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Urartu (Biainili in Urartian) was an ancient kingdom in the mountainous plateau between Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, and Caucasus mountains, later known as the Armenian Highland, and it centered around Lake Van (present-day eastern Turkey). The kingdom existed from about 1000 BC, or earlier, until 585 BC. The name corresponds to the Biblical Ararat.

Urartu was often called the "Kingdom of Ararat" in many ancient manuscripts and holy writings of different nations. The reason for uncertainty in the names (i.e. Urartu and Ararat) is due to variations in sources. In fact, the written languages at that time employed only consonants and not vowels. So the word itself in various ancient sources is written as "RRT", which could be either Ararat, or Urartu, or Uruarti and so on (for more on the name's etymology, see the section Name below).

Ancient sources have sometimes used "Armenia" and "Urartu" interchangeably to refer to the same country. For example, in the trilingual Behistun inscription, carved in 520 BC by the order of Darius the Great of Persia the country is referred to as Arminia in Old Persian, translated as Harminuia in Elamite and Urartu in Babylonian.

Furthermore, the kingdom was known as Armenia to the Greeks (and, subsequently, to the Roman Empire) living in western Anatolia, possibly due to the fact that the contacts they had with Urartu, were through the people of the tribe of Armen.

At its apogee, Urartu stretched from northern Mesopotamia through the southern Caucasus, including present-day Armenia and reaching the river Kura. Archaeological sites within its boundaries include Altintepe, Toprakkale, Patnos and Cavustepe. Urartu fortresses are found in Erebuni (present day Yerevan city), Van, Armavir, Anzaf, Cavustepe and Başkale, as well as Argishtiqinili, Teishebaini (Karmir Blour) and others.

In the late 7th - early 6th centuries BC, the Urartian Kingdom was replaced by the Kingdom of Armenia, ruled by the Armenian Orontid dynasty (see the History section for more on this transition).

Name

Part of a series on the
History of Armenia
Prehistory Shulaveri–Shomu culture Kura–Araxes culture Legend of Hayk Trialeti–Vanadzor culture Armani Lchashen–Metsamor culture Hayasa-Azzi Arme–Shupria Mushki Urumu Nairi Confederation Urartu (Kingdom of Van) Etiuni
Antiquity Satrapy of Armenia Armenia Minor Kingdom of Armenia Armenian Empire Roman Armenia Christianization of Armenia Kingdom of Sophene Commagene Byzantine Armenia Sasanian Armenia Muslim conquest of Armenia
Middle Ages Emirate of Armenia Principality of Hamamshen Kingdom of Armenia Kingdom of Vaspurakan Kingdom of Tashir-Dzoraget Kingdom of Syunik Kingdom of Artsakh Zakarid Armenia Principality of Khachen Mongol Armenia Kingdom of Cilicia
Early modern age Iranian Armenia Five Melikdoms Ottoman Armenia Russian Armenia Armenian Oblast Armenian question Armenian genocide Western Armenia National movement
Modern age First Republic of Armenia Armenian S.S.R. Republic of Mountainous Armenia Contemporary Armenia Republic of Artsakh
Timeline • Origins • Etymology
v t e

The name Urartu comes from Assyrian (a dialect of Akkadian) sources, and was given to the kingdom by its chief rivals to the south. The kingdom was named Biainili by its inhabitants, which was probably related to Lake Van--the political center of the kingdom. Scholars believe that "Urartu" is an Akkadian variation of Ararat of the Old Testament. Indeed, Mount Ararat is located in ancient Urartian territory, approximately 120 km north of its former capital. In addition to referring to the famous Biblical mountain, "Ararat" was also used in the Old Testament to refer to an ancient kingdom north of Mesopotamia. Similarly, early Armenian chronicles (5th - 7th cc. AD) state that the original name for Armenia was "country of Ararad." The variations possibly originate from the Armenian "Ayrarat," which in Armenian means "land of the brave" and "land of Armenians."

Some scholars such as C. F. Lehmann-Haupt (1910) believe that the people of Urartu called themselves Khaldini after their god Khaldi, or that they were related to the Khaldi of the Black Sea coast. The Nairi, an Iron Age people of the Van area, are sometimes considered related or identical.

Ethnic Composition

The Kingdom included three main tribal groups living within its territory: Nairi, Hay and Armen, all three were closely related to one another. The tribal groups living near Lake Van and, in fact, in and around the capital Touchpa (Tushpa) were called "Nairi". The groups to the west in central Anatolia where known as "Armens". The tribal groups to the northeast were referred to as "Hay".

