Maryannu

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. Maryannu is a Hurrianized Indo-Aryan word, formed by adding Hurrian suffix -nni to Indo-Aryan root márya, meaning "(young) man"^[1] or a "young warrior".^[2] Philologist Martin West suggested that the name Meriones, a character in Homeric epic, is "identical" to maryannu.^[3] Thus, Mērionēs would be the Homeric Greek version of the term, reflected in pre-Mycenaean poetic verse as Mārionās.^[4]

The term is attested in the Amarna letters written by Haapi. The majority of the Maryannu had Semitic and Hurrian names.^[5]^[6]

References

^ 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
^ Drews, Robert (1994). The Coming of the Greeks: 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.
^ 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.
^ 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.
^ Drews, p. 155
^ Watson, Janet; Khan, Geoffrey (2011). The Semitic Languages An International Handbook. De Gruyter. ISBN 9783110251586.

Abbas, Mohamed Raafat (2013). "The Maryannu in the Western Desert during the Ramesside Period". Abgadiyat. 8 (1): 128–133. doi:10.1163/22138609-90000015.
Albright, W. F. (1930). "Mitannian maryannu, " chariot-warrior ", and the Canaanite and Egyptian Equivalents". Archiv für Orientforschung. 6: 217–221. JSTOR 41661828.
O'Callaghan, R. T. (1951). "New Light on the Maryannu as 'Chariot Warrior'". Jahrbuch für kleinasiatische Forschung. pp. 309–324. OCLC 55568033.
REVIV, H. (1972). "Some Comments on the Maryannu". Israel Exploration Journal. 22 (4): 218–228. JSTOR 27925358.