Everything about Urartu totally explained
Urartu (
Assyrian: Urarṭu;
Urartian: Biainili; ) was an
Iron Age kingdom in
Eastern Anatolia (
Transcaucasia), rising to power in the mid
9th century BC, and finally conquered by
Media in the early
6th century BC.
The Kingdom of Urartu was located in the mountainous plateau between
Asia Minor,
Mesopotamia, and
Caucasus mountains, later known as the
Armenian Highland, and it centered around
Lake Van (in the present-day
Eastern and
Southeastern Anatolia Regions of
Turkey). The name corresponds to the
Biblical Ararat.
Name
The name
Urartu comes from
Assyrian sources, and was given to the kingdom by its chief rivals to the south. The kingdom's native name was
Biainili. 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 also appears as the name of a kingdom in
Jeremiah 51:27, mentioned together with
Minni and
Ashchenaz.
Some scholars such as
Carl Friedrich Lehmann-Haupt (1910) believe that the people of Urartu called themselves
Khaldini after their god
Khaldi. The
Nairi, an Iron Age people of the Van area, are sometimes considered related or identical.
In the early 6th century BC, the Urartian Kingdom was replaced by the Armenian
Orontid dynasty. In the trilingual
Behistun inscription, carved in
515 BC by the order of
Darius the Great of Persia, the country referred to as
Urartu in
Babylonian is called
Arminia in
Old Persian and
Harminuia in
Elamite.
Shubria was part of the Urartu confederation. Later, there's reference to a district in the area called
Arme or
Urme, which some scholars have linked to the name
Armenia.
Geography
Urartu comprised an area of approximately 200,000 square miles, reaching from the river Kura in the north, to the northern foothills of the Taurus in the south; and from the
Euphrates in the west to the
Caspian sea in the east.
At its
apogee, Urartu stretched from northern
Mesopotamia to the southern
Caucasus, including present-day
Armenia and southern
Georgia as far as the river Kura. Archaeological sites within its boundaries include
Altintepe,
Toprakkale,
Patnos and
Cavustepe. Urartu fortresses included
Erebuni (present day
Yerevan city),
Van,
Armavir,
Anzaf,
Cavustepe and
Başkale, as well as
Argishtiqinili,
Teishebaini (Karmir Blour - Red Mount) and others.
Discovery
Inspired by the account of the
fifth century Armenian historian
Moses of Chorene (who had written about works in Van attributed to the legendary queen
Semiramis),
Friedrich Eduard Schulz travelled to the Van area in 1827 on behalf of the French
Oriental Society. Schulz discovered and copied numerous inscriptions, partly in Assyrian and partly in a hitherto unknown language. Schulze also re-discovered the
Kelishin stele, bearing an Assyrian-Urartian bilingual inscription, located on the
Kelishin pass on the current Iraqi-Iranian border. Schulz and four of his servants were murdered by Kurds in 1829 near
Baskale. His notes were later recovered and published in Paris in 1840. In 1828, the British Assyriologist
Henry Creswicke Rawlinson attempted to copy the inscription on the Kelishin stele, but failed because of the ice on the stele's front side. The German scholar R. Rosch made a similar attempt a few years later, but he and his party were attacked and killed.
Sir
Austen Henry Layard in the late 1840s described the rock-cut tombs of
Van castle and the
Argishti chamber. From the 1870s, local residents began to plunder the
Toprakkale ruins, selling artefacts to European collections.
The first systematic collection of Urartian inscriptions, and thus the beginning of Urartology as a specialized field, dates to the 1870s, with the campaign of Sir
Archibald Henry Sayce. The German engineer
Karl Sester, discoverer of
Mount Nemrut, 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 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, Sultan
Abdul Hamid II, agreed to pay Belck a sum of 80,000 gold marks in reparation. During
World War I, the area briefly fell under Russian control. In 1916, the Russian scholars
Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr and
Iosif Abgarovich Orbeli uncovered 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 lost when a German submarine torpedoed their ship, the
Athenia. Their 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 surveyed Urartian in the Lake Van area and, from 1959, Turkish expeditions under
Tahsin Özgüç excavated
Altintepe and
Arif Erzen.