The aforementioned three main tribal groups had similar languages, cultures, and ethnic origins. These similarities enabled Urartian and early Armenian kings to keep their territory intact and facilitated efforts made to expand their holdings. The kingdom grew in size thereafter and eventually divided into two main parts: Greater Armenia and Lesser Armenia.

Discovery

Friedrich Eduard Schulz travelled to the Van area in 1827 on behalf of the French Oriental Society, inspired by accounts of queen Šamiram) by the 5th century Armenian historian Moses of Chorene. Schulz discovered the ruins of a city and numerous inscriptions, partly in Assyrian, partly in a hitherto unknown language. Schulze also re-discovered the Kelišin, an Assyrian-Urartian bilingue located on the Kelišin pass on the Iraqi-Iranian border. Schulz was killed by Kurds in 1829 near Baskale and parts of his notes were lost. In 1828, British Assyriologist Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson attempted to copy the inscription on the stele, but failed because of the ice on the stele's face. German scholar R. Rosch made a similar attempt a few years later, but he and his party were assaulted and killed. Sir Austen Henry Layard in the late 1840s described the rock tombs of Van-Kelesi and the Argišti chamber. From the 1870s, local residents began to plunder the Toprakkale ruins, selling artefacts to European scholars.

The first systematic collection of Urartian inscriptions was accomplished by Sir Archibald Henry Sayce, dating to the 1870s. German engineer Karl Sester, discoverer of Nemrud Dag, collected more inscriptions in 1890/1.

Waldemar Belck visited the area in 1891, discovering the Rusa stele. A further expedition planned for 1893 was prevented by Turkish-Armenian hostilities. Belck together with Carl Ferdinand Friedrich Lehmann-Haupt visited the area again in 1898/9, excavating Toprakkale. On this expedition, Belck reached the Kelishin stele, but he was attacked by Kurds and barely escaped with his life. Belck and Lehmann-Haupt reached the stele again in a second attempt, but were again prevented from copying the inscription by weather conditions. After another assault on Belck provoked the diplomatic intervention of Wilhelm II, the regional ruler, Sultan Abdulhamid II, agreed to pay Belck a sum of 80,000 gold marks in reparation. During World War I, the area came under Russian control. In 1916, Russian scholars Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr and Iosif Abgarovich Orbeli discovered a four-faced stele carrying the annals of Sarduri II. Boris Borisovich Piotrovsky in 1939 excavated Karmir-Blur, discovering Teišebai, the city of the god of war, Teišeba. In 1938-40, excavations by American scholars at Kirsoop and Silva Lake were cut short by World War II, and most of their finds were sunk when a German submarine torpedoed their ship. Athenia. The surviving documents were published by Manfred Korfmann in 1977. Following the war, excavations were at first restricted to Soviet Armenia. beginning in 1956 Charles Burney excavated in the Van area, and from 1959, Turkish expeditions under Tahsin Özgüç excavated Altintepe and Arif Erzen.

In 1976, an Italian party led by Mirjo Salvini finally reached the Kelishin stele, accompanied by a massive military escort. The First Gulf War again closed the area to archaeological research. After the Gulf War, O. Belli resumed excavation on Turkish territory. In 1989, a 7th c. BC fortress built by Rusas II of Urartu was discovered 35 km north of Van. In spite of resumed excavations, only a third to half of the 300 known Urartian sites in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Armenia have been examined by archeologists (Wartke 1993). Without protection of these sites, local residents will continue to plunder them, taking advantage of the lucrative black market trade.

History

Origins (13th - 9th cc BC)

Assyrian inscriptions of Shalmaneser I (ca. 1270 BC) first mention Uruartri as one of the states of Nairi -- a loose confederation of small kingdoms and tribal states in Armenian Highland in the 13th - 11th centuries BC. Uruartri itself was in the region around Lake Van. The Nairi states were repeatedly subjected to attacks by the Assyrians, especially under Tukulti-Ninurta I (ca. 1240 BC), Tiglath-Pileser I (ca. 1100 BC), Ashur-bel-kala (ca. 1070 BC), Adad-nirari II (ca. 900), Tukulti-Ninurta II (ca. 890), and Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC).

