly related ethnically to the Subarians but Subartu itself was its own individual country. And as considering ethnicity, the Assyrians were Hurrian to begin with (based on the early settlement of Assur) and only later became Semitic as was the the case for the rest of Mesopotamia including Akkad, Babylonia and Sumeria. 

"Most scholars suggest that Subartu is an early name for Assyria proper on the Tigris and westward, although there are various other theories placing it sometimes a little farther to the east and/or north. Its precise location has not been identified." (https://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Subartu&item_type=topic)

"Assyria was also sometimes known as Subartu and Azuhinum prior to the rise of the city state of Ashur after which it was Aššūrāyu, and after its fall, from 605 BC through to the late 7th century AD variously as Athura and also referenced as Atouria according to Strabo, Syria (Greek), Assyria (Latin) and Assuristan."
(https://aratta.wordpress.com/2015/06/28/hausos-goddess-of-the-dawn/)

The brown area on the map is based on present day Kurdistan. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the Kurds by my theory are Nodite descendants. It was by looking at this Kurdish territory that I could more plainly see various relationships and I feel confident that this is also the territory of the Hurrians. Much of what I had read seemed to fall into place and this latest research only strengths my conviction. The Hurrians were mainly a mountain dwelling people but did expand south. They did have their time of domination just like many different groups did. They became the power brokers of their time even bringing Assyria under their control. "The Hurrians, who seem to have operated on a grand scale, having their 'contacts spreading well into Europe', have been related by some scholars to the Finno-Ugrians, a conclusion that has been drawn from their language." (Gösta Werner Ahlström, The History of Ancient Palestine, Sheffield Academic Press, © 1993) When they were in their decline, around 1300 BC, they moved back into the "Hinter Land" also called "Hinter Asia" which would be the mountainous area on the map where the text Lake Van is located. Although some maps have Kurdistan as being as far south as to the eastern side of the Persian Gulf, this map stops at Elam. I go with this map in part because of it. The Western Syrian Nodites may have become, at least in part, culturally Vannic and therefore different from the Elamites who so long ago they moved away from, which is why I interpret this map of Kurdistan as correct and ending at the boundary with Elam. And this agrees with Assyriologist E. A. Speiser's division of the northern and southern groups of indigenous peoples.

"The Hurrians were so ubiquitous that many Indo-Iranian and Indo-European peoples are believed to have substantive Hurrian contributions in their ethnogenesis. For example, the Kurds consider themselves and their culture as descendants of the Hurrians and their civilization, despite linguistic differentiation." (Amjad M. Jaimoukha, The Chechens: A Handbook, RoutledgeCurzon © 2005 p 28)

"Subartu may have been in the general sphere of influence of the Hurrians. There are various alternate theories associating the ancient Subartu with one or more modern cultures found in the region, including the Armenians. The Kurdish scholar Mehrdad Izady, claims to have identified Subartu with the current Kurdish tribe of Zebari/Zubari/Zibaris inhabiting the northern ring north of Erbil, east of Mosul up to Hakkari in Turkey. (https://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Subartu&item_type=topic)

"Although Hurrians were present in Northern Mesopotamia and the country between the Tigris and the Zagros mountains from the first half of the third millenium B.C., their home territory was in the region of Lake Van in eastern Anatolia and the high­ land zone between the Upper Euphrates and the Caucasus. Archaeological finds in this area manifest a general uniformity of material culture from the last quarter to the fourth millenium B.C., suggesting ethnic unity and pointing to continuous occupa­tion by the Hurrians from that time onwards."
(http://s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/20Roots/260Convergence/Hungarians/EndreyASonsOfNimrodCh7-9.pdf)

The origin of the Hurrians is across northern Mesopotamia from the shores of the Mediterranean to northern Iran. This is where the Vanites and Western Syrian Nodites settled down. But from the Sumerian record they seem to emanate from in or about the location of Subartu and advanced westwards. This migration is the supposed reason that they show up in the west in Hittite territory in Anatolia. However, the Hurrians appear in Hittite texts some one thousand years before they are found in the Sumerian texts of Ur.

