This article is part of the series on: Urartu at its greatest extent 743 BC 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). ... Armenian Highland (Armenian Upland) is part of the Transcaucasian Highland and constitutes the continuation of the Caucasus mountains. ... An extinct language is a language which no longer has any native speakers, in contrast to a dead language, which is is a language which has stopped changing in grammar, vocabulary, and the complete meaning of a sentence. ... A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common proto-language. ... The Hurro-Urartian languages are an extinct language family of the Ancient Near East, which comprises only two languages, Hurrian and Urartian (Asia Minor and the Caucasus). ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. ... Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... Image File history File links Artaxiad_standard. ... History of Armenia The history of Armenia is ancient and stretches back to prehistoric times. ...

Prehistoric Armenia

Hayasa-Azzi

Urartu

Kingdom of Armenia

Orontid Armenia

Kingdom of Sophene

Artaxiad Dynasty

Kingdom of Commagene

Arsacid Dynasty

Medieval History

Marzpanate Period

Byzantine Armenia

Arab conquest of Armenia

Bagratuni Armenia

Kingdom of Vaspurakan

Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia

Zakarid Armenia

Foreign Rule

Persian Domination

Ottoman Domination

Russian Domination

Hamidian Massacres

Armenian Genocide

Contemporary Armenia

Democratic Republic of Armenia

Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic

Republic of Armenia

Topical

Military history of Armenia

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Urartian (also called Vannic, in older literature also "(Turanian, is Iranian) Chaldean") is the conventional name for the language spoken by the inhabitants of the ancient kingdom of Urartu in the region of Lake Van in modern-day Turkey in the highlands of Armenia. ^[1] The Armenian Highland shows traces of settlement from the Neolithic era. ... Hayasa-Azzi or Azzi-Hayasa was a confederation formed between the Kingdoms of Hayasa located South of Trabzon and Azzi, located North of the Euphrates and to the South of Hayasa. ... Urartu at its greatest extent 743 BC 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 Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia (sometimes referred to as Armenia Minor) was a state formed in the Middle Ages by Armenian refugees fleeing the Seljuk invasion of Armenia. ... The Orontid Dynasty was the first Armenian dynasty. ... Sophene as part of the Empire of Tigranes The Kingdom of Sophene (Armenian: ) was an ancient Armenian kingdom. ... The Artaxiad Dynasty ruled Armenia from 189 BC until their overthrow by the Romans in AD 12. ... Map showing Commagene as a tributary kingdom of the Armenian Empire under Tigranes the Great. ... The Arsacid Dynasty (Arshakuni Dynasty) ruled the Kingdom of Armenia from AD 54 to 428. ... The medieval history of Armenia covers the history of Armenia during the Middle Ages. ... Marzpanate period is the time in Armenian history after the fall of the Arshakuni Dynasty of Armenia in 428, when most of Armenia was governed by Marzbans (Governors-general of the boundaries), nominated by the Sassanid Persian King. ... Byzantine Armenia is the name given to the Armenian part of the Byzantine Empire. ... The Arab conquest of Armenia was a part of the Muslim conquests which began after the death of the prophet Muhammad. ... The Bagratuni or Bagratid royal dynasty of Armenia (Armenian: Բագրատունյաց Արքայական Տոհմ or Bagratunyac Arqayakan Tohm) is a royal family whose branches formerly ruled many regional polities, including Armenian lands of Syunik, Lori, Vaspurakan, Kars, Taron, and Tayk. ... Vaspurakan was a province and then kingdom of Greater Armenia during the Middle Ages. ... The Kingdom of Cilician Armenia, 1199-1375. ... Zakarid Armenia Ca. ... Persian Armenia, AD 387-591 Persian Armenia corresponds to the Armenian territory controlled by Persia throughout history. ... Patriarch Harutyun I The Ottoman rule of Armenia or Ottoman Armenia, beginning with the rule of Selim II (1524 – 1574) becomes the integral part of the Ottoman Empire. ... Eastern Armenia or Russian Armenia is the portion of Ottoman Armenia that was ceded to the Russian Empire following the Russo-Turkish War, 1828-1829. ... Contemporary political cartoon portraying Hamid as a butcher of the Armenians During the long reign of Sultan Hamid, unrest and rebellion occurred in many areas of the Ottoman Empire. ... Armenian Genocide photo. ... Motto None Anthem Mer Hayrenik (Our Fatherland) Map of the Democratic Republic of Armenia from March 1919 to March 1920. ... State motto: Պրոլետարներ բոլոր երկրների, միացեք! (Workers of the world, unite!) Official language None. ... The military history of Armenia encompasses a period of several thousand years, as the Armenian people have existed as a nation since the Early Bronze Age. ... // 883 BC: Foundation of the Kingdom of Urartu with Aramé. 834-828 BC: Reign of Sarduri I who constructs Tushpa (Van). ... For other uses, see Turan (disambiguation). ... Urartu at its greatest extent 743 BC 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). ... Lake Van Armenian: ; (Turkish: Van Gölü; Kurdish: ) is the largest lake in Turkey, located in the far east of the country. ... Armenian Highland (Armenian Upland) is part of the Transcaucasian Highland and constitutes the continuation of the Caucasus mountains. ...