Urartu re-emerged in Assyrian inscriptions in the 9th c. BC as a powerful northern rival. The Nairi states and tribes became a unified kingdom under king Aramu (ca. 860-843 BC), whose capital at Arzashkun was captured by Shalmaneser III. Roughly contemporaries of the Uruartri, living just to the west along the southern shore of the Black Sea, were the Kaskas known from Hittite sources.

Growth in power (9th c. - 714 BC)

Sardur I (ca. 832-820 BC), son of Lutipri, moved the capital to the ancient city of Tushpa (modern Van, on the shore of Lake Van), fortifying it. His son, Ispuini (ca. 820-800 BC) annexed the neighbouring state of Musasir and made his son Sarduri II viceroy; Ispuini was in turn attacked by Shamshi-Adad V. His successor Menua (ca. 800-785 BC) also enlarged the kingdom greatly and left inscriptions over a wide area. Urartu reached highest point of its military might under Menua's son Argishti I (ca. 785-760 BC), becoming one of the most powerful kingdoms of ancient Near East. Argishti I added more territories along the Araxes river and Lake Sevan, and frustrated Shalmaneser IV's campaigns against him. At some point the Urartuan armies reached all the way to Babylon, taking the city. Argishti also founded several new cities, most notably Erebuni in 782 BC, which grew to be the modern Armenian capital of Yerevan.

At its height, the Urartu kingdom may have stretched North beyond the Aras River (Greek Araxes) and Lake Sevan, encompassing present-day Armenia and even the southern part of Georgia (e.g. Qulha) almost to the shores of the Black Sea; west to the sources of the Euphrates; east to present-day Tabriz, Lake Urmia, and beyond; and south to the sources of the Tigris. This became the first known Armenian empire.

Decline and recuperation (714 - 640 BC)

In 714 BC, the Urartu kingdom suffered heavily from Cimmerian raids and the campaigns of Sargon II. The main temple at Mushashir was sacked, and the Urartian king Rusa I was defeated by Sargon at Lake Urmia.

The setback, however, was temporary, as Rusa's son Argisthi II (714 - 685 BC) restored Urartu's power, at the same time maintaining peace with Assyria. This in turn helped Urartu enter a long period of development and prosperity, which continued through the reign of Argishti's son Rusa II (685-645 BC).

After Rusa II, however, the Urartu grew weaker and dependent on Assyria, as evidenced by Rusa II's son Sardur III (645-635 BC) referring to the Assyrian king as his "father."

Later Period (640 - early 500's BC)

Much like Urartu's ethnic composition, its later period and transformation to the Orontid Kingdom of Armenia are debated among scholars.

According to Urartian cuneiforms, Sarduri III was followed by three kings--Erimena (635 - 620 BC), his son Rusa III (620 - 609 BC), and the latter's son Rusa IV (609 - 590 BC). It is also known that in the late 600's BC (during or after Sardur III's reign), Urartu was invaded by Scythians and their allies--the Medes. In 612 BC, the Median king Cyaxares conquered Assyria. Many Urartian ruins of the period show evidence of destruction by fire. This would indicate two scenarios--either Media conquered Urartu, bringing about its subsequent demise; or Urartu/Armenia maintained its independence and power, going through a mere dynastic change, as a local Armenian dynasty (later to be called the Orontids) overthrew the ruling family with the help of the Median army. Ancient sources support the latter version:

• Xenophon, for example, states that Armenia, ruled by an Orontid king, was not conquered until the reign of Median king Astyages (585 - 550 BC)--long after Median invasion of the late 7th century BC. .
• Similarly, Strabo (1st c. BC - 1st c AD) wrote that "n ancient times Greater Armenia ruled the whole of Asia, after it broke up the empire of the Syrians, but later, in the time of Astyages, it was deprived of that great authority ..." .
• Furthermore, according to the Old Testament, as late as 593 BC, prophet Jeremiah calls on the kingdom of Ararat and its Median allies to conquer Babylon (Jeremiah 51:27), suggesting that at the time Ararat/Urartu/Armenia was still powerful enough to conquer the Babylonian Empire.
• Finally, early Armenian chronicles corroborate the Greek and Hebrew sources. In particular, Movses Khorenatsi writes that Armenian prince Paruyr Skayordi helped the Median king Cyaxares conquer Assyria, for which Cyaxares recognized him as the king of Armenia, while Media conquered Armenia only much later--under Astyages.