"Of the two designations, “ Subarian ” was the first to confront cuneiformists — in a variety of sources from Mesopotamia. “Hurrian ” was encountered later, along the western fringes of the region..."
(E. A. Speiser, Hurrians and Subarians, Journal of the American Oriental Society, © 1948)

The capital city of the Hurrians was Urkesh in the Kingdom of Mitanni. That is the archaeological location and of all the cities mentioned so far it is the only one that begins with UR. 
"Events of vast significance have occurred in that small area of the world, ringing down their consequences through the ages. Perhaps some day we shall know more about this subject. One thing is becoming increasingly clear: The modern revelation contained in The URANTIA Book is not merely a theoretical article of belief to be sheltered from all links with external reality. Even the word Urantia, which we URANTIA Book readers know as the name of our planet, is not, it now seems, new to this world (a possibility that brings a comforting sense of continuity with the past): the similarity between Urantian and Urartian is too close--the ubiquity of the Ur prefix too universal. Perhaps someday scholars will find a new inscription or discover a new language fact and show that the exact term Urantia has been in widespread use on our world for ages upon ages.

"The word Urantia, the revealed universe name of our planet, was known to Van. Derivatives of this word have abounded in the area where Van dwelt, working their way into the languages and traditions of men since time immemorial. Some are obvious, while others are speculative: Urartu--Ur--King Ursa--Ural Mountains. Perhaps it is wrong to look to ancient definitions of the word Ur and its derivatives to find clues to the significance of the name Urantia. Perhaps, as a revealed name, this word has given all human languages their variously and imperfectly perceived interpretations of the true universe meaning of the prefix Ur."
(http://www.starspring.com/copiedfromfacebook/UrartuCopiedFromFacebook.html © Troy Bishop)

The capital of the Hurrians was Urkesh. But there may be another capitol which was located at Urfa (another UR prefix) and which is where Göbekli Tepe is located just west of Urkesh. The Proto-Hurrians pre-date the Natufian/Andites by many millenia. And, since in the archaeological sense of Urkesh being their capital, it is not surprising that the later Göbekli Tepe was built where it was, which is as some would have it, in the Hurrian heartland. Strange how some things come together.
"It is only after this Hurrian expansion that the name ‘Hurri’, or more exactly fc/ш гп', makes its first appearance in contemporary sources and this has led Ungnad to suggest that that name does not designate a people but only a political concept, such as ‘federa­tion’ or ‘union’. However, Hrozny has established that there was also a city called Khurri or Khurra mentioned by that name in Assyrian and Babylonian records which was probably identical with modern Urfa (Edessa) and was the centre of the Hurrian empire. This makes it appear more likely that khurri was the name of the Hurrian people in their own language and that they applied the same designation to their capital. 

"Assuming, therefore, that the carved jar of Karmir Blur was of Hungarian origin, its emergence among the ruins of an Urartian fort furnishes further proof of close Hurrian-Hungarian relations. These can be also traced in another important way. We have already referred to the fact that in early Christian tradition and Moslem mythology Edessa (Urfa) was particularly closely as­sociated with Nimrod (Chapter 1 ), and we have also pointed out that this city was probably the capital of the Hurrians. It is therefore very likely that Nimrod was a Hurrian mythical figure, or perhaps even an early Hurrian ruler, and that he personifies that people in the Bible and Near Eastern tradition. Biblical references to the role played by him in Assyria are certainly consistent with the Hurrian occupation of that country and although there is no evidence that the Hurrians engaged in any large scale building activities throughout the Near East, it is quite possible that the Israelites simply attributed to them the works of the Sumerians of whom they had no memory. After all, the Hurrians were still around at the time the Genesis was written (c. 950 B.C.) but the Sumerians had completely disappeared nearly a thousand years previously." (http://s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/20Roots/260Convergence/Hungarians/EndreyASonsOfNimrodCh7-9.pdf)

With the decline of the Hurrians as a historical people, and after a victorious past, the Urartians that lived about Lake Van who were of Hurrian descent were able to become the dominant power of northern Mesopotamia during the Iron Age. So we have at least two major groups, the Mitanni and the Urartians who were Hurrian but were politically different and it is true for the Subarians.

Double Origins
"The Curator of the East Asian Museum in Berlin, E. Mayer, states that the Hurrites were not Semites and their name in Sumerian was SUBAR or SUBIR. In about 3500 B.C., the Sumerian people settled among the Sabir/Subir/Subarean people who lived in this territory. This is probably the explanation of the expression KAS-GAR which was found on the Sumerian tablets. KAS-GAR means "double origins" (Sabir/Hurrite and Sumerian)." (http://www.magtudin.org/Homeland%2010.htm) The "double origins" most likely means divine and human.

