with tribes of the goddess cult.  So long as the Hatti tribe remained the predominant partner in the Hittite confederacy, the supremacy was assured of the Great Father who symbolized their sway.  But when, in the process of time, the power of the Hatti declined, their chief god “fell... from his predominant place in the religion of the interior”, writes Dr. Garstang.  “But the Great Mother lived on, being the goddess of the land."[292]

In addition to the Hittite confederacy of Asia Minor and North Syria, another great power arose in northern Mesopotamia.  This was the Mitanni Kingdom.  Little is known regarding it, except what is derived from indirect sources.  Winckler believes that it was first established by early “waves” of Hatti people who migrated from the east.

The Hittite connection is based chiefly on the following evidence.  One of the gods of the Mitanni rulers was Teshup, who is identical with Tarku, the Thor of Asia Minor.  The raiders who in 1800 B.C. entered Babylon, set fire to E-sagila, and carried off Merodach and his consort Zerpanitu^m, were called the Hatti.  The images of these deities were afterwards obtained from Khani (Mitanni).

At a later period, when we come to know more about Mitanni from the letters of one of its kings to two Egyptian Pharaohs, and the Winckler tablets from Bog-haz-Koei, it is found that its military aristocracy spoke an Indo-European language, as is shown by the names of their kings—­Saushatar, Artatama, Sutarna, Artashshumara, Tushratta, and Mattiuza.  They worshipped the following deities: 

    Mi-it-ra, Uru-w-na, In-da-ra, and Na-sa-at-ti-ia—­

Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and Nasatyau (the “Twin Aswins” = Castor and Pollux)—­whose names have been deciphered by Winckler.  These gods were also imported into India by the Vedic Aryans.  The Mitanni tribe (the military aristocracy probably) was called “Kharri”, and some philologists are of opinion that it is identical with “Arya”, which was “the normal designation in Vedic literature from the Rigveda onwards of an Aryan of the 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.