he three upper classes".[293] Mitanni
signifies "the river lands", and the descendants of its inhabitants,
who lived in Cappadocia, were called by the Greeks "Mattienoi". "They
are possibly", says Dr. Haddon, "the ancestors of the modern
Kurds",[294] a conspicuously long-headed people, proverbial, like the
ancient Aryo-Indians and the Gauls, for their hospitality and their
raiding propensities.

It would appear that the Mitannian invasion of northern Mesopotamia
and the Aryan invasion of India represented two streams of diverging
migrations from a common cultural centre, and that the separate groups
of wanderers mingled with other stocks with whom they came into
contact. Tribes of Aryan speech were associated with the Kassite
invaders of Babylon, who took possession of northern Babylonia soon
after the disastrous Hittite raid. It is believed that they came from
the east through the highlands of Elam.

For a period, the dating of which is uncertain, the Mitannians were
overlords of part of Assyria, including Nineveh and even Asshur, as
well as the district called "Musri" by the Assyrians, and part of
Cappadocia. They also occupied the cities of Harran and Kadesh.
Probably they owed their great military successes to their cavalry.
The horse became common in Babylon during the Kassite Dynasty, which
followed the Hammurabi, and was there called "the ass of the east", a
name which suggests whence the Kassites and Mitannians came.

The westward movement of the Mitannians in the second millennium B.C.
may have been in progress prior to the Kassite conquest of Babylon and
the Hyksos invasion of Egypt. Their relations in Mesopotamia and Syria
with the Hittites and the Amorites are obscure. Perhaps they were for
a time the overlords of the Hittites. At any rate it is of interest to
note that when Thothmes III struck at the last Hyksos stronghold
during his long Syrian campaign of about twenty years' duration, his
operations were directly against Kadesh on the Orontes, which was then
held by his fierce enemies the Mitannians of Naharina.[295]

During the Hyksos Age the horse was introduced into Egypt. Indeed the
Hyksos conquest was probably due to the use of the horse, which was
domesticated, as the Pumpelly expedition has ascertained, at a remote
period in Turkestan, whence it may have been obtained by the
horse-sacrificing Aryo-Indians and the horse-sacrificing ancestors of
the Siberian Buriats.

If the Mitanni rulers were