"Some Sumerian myths claimed that the god of Air en-Lil created man. Other myths claimed that enKi created man, but in fact the FinnUgor myths claim that the equivalent of Enki known as "world caretaker" man, was originally the ancestor of mankind. In a sense he is the father of mankind, but not its creator.
     This however may be but a variation in Sumerian of the Finn-Ugor idea of the dual origin of man, where one branch of humanity is known known as MOS, coming from heaven and another branch known as POR being the sons of earth has Sumerian links that are a little bit changed, where "Meš" = princely, man also while most people are derived from clay. The term POR in Sumerian has the equivalent word PAR-im, which is dry-arid land. Thus one group is believed to be the son of the air god, while the other group is believed to be the son of the earth. Perhaps this also gave the idea to the Sumerians that certain of their kings were partly divine in origin, by having a god or goddess as one of their parents, while the other parent was human. This idea is echoed in the Bible as the Elohim, the sons of god who intermarried with the daughters of (earth) men. The story is greatly changed, but the underlying facts are still the same." (http://users.cwnet.com/millenia/Sumer-origins.htm)

Very interesting, the "double origins" concept found beyond Mesopotamia and Enki as "World Caretaker", what a nice surprise. It is also a trail of connect the dots. It appears that the Hurrians, but named as the Subirs/Sabarians/Sapirs, migrated eastward through what by now is a well known corridor that borders the southern Caspian Sea. As they traveled east into Turkmenistan they curved northward. That brings them into the area that would later be called Chorasmia with its welcomed oasis and considered by some historians as originally settled by the Subirs. Their northward movement would be split by the Ural Mountains funneling some to the east into Siberia but most to the west into Old Europe the gateway to western Europe. Here it becomes interesting. The land to the northeast, Siberia, would become the origin of the Hungarians who would later migrate eventually to the Carpathian Basin and claim it as Hungary. Siberia is also home to the Ob-Ugrian and as some historians postulate, home to the FinnUgor (with the suffix Ugor located both east and west of the Urals and most likely with the same ancestry as the Ob-Ugrian if not the same people. The difference in names might be related to a time frame and/or the ethnology of the historian.) Along with these early Hungarians came a language with strong Sumerian ties, Siberian folklore and legends which is why some scholars have the origin of the Hungarians in Sumeria itself. As for the Hungarian language: "His conclusion [László Götz] is that most Eurasian ethno-linguistic groups are related to one another in varying degrees, and that these groups, such as the Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic groups, were formed in a complex process of multiple ethno-linguistic hybridization in which Sumerian-related peoples (Subareans, Hurrians, Kassites, Elamites, Chaldeans, Medes, Parthians) played a fundamental role." and that "The linguistic similarities between Sumerian, Hungarian and other languages are corroborated by the archeological and anthropological data discovered so far."
(http://www.hunmagyar.org/tor/controve.htm) 

Here is more on the Hungarian-Sumerian connection: "There is therefore strong linguistic evidence that the ances­tors of Hungarians lived in the Mesopotamian region during the third millenium B.C. and possibly even earlier. This evidence is supported by definite traces of Sumerian mythology and reli­gious concepts in Hungarian folklore. The cult of the Great Stag, one of the personifications of the Sumerian god Enki, is reflected in numerous Hungarian Christmas and New Year’s Eve regos chants.20 It is perhaps not without significance that the melodies of these chants differ markedly from the pentatonic folk-songs prevalent in old Hungarian music and are generally regarded as of much more ancient origin.-1 Although the cult of a benevolent stag divinity is common to many peoples, Hungarians have also preserved his name, Dara-mah (Hungarian Doromo, Durumo), and the memory of his son Dumuzig (later Tammuz) survived in the Hungarian pagan god Damachek."  (http://s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/20Roots/260Convergence/Hungarians/EndreyASonsOfNimrodCh7-9.pdf)

The map above includes an area labeled as Turania which is another name for Central Asia. If you do any more reading on this subject you will encounter it so I include it here.

Chorasmia/Khwarezmi
"The land of the Sumerians
The main name for the land of Sumeria is also a rather enigmatic term "Ki-Engi-ra" or sometimes "Kiengi". It is also not very well understood. While KI=land, place as in FinnUgor *kila, the following Engira or Engur, however doesn't seem to make much sense in this context, since it means fresh-underground waters. Interestingly there was in ancient times another great city-state, which lasted until the coming of the Mongols, next to the Aral Sea. It also was a land of extensive canals and irrigation and known by a very similar name locally as Kanga. The Persians and most historians knew it as the kingdom of Choresmia. According to Russian archaeologists and historians it was probably founded by the Hurrian-Subarians. Its also interesting to know that the Subarians were also known even by the northern Ob-Ugrians, as Sapir and were admired for their superhuman knowledge and abilities, probably as the carriers of a very ancient and high civilization." (http://users.cwnet.com/millenia/Sumer-origins.htm)

My above map is a composite of several maps. It has Chorasmia between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya rivers with the inclusion of the agricultural region directly south of the Aral Sea and all the way west for access to the Caspian Sea. The Amu Darya flows into the Aral Sea from Afghanistan and today the sea is just about gone.