Thus, various ancient sources support the conclusion that, following the reign of Sarduri III, the kingdom of Ararat/Urartu went through a dynastic change, as the Armenian Orontid family replaced the house of Aramu, receiving assistance from the Medes, and in return helped the Medes conquer Assyria. This would indicate that the kings Erimena, Rusa III, and Rusa IV were the Urartian names for the earliest Orontid kings of Urartu/Armenia. Under these early Orontids (late 7th - cearly 6th cc), Ararat/Urartu continuted to be a powerful independent kingdom, being called Ararat, Urartu, and Armenia by different sources, all referring to the same state.

Urartu's role in the ethnogenesis of the Armenian nation

Although weakened by incursions, the southeastern parts where Hays lived remained intact. The Hay took over the rule of that part of Urartu’s territory, remained a viable political entity and regained strength under their own name of "the land of Hays" – Hayq, Hayastan. The western territory remained under the control of the Armens, and was known as Armenia, the name by which it came to be known to the rest of the world.

Even before the Urartian era came to an end, Armens had been mixing with the Urartians. But it was not until the its end, that the Urartians adopted the Indo-European Phrygian language and the Armens adopted certain aspects of Urartian social, political and cultural institutions. The Urartians thus became the Armenians and vice versa (See also the section The Urartian legacy below).

Archaeological rediscovery

The existence of Urartu was forgotten by the 5th century AD. It was not rediscovered until historical and archaeological work done in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, before which Urartian ruins were generally assumed to be Assyrian.

Economy and politics

The people of Urartu were mostly farmers. They were experts in stone architecture; they may have introduced the blind arch to the Near East, and their houses may have been the precursor of the Persian apadana layout. They were also experts in metalworking, and exported metal vessels to Phrygia and Etruria. Excavations have yielded two-storied residential houses with internal wall decorations, windows, and balconies. Their towns generally had well-developed water supply (often taken from far away) and sewage systems.

Their king was also the chief-priest or envoy of Khaldi, their major deity. Some temples to Khaldi were part of the royal palace complex while others were independent structures. Other deities included Teisheba, god of the heavens (the Teshshub of the Hurrians and Khurits), and Shiwini, the sun goddess.

Language

Overview

Urartian inscriptions use two scripts--locally-developed hieroglyphs, and cuneiform script borrowed from Assyrians and Hittites.

The Urartian cuneiform inscriptions are further divided into two groups. A minority is written in Akkadian (the official language of Assyria). The bulk of the cuneiforms, however, is written in an agglutinative language, conventionally called Urartian, Khaldian, or neo-Hurrian, which was related to Hurrian in the Hurro-Urartian family, and was neither Semitic nor Indo-European. It had close linguistic similarities to Northeast Caucasian languages. Igor Diakonov even places it in the Alarodian family, based on linguistic similarities with Northeast Caucasian languages. A more distant connection between Urartian and the modern Georgian language has been postulated as well.

Currently, the number of known Urartian cuneiform inscriptions is 500. They contain around 350-400 words, most of which are Urartian, while some are loan words from other languages. The greatest number of foreign loan words in Urartuan language is from Armenian--around 70 word-roots.

The Urartians originally used the locally-developed hieroglyphs but later adapted the Assyrian cuneiform script for most purposes. After the 8th century BC, the hieroglyphic script was restricted to religious and accounting purposes. Currently, samples of Urartian written language have survived in many inscriptions found in the area of Urartu kingdom.

Unlike cuneiform inscriptions, the Urartuan hieroglyphic texts have not been successfully decyphered. As a result, scholars disagree as to what language is used in the texts. In mid-1990's, Armenian scientist Artak Movsisyan published a partial attempted decyphering of Urartian hieroglyphs, suggesting that they were written in an early form of Armenian.

Debate over spoken language

The linguistic and, therefore, ethnic make-up of Urartu's population has been subject to debate among scholars. Currently, there is no consensus whether Urartian was the spoken native language of Urartu's inhabitants, or a mere language of official writings. The majority view states that it was spoken by the royal elite, which ruled over a largely Armenian-speaking population. This, according to the proponents of the view, explains the large number of Armenian and other Indo-European words in the Urartuan language. Under this theory, the Armenian-speaking population was either the descendant of the proto-Armenians who migrated to the Armenian Highland in the 2nd. millenium BC, mixing with the local Hurrian-speaking population (i.e. the "Phrygian theory," first suggested by Herodotus), or it was native to the Armenian Highland (as suggested by V. Ivanov and T. Gamkrelidze), coexisting with the ruling Urartian/Hurrian elite.