In 1976, an Italian team led by
Mirjo Salvini finally reached the Kelishin stele, accompanied by a heavy military escort. The
First Gulf War then closed this area to archaeological research. O. Belli resumed excavation of Urartian sites 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 excavations, only a third to a half of the 300 known Urartian sites in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Armenia have been examined by archaeologists (Wartke 1993). Without protection, these sites have been plundered by local residents taking advantage of the lucrative black market trade in antiquities.
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 of Assyria. 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)
Sarduri I (ca. 832-820 BC), son of Lutipri, successfully resisted the
Assyrian attacks from the south, led by
Shalmaneser III, consolidated the military power of the state and moved the capital to
Tushpa (modern
Van, on the shore of
Lake Van). 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 (for example
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 Argishti 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 - 590/585 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 or 585 BC). Late during the 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 subsequently 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, wasn't 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 "[i]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 called 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. It is possible that the last Urartian king, Rusa IV, had connections to the future incoming Armenian Orontids dynasty.
Urartu was destroyed in either 590 BC or 585 BC. The end of Urartu was violent; many of its fortresses were burned down. By the late sixth century, the Urartians had certainly been replaced by the Armenians.
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
Urartian--the language used in the cuneiform inscriptions of Urartu--was an
agglutinative language, which belongs to neither the
Semitic nor the
Indo-European families but to the
Hurro-Urartian family. It survives in many inscriptions found in the area of the Urartu kingdom, written in the
Assyrian
cuneiform script. There are also claims of autochthonous
Urartian hieroglyphs, but this remains uncertain.
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 among Urartian and the modern
Georgian language and
Circassian have 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 deciphered. As a result, scholars disagree as to what language is used in the texts. In mid-1990s, Armenian scientist Artak Movsisyan published a partial attempted deciphering 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.
The majority belief states that it was spoken by the royal elite, which ruled over a multi-ethnic, in late Urartian times largely Armenian-speaking population. Under this theory, the Armenian-speaking population were the descendants of the
proto-Armenians who migrated to the Armenian Highland in ca. the 7th century BC, mixing with the local Hurrian-speaking population (for example the "Phrygian theory," first suggested by Herodotus).
According to Encyclopedia Brittanica, the
Urartian language, "also called Chaldean or Vannic" was an "ancient language spoken in north-eastern Anatolia" and was "Non-Indo-European in origin." Urartian
» "
is thought to be descended from the same parent language as the older, Hurrian language. Surviving texts of the language are written in a variant script called Neo-Assyrian."
Two bilingual inscriptions in Assyrian and Urartian led to the successful decipherment of the Urartian language.
A minority belief, 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 the language the Urartian cuneiform inscriptions being very repetitive and scant in vocabulary (having as little as 350-400 roots). Furthermore, over 250 years of usage, it shows no development, which is taken to indicate that the language had ceased to be spoken before the time of the inscriptions.
The Armenians according to Diakonoff, are then an amalgam of the Hurrian (and Urartians), Luvians and the Proto-Armenian Mushki who carried their IE language eastwards across Anatolia. After arriving in its historical territory, Proto-Armenian would appear to have undergone massive influence on part the languages it eventually replaced. Armenian phonology, for instance, appears to have been greatly affected by Urartian, which may suggest a long period of bilingualism. |
Ethnic Composition
On linguistic grounds (see
Hurro-Urartian), the majority of scholars believe that the Urartians were related to the earlier
Hurrians. A minority belief states that Urartu was populated and ruled by Armenians (see below for more on the linguistic debate).
The Urartians were succeeded in the area in the 6th century BC by the Armenians,, who in the belief of some scholars had been present in
Anatolia from around
1200 BC, and over the following centuries spread east to the
Armenian Highland. A competing theory suggested by
Thomas Gamkrelidze and
Vyacheslav V. Ivanov in
1984 places the
Proto-Indo-European homeland in the Armenian Highland, see
Armenian hypothesis, which would entail the presence of (pre-)
Proto-Armenians in the area during the entire lifetime of the Urartian state.
After the disappearance of Urartu as a political entity, the Armenians dominated the highlands, absorbing portions of the previous Urartian culture in the process. The Armenians became, thus, the direct succesors of the kingdom of Urartu and inherited their domain.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Urartu'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://urartu.totallyexplained.com">Urartu Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