"From about 30,000 to 10,000 B.C. epoch making racial mixtures were taking place throughout southwestern Asia. The highland inhabitants of Turkestan were a virile and vigorous people. To the northwest of India much of the culture of the days of Van persisted." (UB 870)

The beginning of agriculture in this region dates back to about 3000 BC. At about 1000 BC a Neolithic culture flourished in the Chorasmian oasis but the first historical reference is from the Avesta at about 500 BC. The archaeological record shows that the technologies of civilization traveled north from the BMAC. An article on http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/chorasmia-i, dates the kingdom of Chorasmia to 600 BC for the approximate start of its establishment. 

The kingdom of Chorasmia which would include the older Oxus civilization also known as the BMAC the forth civilization to arise with Sumeria, Harappa and Egypt was located partly in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan and borders the Aral Sea. These are the three largest of the countries of Central Asia. Also included would be Kyrgystan and Tajikstan. Afghanistan is sometimes also included. "There are indications that some kind of kingdom had come into being as early as the thirteenth century BCE. The first of these is the fact that ancient chronographers knew a Chorasmian era, which dated back to 1292 BCE. The second indication is that according to the Gâthâ's, Avestan texts written in the fourteenth or thirteenth century, the prophet Zarathustra was protected by king Hystaspes of Chorasmia." 
(http://www.livius.org/articles/people/chorasmia/)

"The Hurrian descendants also founded the kingdom of Urartu as well as the central Asian kingdom of Khwarezmia, next to the Aral Sea.( S.P.Tolstov, Ancient Khwarezmia, Moscow, 1947 ) [Some Russian researchers claim that Khwarezmia and its area was the possible origin of the Finno-Ugrian and Altaic nations!] The people of Subartu (Hurrians and Subars) lived predominantly in northern Mesopotamia but in very ancient times also in southern Mesopotamia."
(http://genesisjournal.blogspot.com/2004/09/hungarian-ethnic-designations.html

The Russian researchers point to Chorasmia/Khwarezmi as a possible homeland of the Finn-Ugrians to the north and the Altaic peoples more to the east. They are probably right. We do not know of any estimates of population size of this collective of "Subirs" but it was enough (along with the earlier Andites and Adamites) to influence this entire region. We also have no real date of when the Subir-Hurrians migrated to Central Asia. The beginning of the Neolithic seems possible as there is evidence of very early irrigation. That would mean they were on the heels of the Andites and reinforced those epic memories of the past.

"The previous summary illustrates the fact that the Magyar and Sabir names have been found in Northern Mesopotamia since the dawn of history, but they may mislead one to think this is the only place where it was found. Actually one can trace it to the east of this area to the Turanian Lowlands and Turkestan also, where even today there are a few place and geographic names which recall their presence. The Persians split the Sabir people and only one branch lived in the Caucasus while another further east. This is how the Sabirs gave their name to the northern Asia in the name Siberia."
(http://genesisjournal.blogspot.com/2004/09/hungarian-ethnic-designations.html)

Conclusion
Everything points to those Proto-Hurrians, as being the substrata for the Assyrians, Sabarians, Urartians and the Mitanni. They also became a political entity unto themselves and they had a definite cultural impact on the region as a whole. I have not delved into their religious influence here but it was substantial. Of all the religious iconography in this region the Tree of Life is dominant. This is confirmed in Assyrian, Urartian and Mitanni art. Legends at this time would have been known of the relationship of the Tree of Life to Van (the world tree), to Eden (in the concept of Divine Kingship) and perhaps, since they were Nodite, from Dalamatia itself. So at this time frame of about 6000-1300 BC we are post-Adamic, post-Andite and by 1300 post-Melchizedek. 

Looking at the map with its Hurrian migrations I can see that Van's headquarters was no random placement. It is located where the Silk Road would develop in the future with its major thoroughfare of the migratory routes including the Adamic, the Andite, the Nodite, the Hurrian and others. It is a strategic location for what Van needed. It was an excellent jumping off point for his missionaries to seed the known world. It was a doorway for his legend to travel between east and west. Shortly after Van departed, Adamson, Adam and Eve's first born, who married Ratta settled here to raise their family. It would continue this Mesopotamian history of the rebellion, its epic consequences and the story of the miraculous Tree of Life. 