A minority view, advocated primarily by the official historiography of Armenia, suggests that Urartian was solely the formal written language of the state, while its inhabitants, including the royal family, spoke Armenian. The theory primarily hinges on two observations of the Urartian cuneiform inscriptions. First, their language is very restrictive, repetitive, and scant in vocabulary (having as little as 350-400 roots). Furthermore, over 250 years of usage, the it shows no development. This would indicate a written foreign language, as opposed to a native organic one. The second observation points to the relatively high quantity of Armenian words and even entire Armenian phrases and sentences in the inscriptions (over 70 word-roots), which would indicate that, if in fact Urartuan was a borrowed written language, its writers spoke Armenian. The theory also hinges on secondary evidence such as Armenian words used for animals, localities, and persons. The proponents of this view suggest that the Armenian-speaking kings of Urartu adopted a Hurrian dialect from Hittite archives for the purposes of official writing. This would not be unique to Urartu, as many societies throughout history have used a foreign language for writing.

The Urartian legacy

The language and mythology of Urartu had important influence over the languages and cultures of Armenia and Georgia. Urartu had absorbed a large influx of Armenians, while modern Armenians claim descent from the Urartians; and it seems that both Armenians and the Urartians had a major link with the Hurrians. There is no question that the Hurrian and Urartian languages were very similar, and some have used this as evidence that the Hurrian peoples of Syrian Mesopotamia had origins in the Urartu area. However, given that the Hurrian timeframe in Syria (c. 2300-1200 BC) predates the timeframe of Urartu in Armenia (c. 1000-585), it is more often considered likely that the peoples of Urartu had origins in Syria, and fled from Mesopotamia into the mountains after the Hittites and Assyrians conquered the region. Chronologically, the Urartian language seems to be a continuation of Hurrian dialects, and not the other way around. Thus the relationship between the Armenians and the Hurro-Urartians is similar to that of the Romans with the Etruscans, or that of the Greeks with the Minoans and other Pelasgians.

See also

• Armenia
• Languages of the Caucasus
• Hurro-Urartian languages
• Urartian language
• List of Kings of Urartu

References

Footnotes

1. Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia, v. 12, Yerevan 1987, p. 280
2. Xenophon, "Cyropedia," III.7
3. Strabo, "Geography," 11.3.5; http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0198&loc=11.13.1
4. Movses Khorenatsi, "History of Armenia"
5. Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia, v. 12, Yerevan, 1987, p 274; Rafayel Ishkhanyan, "Illustrated History of Armenia," Yerevan, 1989, p. 45
6. A. Movsisyan, "Hieroglyphics of the Kingdom of Van," Yerevan, 1998
7. C. Walker, "Armenia--Survival of a Nation," London, 1990.
8. Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia, v. 12, Yerevan 1987, pp. 274-282

Literature

• M. Chahin, The Kingdom of Armenia: A History, Routledge, London, 2001.
• C. F. Lehmann-Haupt, Armenien - Einst und Jetzt, Berlin 1910.
• Giorgi Melikishvili, Nairi-Urartu (a monograph in Russian), Tbilisi, 1955.
• Giorgi Melikishvili, About the history of ancient Georgia (a monograph in Russian), Tbilisi, 1959.
• Boris B. Piotrovsky, The Ancient Civilization of Urartu (translated from Russian by James Hogarth), New York:Cowles Book Company, 1969.
• M. Salvini, Geschichte und Kultur der Urartäer, Darmstadt 1995.
• R.-B. Wartke, Urartu - Das Reich am Ararat In: Kulturgeschichte der Antiken Welt, Bd. 59, Mainz 1993.
• P.E. Zimansky, Ecology and Empire: The Structure of the Urartian State, , Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1985.
• P.E. Zimansky, Ancient Ararat. A Handbook of Urartian Studies, New York 1998.

External links

• Historical Maps of Urartu by WikiMedia Commons
• An Urartian Ozymandias - article by Paul Zimansky, Biblical Archaeologist
• Nairi/Urartu (A very detailed site)
• Urartu Civilization
• Urartu (Greek Ararat)
• In war and peace The Urartians
• Capital and Periphery in the Kingdom of Urartu, Yehuda Dagan, Israel Antiquities Authority

v t e History of Anatolia

• Urartu
• History of Armenia