An ancient kingdom located in the Armenia Highlands, bordering the Assyrian Empire. They spoke Urarṭian a relative of the Hurrian language; they adopted Assyrian cuneiform to write their language. Urarṭu is their Assyrian name— they are also referred to as Ararat, Biainili, and the Kingdom of Van.
[Map from Kadiracar on Adobe Stock Link]
🔹From Gods Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia by Jeremy Black and Antony Green pp. 182:
The State of Van, better known by the name Urarṭu applied to it by the Assyrians (and appearing in the Bible in the form Ararat), lay in the mountainous area around and to the south of Lake Van in what is now south-east Turkey and the neighbouring areas of north-west Iran and Armenia. The oldest definite evidence for the kingdom is from the third quarter of the ninth century BC. Urarṭu, which rose to become a powerful influence in the international politics of its day and a thorn in the flesh of Assyrian kings, was finally overthrown by the Scythians and absorbed into the Median, then into the Persian empire. The people of Urarṭu spoke a late form of the Hurrian language and preserved some aspects of Hurrian culture.
Among their deities were:
Haldi — The national god of Urarṭu
Bagbarti — The wife of Haldi [Note: Named Arubani in other sources]
Tešeba — A storm god (corresponding to Hurrian Tešup)
Šiwini — A sun god (corresponding to Hurrian Šimigi)
[Note: The spelling of these Gods is different in different sources]
🔹Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History— “Urartu”:
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/urar/hd_urar.htm
This object, with the lower part of a figure standing along the flanks of a bull, was most likely part of a throne. From better-preserved examples, we know that the figure wore the horned crown of a deity. The whole would have been gilded. A throne and footstool supported by four deities and their animal companions would have been a potent symbol of the Urartian king's power.
🔹From In the Land of a Thousand Gods: A History of Asia Minor in the Ancient World by Christian Marek:
"It has been proven that Hurrian tribes settled in eastern Anatolia and in the bordering areas of Iran and Armenia from the eighteenth century BCE on. In the fourteenth century, the Nairi Lands are mentioned in this region, and from the thirteenth century the name Uruatru/t is attested. The center of this culture lay in the area of Lake Van, the heart of the kingdom that was later called Urartu. In using the name, modern scholarship follows Assyrian terminology: earlier, in German scholanship the name Chalder-after their main god, Haldi, was used to designate the inhabitants. The corresponding state called itself Biainili. The name Urartu appear in the Old Testament in connection with the story of the Flood in the form arena, which is used to refer to the country. (Not until the Middle Ages was the name "Ara. rat used to designate the highest mountain in the region; see p. 12). The most important sources for the history of Urartu are Assyrian campaign reports. From the ninth century on, these are supplemented by a few royal inscriptions made under Urartian kings, initially in Assyrian, and then, after ca. 820 BCE, in the native language written in Assyrian cuneiform script. This language has still not been fully understood.
At first, smaller states divided up the area among themselves, but in the ninth century they appear to have been unified. We find the first mention of a king of Uratu in 856. The kingdom was involved in constant battles with the Assyrians and a times competed with them for power. During the period of Assyrian weakness from the end of the ninth century to the middle of the eighth, Urart expanded great, reaching as far as Cilicia and northern Mesopotamia. However, in 714 BCE an Assyrian attack put an end to Urartu's great-power status, and toward the end of the century it was threatened and weakened by the Cimmerians, who invaded it from northern Asia Minor. In the seventh or the sixth century, Urartu disappears from history without a trace, and the reasons for this—why and how it happened—remain hidden from us. Its end may be connected with the Armenian immigration, which also remains, however, completely incomprehensible for us.
The political and cultural achievements of the Kingdom of Urartu are impressive: in a short time, its rulers constructed a state on the Assyrian model with a well structured bureaucratic apparatus. The kings bore names such as Sardur, Argisti, and Rusa [...]. They presented their successes in military bulletins, introducing them with the formula "Saith the King, which we meet again later in the inscriptions of the Iranian Achaemenids. No literature in the strict sense has come down to us from the Urartians. But they made great achievements in architecture and metalworking. The Urartians worshipped their gods in temples whose appearance is known to us through representations on Assyrian reliefs. The earlier assumption that they were related architectonically to the type of the Greck temple is probably not correct. Significant remains of many fortifications have been found on rock formations that are difficult to access. In the cities there were blocks of multi storied apartment buildings. Among the outstanding products of the art of metal working in Urartu are large bronze kettles resembling tripods. They were widdy distributed in the Mediterranean world of that time. Whether these were examples of the Urartians' export commodities or imitations of their products remains an open and controversial question. In the area inhabited by the Urartians, the named conditions were not favorable for agriculture; it was pursued all the more Lake Van was alkaline and could not be used as a reservoir of fresh water, so canals, irrigation systems, and terraces on hillsides were constructed.
As has been said, we still remain in the dark regarding the ancestry and origins of the Armenians who settled in the area of the Urartians after the latter disappeared from history. We do not know the provenance of the name Herodotus uses for them, the Armenioi (the name for the country, Armenia, first appears in Xenophon). The Persians called the land or the people Armina. As is usual in such cases, among the Greeks there were stories about a mythical ancestor, Armenos, who came from Thessaly and accompanied the Argonauts to Armenia. His followers—according to the myth—then divided up the enormous area among themselves, and their Thessalian origin could still be discerned in the Armenians' clothing, their long mantles, and their way of riding their horses. In modern times as well, there has been much speculation concerning their origin, but the sources do not provide an adequate basis for proof. There are also too few archacological discoveries from the phase between the sixth and fourth centuries BCE. Despite the clear influence of their neighbors, who spoke Luwian and Hurrian-Urartian as well as Caucasian and Semitic tongues, Armenian has been identified as an Indo-European language. The Armenians produced texts in their own language only after they adopted the Greek alphabet shortly after 400 CE; from the preceding millennium only a few inscriptions and coins minted in Aramaic and Greek have come down to us."
"Dwellings of The Gods: Urartian Temples and Sanctuaries" by Yervand Grekyan in Archaeology and History of Uratru (Buainili). Academia
The role of performance in the rituals of Išpuini and Minua: Religion, community and legitimacy in the formation of Urartu by Annarita Bonfanti ISAW, New York University, USA. PDF
The Assyrian Impact on Urarṭu: Toponyms and Ideological Motifs by Zozan Tarhan | Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Faculty of History. PDF