It would be in this area of Turkmenistan where the Tree of Life grew and where Van and Amadon lived all those millennia. And that presents a bit of a problem. Specifically the World Tree and Shamanism. The Tree of Life is as involved in Mesopotamian religion as it is in Shamanism. There are many common features of the Tree in Mesopotamia and in Central Asia. I do not think we will be able to untangle this knot of where or when differing concepts, regarding the Tree, originate.

I still have questions about the relationship, if any, between the Hurrians and the Andites. I am assuming that there was, as they both lived in the same basic area of northern Mesopotamia for thousands of years. History and geography indicates that the Hurrian were more of a people of the mountains and the Adamites more plainsmen with their focus on agriculture. The Adamites migrated west across the Mediterranean Basin until it flooded, south into Egypt and east into Turania but they do not seem to have migrated that much north and that may be the reason that the Andites and the Hurrians seem to be two distinctive groups. By 6000 BC the Andites were essentially gone except for the southern Sumerians. That would leave the indigenous people of the north, the Vanites, those Amadonites with a component of Nodite blood but not enough Adamic blood to qualify as an Andite and the two groups of Nodites who by this time were most likely amalgamated into one roughly homogeneous group (the northern Nodites) as the emerging proto-Hurrians. So the genetic weight of the Hurrians is Andonite and Nodite. There also would be those Sangiks that would round out this group. That's guesswork but it would satisfy: a people who continued to keep alive the legend of the Tree of Life, the rebellion, the epic event of the mixture of human and divine blood, the traditional belief in the reality of Van as Enki and as a group of aboriginal people cohesive enough to become contributors to the substrata of Mesopotamia. 

One of the Sumerian appellations for Enki is "caretaker of man". "Sumerian KIG > KI, better known as EnKI and EA=god of waters, wisdom, magic, caretaker of man. He seems to be a combination of several earlier gods, because of his wide range of functions and many titles. One of the Sumerian caretaker of man Hungarian KEGY = mercy (Sumerian Kiag = love, care) The FU [Finn-Ugor] myths about the "world care taker or world ranger" fits with enKI in that he teaches and looks out for the benefit of mankind. Enki's other name is DARAMAH which can mean great stag, but may be related to the FU chief god TAREM in Ugrian or the god of weather /atmospheric TIER-MES in Lappish. Hungarian teremt�=creator. As the magician-shaman of the gods several FU names related to prophecies and magic also relate to Sumerian, along with the meaning of water and river, which is also his chief element. IA in Finn-Ugor is *YO-(ki) , or YO in some languages means river, but yos is also a prophet. The Y was replaced by a leading I in Sumerian.  There is evidence that the Finnish water god HIISI, who took on the form of a stag but was later demonized, was once also similar to EA." (http://lunaticoutpost.com/showthread.php?tid=363903) 

"The Aurora Borealis is caused by his shiny clothes and glittering white horse as he flashes through the sky."

(http://www.cosmicelk.net/mammothhunters.htm)

Once again we see attributes of Enki: waterfowl-like in the image of the swan, child of the sky god, a bestower of culture and riding a flying white horse which is part of another folklore belief of the Ob-Ugrians. 

Included with all the Shamanistic trapping surrounding Enki is the concept of watching as in the World Watching Man. It may be just a strange coincidence but Enki, as one of the Anunnaki, is what the Bible's term for the Anunnaki says he would be - a Watcher. That means that the term "watcher" could come from the stories of those ancient shaman who lived in Siberia. 

