The Hurrians (Khurri) are a people who lived in the country that arc'ed from the Kirkuk area of northern Iraq, across northern Syria and well into eastern Turkey (where they heavily influenced the Hittites), and south into an area directly north of Lebanon, now part of Syria. This region is the northern and western section of what British archaeologists designated, a century ago, as the Fertile Crescent. The time frame is circa 1800 - 800 bce, the later bronze age.

The people do not speak a Semitic language, like those to their south, the Canaanites, Assyrians and Babylonians, nor an Indo-European one like the Hittites to their north, or the Indo-Iranian people who conquered them and founded the kingdom of Mitanni. These groups fused, with the invaders bringing in Indic deity names like Mitra and Varuna. But the Hurrian language is unrelated to either Semitic or Indo-European, an older substrate related to the Urartian language in what later became Armenia. One disputed theory interprets these languages as branching from a Northeastern Caucasian language family.

The Hurrians had their own goddesses and gods, which were adopted by their powerful neighbors and sometime rulers, the Hittites and Assyrians.

The Hurrians called the Great Mother Hebat or Hepat. (This name was incorporated into that of the most famous Hurrian priestess, Puduhepa, who became queen of the Hittite empire and one of the most powerful women in the region.) It has been suggested that Oupis, a title of Artemis Ephesia, is a hellenization of Hepat, although Ephesos is well west of the Hurrian country.

Like many other goddesses of SW Asia, Hebat stood on a lion, as shown (far right) in a colossal sculpture at Tel Halaf (Bit Hiluli) in northern Syria:

Hebat is prominent in Hittite rockface reliefs, along with the maiden goddess Shaushka, also of Hurrian origin. Assyrians revered her as Ishtar of Nineveh, who often depicted with one leg covered by a skirt and the other, front leg unclothed, unless by a warrior kilt. The Hittites pictured her this way too, and similarly winged. Below is Shaushka / Ishtar of Nineveh in her Assyrian form:

It is the original Hurrian form of Shaushka we'll explore here. I'm just spooling out what I've found, going by the iconographic record, as thin on details as that is. Most of it comes from Syrian seals. Below, she appears winged, with both lion and bull, and appears flanked by lunar crescents. But are they? this shape appears in several different forms, as we'll see.

This cylinder seal from Tel Atchana (far NW Syria, near Ugarit) is a classic form of the Middle Bronze Age. The goddess stands, in her high pointed headdress, on the head of an animal with foliage (or wings) sprouting from it. Shaushka is placed in the middle of two branches, or maybe palm trees, grasping them firmly. Are those birds, or palm fronds at the tops, above her hands? (We'll see this motif again when we get to India.)

Below, Shaushka still grasps crescent shapes with serrated ridges on them, but instead of palm bark, they appear to be her fringed garment which she is holding apart. Various animal spirits surround her. North Syria, circa 1800 bce.

This carved serpentine seal is from the same region and time. Here she is holding something that could be a garment, but looks somewhat like a snake, topped at one end by disc and crescent. This form may be associated with rainfall (we'll return to that), which is also suggested by Shaushka facing the storm god Hadad. She is standing on a bull in this instance. The eight-pointed star of Ishtar sits next to the row of women in procession at lower right.

In another variant, Shaushka is not holding the shape but stands within it, emphasizing it as a portal, a winged one. She stands on a cow or bull again, while receiving offerings from both sides.

This one from around 1600 is quite similar, again the goddess appearing within a winged portal and upon a bull. The offerant at left is wearing an Egyptian headdress.

In this drawing we see the two motifs combined: the winged and serrated portal, and Shaushka holding her skirt or veil open — or is it a serpent? She stands on a bull, in contrast to most images of Ishtar.

Same goes for this one, except that the portal has multiple wings, and the goddess is not standing on a bovine. The "skirt" seems to have double serpent heads. These are from a source I haven't identified yet, Amiet 1960.

And once again on the bull, grasping a double serpent curled into a crescent shape, looking toward a solar disc and lunar crescent. The male deity at left is horned in Mesopotamian style, and yet the Egyptian ankh also appears.

What we are seeing here is a set of overlapping and multivalent symbols: the tree / portal, the skirt / snake, any of these, or the goddess herself, being winged.

This goddess appears in another form on a golden bowl from the destroyed fortress of Hasanlu, around 900 bce. This was a period of warfare, the iron age in full swing, and the bowl focuses mostly on war: men in chariots, men leading away sheep, swords, perhaps a captive, perhaps a female mourner who has gashed her cheeks.

But Shaushka is there, this time standing on two sheep, spreading her veil wide. It has been suggested that her veil is filled with rain patterns, though these could simply indicate the weaving pattern of the cloth.

Here's a better view of the chased bowl from Hasanlu, over the Iranian border. The section with Shaushka has been crushed, as you see. Her female delta is filled with a flowing watery pattern. But look carefully at her feet, because this wide-hipped woman with turned-out toes becomes a theme the further east we go, all the way to India. We'll look at that next, and then come back to Hasanlu.