Hamazi

Hamazi or Khamazi (Sumerian: Ḫa-ma-zi^ki) was an ancient kingdom or city-state of some importance that reached its peak ca. 2500-2400 BC. Its exact location is unknown, but is thought to have been located in the western Zagros mountains roughly between Elam and Assyria, possibly near Nuzi or modern Hamadan.

Hamazi first came to the attention of archaeologists with the discovery of a vase with an inscription in very archaic cuneiform commemorating the victory of Utug (or Uhub), an early king of Kish, over this place, causing fringe theorist Laurence Waddell in 1929 to speculate that it was to be identified with Carchemish in Syria. It is now generally considered to have been somewhere in the vicinity of the Diyala.

One of the earliest references to Hamazi is found in the epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, where Enmerkar prays to Enki about the confusion of languages in the various inhabited lands, at the time of the building of the ziggurats in Eridu and Uruk. Hamazi is the only land mentioned in this prayer with the epithet "many-tongued". A sequel, Enmerkar and En-suhgir-ana also mentions that the sorcerer of Hamazi, Urgirinuna, went to Aratta after Hamazi "had been destroyed"; he is later sent by the Lord of Aratta on a failed mission attempting to bring Enmerkar into submission.