We do not hear much about this flying horse of Enki in the usual information about him. But there is a connection with water and the sky. We start with his abode in the Aspu. When depicted on seals and the like he sits within a square on a cube-like throne. Sometimes his symbol is a square with a cross inside. This square shape is also in a constellation called AS-IKU. The Sumerians called this great square "the field" (1-iku the 'One-Acre Field'). "The god Enki is the most important of the deities in the flood myth, for he is the one who specifically warns Utnapishtim of the coming of the flood, and it is precisely this god who later became the sign of Capricorn, for both the goat and the fish were sacred to him. As Utnapishtim recounts the story of the flood to Gilgamesh, he tells him that Enki warned him that Enlil planned to destroy humanity and that Utnapishtim should build an ark shaped exactly like a cube ("her length and breadth shall be the same"). This is a strange detail until we realize that for the Mesopotamians the constellation of Pisces included the so-called Pegasus Square between the two fish, and that this square was known as "1 Iku," precisely the dimensions of the ark (an iku was a unit of measurement equivalent to 3600 square meters)." (http://www.mythicjourneys.org/newsletter_may07_gilgamesh3.html) The name Pegasus is from the Greek which refers to the winged horse of Poseidon the god of the sea but whose name translates as "Lord of the Earth". One Greek myth has the winged white horse sired by Poseidon. Enki is well known in that Poseidon is his later manifestation. Therefore, the constellation named Pegasus in Greek is founded on Enki's winged horse from those oral Shamanistic traditions about the World Watching-Man. What the relationship is of Enki's square water temple to the square of Pegasus is revealed from Enki and the World Order:

Here is an example from the Enuma Elish about the Babylonian Marduk's squaring and measuring Enki's subterranean home:

Van's memory, as the god Enki, has found lodging in the Siberian area to the north of his then headquarters in the Kopet Dagh. Here, as in the Sumerian pantheon, he is the younger son of the Sky god. Also, Van's responsibilities could easily be summed up as "overseeing the world and of humans." The author, Thomson Gale, also mentions in conjunction with the warlord guardian spirits, which includes the world-overseeing man, the spirit named as the "Winged Old Man" as appearing in animal form of an eagle. This Shamanistic idea may be at the root of the eagle headed figures of the Assyrians (first image) that I have wondered about on the page Shamanism and Revealed Religion. Considering the entanglement of Shamanism and Mesopotamian religious beliefs I would endorse such a notion. There does not seem to be any other legitimate answer as powerful as the verified religious beliefs of the Ob-Ugrian. And who has an ancestral influence on the Assyrians and Ob-Ugrians?: the Hurrians. The second winged anthropomorphic figure (gray) is Hittite. Same figure, different style. What is interesting about this image is that it could be dated before the Assyrian images. But as I have mentioned many times, archaeological based dates are tricky. The third image is from Urartu, the forth is Hurrian (Mitanni cylindar seal) and the last image is Garuda a winged eagle headed figure which is from India and is Hindu. In any case this eagle headed winged figure is at least well spread across northern Mesopotamia at an early date and most likely predates the Sumerians. From what the UB says and what the Sumerian have written we can conclude these apkallu are related to the Sethite priesthood. See page The Apkallu for more info. The UB tells of the last three Andite migrations between 8000 and 6000 B.C. and within it , "Ten per cent, including a large group of the Sethite priests, moved eastward through the Elamite highlands to the Iranian plateau and Turkestan." (UB 873)  So, we know for certain that the Sethite priesthood was in Turkmenistan and with some educated guesswork at least as far north as the Aral Sea where there was an abundance of water and food.

Further evidence of associations with Enki can be seen to the left. The first is a Sumerian seal of Enki showing the water coming from him with the fish as the first and most popular association. The middle is a Hittite relief with the goat and the Tree of Life. The last is the Sumerian version labeled as the "Ram in the Thicket" which is a gross misnomer. It is neither a ram nor a thicket. Both the Hittite and Sumerian art work have the goat standing on the Tree of Life itself. This is exactly what the Sumerian epic "Enki and the World Order" says about the 'Stag of the Abzu' as he is "on board" the stag of the Abzu with it's "shade extending over the whole land." But it is confusing as the 'Stag of the Abzu' also refers to a real boat. Part of the shaman's ritual does include the shaman climbing the Tree of Life. The last association with Enki is the eagle which you can see in the first Sumerian seal impression. Also, the goat is present just under Enki in case you missed it. "The three animals which we see around Enki - the fish, the bird and the horned goat - may well symbolize the totality of the animal world – all that flies, swims or runs. Water is essential to the life of all of them." (https://scythianwarriorofsatan.wordpress.com/2014/11/01/the-great-stag-by-ida-bobula/)

There are also composite figures associated with Enki. The line drawing is the fish goat Capricorn, one of the animals of the zodiac which would be Babylonian, taken from the earlier "animal round" which is Sumerian. The small sculpture is an apkallu and in this case represents Oannes the Babylonian fish man one of the seven sages. Neither of these are Enki himself but are symbolic representations. 

