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Urartu (Biainili or Khaldini in Urartian) was an ancient kingdom in eastern Anatolia, centred in the mountainous region around Lake Van (present-day Turkey), which existed from about 1000 BC, or earlier, until 585 BC. The name may correspond to the Biblical Ararat.

At its apogee, Urartu stretched from northern Mesopotamia through the southern Caucasus, involving parts of present-day Armenia up to Lake Sevan. Its archaeological sites include Altintepe, Toprakkale, Patnos and Cavustepe. Urartu fortresses are found in Van, Armavir, Erebuni (present day Yerevan), Anzaf, Cavustepe and Başkale.

Name

The name Urartu is from Assyrian, a dialect of Akkadian, and was given to the kingdom by its chief rivals to the south; it may have meant simply "mountain country". The kingdom was named Biainili or Khaldini by its inhabitants, the origin of the name of Lake Van. The name Urartu apparently corresponds to the Ararat of the Old Testament. Indeed, Mount Ararat is located in ancient Urartian territory, approximately 120 km north of its former capital.

History

Origins

Assyrian inscriptions of Shalmaneser I (ca. 1270 BC) first mention a loose confederation called the Uruartri or Nairi in North-East Anatolia, in the region around Lake Van. They 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). These towns or 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.

Main period

Sardur I (ca. 832-820 BC), son of Lutipri, seems to have been a usurper who founded the main dynasty. He 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. Argishtish I (ca. 785-760 BC) added more territories along the Araxes river and Lake Erivan, and frustrated Shalmaneser IV's campaigns against him.

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 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.

Decadence

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.

Urartu was then invaded by Scythians from the north, and finally conquered by the Scythians' associates, the Medes, in 612 BC. Many Urartu ruins show evidence of destruction by fire. Even before the Urartian empire came to an end, Armenians had been mixing with the Urartians. But it was not until the demise of Urartu, that the Urartians adopted the Indo-European Armenian language and the Armenians adopted certain aspects of Urartian social, politcal and cultural institutions. The Urartians thus became the Armenians and vice versa.

Arcaheological 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 Khaldi temples 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

The Urartians spoke an agglutinative language, conventionally called Urartian, 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.

The Urartu language was originally written using locally-developed hieroglyphics, but the Urartians 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.

The Urartian legacy

Urartu was what is today parts of Turkey, northern Iraq and northwestern Iran. Much of it is where the modern Kurds live, and the Kurds are the direct line of the people who lived there then, although interbred with subsequent peoples and were heavily influenced by Iranian. The Gutu or Kuti lived in the middle reaches of the Tigris about 2000 BC, in Sumerian times, and were related apparently to the Kassites who lived to the east on the edge of the Iranian plateau. The Assyrian name of them, Kirtie, evolved into Kardi. The name of Babylonia used in the Amarna letters is Karduniash. The Armenians crossed the Caucasus in about 600 BC, pushing the Khaldis to the south, so that they lived in what is now Kurdistan. The word Kurd is Kald with another common consonantal change , .

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 some 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

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

Literature

• Boris B. Piotrovsky, The Ancient Civilization of Urartu (tranlated from Russian by James Hogarth), New York:Cowles Book Company, 1969.
• Giorgi Melikishvili, Nairi-Urartu (a monograph in Russian), Tbilisi, 1955.
• Giorgi Melikishvili, About the history of ancient Georgia (a monograph in Russian), Tbilisi, 1959.
• R.-B. Wartke, Urartu, das Reich am Ararat (in German), Mainz: Zabern, 1993.
• Paul Zimansky, Ecology and Empire: The Structure of the Urartian State, , Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1985.
• M. Chahin, The Kingdom of Armenia: A History, Routledge, London, 2001.

External links

• 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

• History of Anatolia
• Ancient peoples
• Former countries
• Iron Age