Maryannu

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Possible Maryannu from the Tomb of Userhet Hunting from a Chariot, Tomb of Userhat MET DP226606.jpg
Possible Maryannu from the Tomb of Userhet

The Maryannu were a caste of chariot-mounted hereditary warrior nobility that existed in many of the societies of the Ancient Near East during the Bronze Age, in particular between 1700 and 1200 BC. [1] Maryannu is a Hurrianized Indo-Aryan word, formed by adding the Hurrian suffix -nni to the Indo-Aryan root márya, meaning "(young) man" [2] or a "young warrior". [3] Philologist Martin West suggested that the name Meriones , a character in Homeric epic, is "identical" to maryannu. [4] Thus, Mērionēs would be the Homeric Greek version of the term, reflected in pre-Mycenaean poetic verse as Mārionās. [5]

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The term is attested in the Amarna letters written by Haapi. The majority of the Maryannu had Semitic and Hurrian names. [6] [7]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Boyce, M. (1987). "Priests, cattle and men". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 50 (3): 508–526. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00039483 . Retrieved July 14, 2025.
  2. ↑ von Dassow, Eva, (2014). "Levantine Polities under Mittanian Hegemony". In: Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum, Nicole Brisch and Jesper Eidem (eds.). Constituent, Confederate, and Conquered Space: The Emergence of the Mittani State, p. 27
  3. ↑ Drews, Robert (1994). The Coming of theGreeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p. 59. ISBN   978-0-691-02951-1 . Retrieved 22 July 2019.
  4. ↑ West, Martin L. (1997). The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 612. ISBN   0-19-815042-3.
  5. ↑ Teffeteller, Annette (2001). "Greek Athena and the Hittite Sungoddess of Arinna". In Susan Deacy; Alexandra Villing (eds.). Athena in the Classical World. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. p. 355. doi:10.1163/9789004497290_022.
  6. ↑ Drews, p. 155
  7. ↑ Watson, Janet; Khan, Geoffrey (2011). The Semitic Languages An International Handbook. De Gruyter. ISBN   9783110251586.

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