                                                                                                                                                                     

The Goat

"Few animals are more important in mythology than the Goat,
whilst Capella and Capricorn stand in the front rank of stars and constellations."
Robert Brown, Researches into the Origin of Primitive Constellations
of the Greeks, Phoenicians and Babylonians, Williams and Norgate © 1899

As mentioned in a previous paragraph above, Enki is associated with three animal symbols - the fish, the eagle and the goat. Of these three the goat seems the most enigmatic. There is precious little that I have been able to find when searching the most obvious avenues. So I decided to follow my instincts and look into Shamanism. There I found much of what I was looking for. 

First, the most important feature of the goat, at least from Central Asia, are the horns:

"Ziarat consist of a stone cairn, decorated with togh, or cloth flags hung from long poles (Fig. 3). These flags are placed there so that the shrine can be visible from a distance. Most Afghan ziarat are decorated with goat horns, which are placed atop the long flagpoles, or on separate poles of their own, or, alternatively, they are embedded in the earth around the stone cairn. Unlike the shrine flags, the significance of these goat horns is more difficult to determine. In present-day Nuristan (northeastern Afghanistan) goat horns appear as an emblem of prestige, signifying the number of feasts given by a particular individual, and so signifying his rank (EDELBERG and JONES 1979, 114). There is also a separate tradition in Afghanistan which links horns with warriors. In the Shah Nama (The Epic of Kings), written in the court of Mahmud of Ghazni during the eleventh century, warriors are referred to as gow [cow?], bulls, and described as being "possessors of horns," which meant that they wore horn-decorated helmets. Even today in Afghanistan there is a common expression, shakh dar at ra beyar, used when challenging someone, which means "bring out your horned one," or, in other words, your most powerful person.

The ancient religious significance of the goat in Afghanistan is clear, as we have already noted, from the various ritual goat-burials unearthed by archaeologists (DUPREE et al. 1972, 12-13, 81-82; DUPREE 1973, 215). Indeed, these finds have been interpreted as signifying the presence of a Central Asiatic goat-cult dating back to either the Neolithic (DUPREE 1973, 264-266) or the Bronze Age (SHAFFER 1978, 81-83). The discovery at Teshik-Tash of a Neanderthal burial site on the banks of the Oxus River,[5] in which several pairs of goat horns had been arranged around the body, suggests that goat horns had ritual significance at an even earlier date (GOWLETT 1984, 107). The present-day association of goat horns with ziarat may well reflect the tenacity of pre-Islamic elements." (http://www.khyber.org/publications/041-045/afghanshaman.shtml)

These goat horns of Central Asia are impressive and serious looking and are a far cry from what you see in some artistic renderings. The horns in Mesopotamia are an important symbol of divinity and virility and are reminiscent of the Mesopotamian "horned cap" of the gods. It is the ibex pictured above that has the strongest goat association to Enki (also shown on the decorated pottery). 

The second reason is the goat's relationship to fertility:

"Gods could be worshipped via a representative animal, which made animal cults and totemistic practices part of Paleolithic man's psychological landscape. Many archeological excavations suggest that primative man performed a host of animal rituals, ranging from the glorification of animal deities, to animal sacrifice, or simply showing great respect for specific animals.
     For example, horned animals, particularly the ibex, were worshipped as icons in the prehistoric Near East; they are protrayed on pottery dating as far back as 5500 BC. One explanation given for this worship is that it derives from the goat's remarkable sex drive. Generally speaking, goats have always been viewed as symbols of fertility....In early Babylonian times the god Ea, protector of its people and the bringer of knowledge and civilization to humanity, was portrayed as a goat."
(Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries, Talking to the Shaman Within: Musings on Hunting, © 2014 Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries)

One of Enki's attributes is fertility and according to various texts he, as a lusty god, did have a well known strong sex drive. 

The third reason comes from Shamanistic rock art. The following is from Ughtasar in eastern Armenia:

"Motifs - goats rule!  Of the 977 rocks recorded images of goats consistently predominate among the figurative motifs, appearing on a total of 515 rocks and representing 65.3% of all identifiable figurative motifs.  Humans, some with enormous hands, are the next highest in number, appearing on 166 rocks (16.3% of figurative motifs).  Felines feature on 74 rocks (6.7%), while zigzags or snakes appear on 42 rocks, making up 3.5% of the figurative motifs.  Other animals including stags, bulls and canines are less frequently depicted. There are also many enigmatic abstract motifs, perhaps holding meaning for only a minority of participants, practitioners and viewers of the rock art.

"It has long been recognized that goats play a dominant role in Armenian rock art but the quantitative survey at Ughtasar has enabled the research team to demonstrate that goats, assumed from their massively exaggerated horns to be both wild and male account for almost two-thirds of all figurative motifs.

"The collected data, together with other characteristics of the ‘art’, make it possible to use models such as that of Layton (2000) and others (Sauvet et al, 2009) to assign the character of the rock art to such categories as ‘totemic’, ‘shamanic’ or ‘secular’.  In this context Ughtasar appears to match Layton’s criteria for a ‘shamanic’ site: goats appear at least twice as frequently as the mean for the remaining figurative motifs. The distribution map also indicates that they are distributed with similar frequency across the area surveyed so far.

Perhaps goats acted as ‘spirit guardians’ or vehicles for spiritual activity of various kinds. Analogous accounts of animals thought to have acted as ‘spirit helpers’, such as the eland in southern African rock paintings or the bighorn sheep on petroglyphs in the Cosos Mountain Range of California have also been interpreted as ‘shamanistic’ in character (Lewis-Williams & Dowson 2000; Whitley, 2011). Research is ongoing into the intriguing question of why goats were so important for those who created the rock art of Armenia and western and Central Asia." (http://ughtasarrockartproject.org/results.html)

The above reasons of why Enki is associated with the goat should give you an indication of the underlying power of the shamanistic influence from Central Asia. It also shows just how complicated and perhaps obscure the answers to Mesopotamian symbolism really are. 

A spiritual belief involving the goat in Central Asia continues down to the present day. The photo is from a spirit shrine in Langar Tajikistan and shows a collection of goat heads including a collection of just the horns. This tells you how important the horns are and how tenacious the olden beliefs remain a strong influence. The petroglyphs, at least several thousand years old, are from the same area.
(http://insearchoflostplaces.com/2016/11/langar-tajikistan/)

You just never know. Somethings seem to arrive out of the blue. This is the first research I have done with any depth for Central Asia concerning the proto-Hurrians those earliest Hurrians/Sabirs. The sentence linking Sabir with Siberia may be another link between Mesopotamia and the Shaman along with those enigmatic eagle headed reliefs from Mesopotamia. But as usual there are other theories for the origin of the name Siberia. For me, which is probably showing my bias, this one makes a lot of sense. Partly based on the fact that they carry those same Andite legends and partly on the fact that the name Sabir, or some version of it, was so well known. Another surprise was the "Winged Old Man." That really was out of the blue. I knew about the Hungarian connection from earlier research but this latest effort has cleared up many of the gray areas, particularly linguistic, and gave me a more overall picture that I could understand. There is, as usual, one last thing. That is climate and how world events are effected by it. To revisit the Andites who were already in Central Asia in large numbers, an increasing aridity around 8000 BC was starting to drive the Andites from Turkmenistan into neighboring areas which includes the lands about the Euphrates (UB 878). That timing is just before various civilizations and peoples begin to appear on the map. So Central Asian influences were already afoot in and about Mesopotamia when those religious monuments were first being carved. For me it is no stretch to see the eagle headed Winged Old Man represented in Assyrian, Urartian and Hittite art. It also is no surprise to see them connected with the Sethite priests although I do not understand the forces involved in its fusion. There may be a Babylonian connection. "But ever-increasing drought gradually brought about the great Andite exodus from the lands south and east of the Caspian Sea. The tide of migration began to veer from the northward to southward, and the Babylonian cavalrymen began to push into Mesopotamia." (UB 879) This contributed further to the end of Sumeria. But perhaps the start of the apkallu and their association with kingship. "After the breakup of the early Sumerian confederation the later city-states were ruled by the apostate descendants of the Sethite priests. Only when these priests made conquests of the neighboring cities did they call themselves kings." (UB 876)

This page is a good example of the mixing of Shamanism and Mesopotamian beliefs. Starting with the proto-Hurrian who would have had both shamans and that legendary pre-Mesopotamian background we get to Enki the eagle headed winged god with his association with goats and the World Tree. There is a mixing of the world caretaker role with the World Watching Man, the aspu with the river and astrology linking his winged horse to Pegasus. Then back again, mixing the ancient Shaman imagery with the persona of Enki creating compound mythical characters such as the fish apkallu, the goat fish and the familiar winged eagle headed genii of the Tree of Life. Shamanism had a profound impact on Mesopotamian beliefs in that Shamanism as the evolutionary religion of early man was grafted with the history of the rebellion and all which that entails to produce a hybrid belief system that we call the Sumerian pantheon.

You never know, I was not even going to write this page. 

Thank you for reading.

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