First attested in the 9th century BC, Urartian goes into decline after the fall of the Urartian state in 585 BCE, and by 500 BCE it was likely was confined to the elite, while the common people spoke Armenian.^[2]

Classification

Urartian was an agglutinative language, which belongs to neither the Semitic nor the Indo-European families but to the Hurro-Urartian family.^[3] It survives in many inscriptions found in the area of the Urartu kingdom, written in the Assyrian cuneiform script. There have been claims^[4] of a separate autochthonous script of "Urartian hieroglyphs" but these remain unsubstantiated. It has been suggested that Agglutination be merged into this article or section. ... 14th century BC diplomatic letter in Akkadian, found in Tell Amarna. ... For other uses, see Indo-European. ... The Hurro-Urartian languages are an extinct language family of the Ancient Near East, which comprises only two languages, Hurrian and Urartian (Asia Minor and the Caucasus). ... Urartu at its greatest extent 743 BC 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). ... For other uses, see Assyria (disambiguation). ... Cuneiform script The Cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. ...

Urartian is closely related to Hurrian, though not derived from it. ^[5] Although Urartian and Hurrian are related, it is now fairly clear that the two languages developed quite independently from the third millennium onwards. ^[6]

Decipherment

Urartu was discovered in 1827 by F. E. Schulz. Schulz also made copies of several cuneiform inscriptions at Tušpa, but made no attempt at decipherment.

After the decipherment of Assytian cuneiform in the 1850s, Schulz' drawings became the basis of deciphering the Urartian language. It soon became clear that it was unrelated to any known language, and attempts at decipherment based on known langauges of the region failed (Georgian: F. Lenormant 1871, Armenian: A. D. Mordtmann 1872–1877). Decipherment only made progress after World War I, with the discovery of Urartian-Assyrian bilinguals at Kelišin and Topzawä, (A. Götze 1930, 1935; J. Friedrich 1933).

In 1963, a grammar of Urartian was published by G. A. Melikishvili in Russian, appearing in German translation in 1971. In the 1970s, the genetic relation with Hurrian was established by I. M. Diakonoff.

Corpus

Urartian cuneiform tablet on display at the Erebuni Museum in Yerevan. The inscription reads: For the God Khaldi, the lord, Argishti, son of Menua, built this temple and this mighty fortress. I proclaimed it Irbuni (Erebuni) for the glory of the countries of Biai (=Urartu) and for holding the Lului (=enemy) countries in awe. By the greatness of God Khaldi, this is Argishti, son of Menua, the mighty king, the king of the countries of Biai, ruler of the city of Tushpa

The oldest delivered texts originate from the reign from Sarduri I, from the late 9th century BCE.^[7] With the fall of the realm of Urartu approximately 200 years later disappeared the written sources from his time. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (3072x2304, 3187 KB) Summary Erebuni museum, Yerevan, Armenia. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (3072x2304, 3187 KB) Summary Erebuni museum, Yerevan, Armenia. ... Location of Yerevan in Armenia Coordinates: , Country Established 782 BC Government  - Mayor Yervand Zakharyan Area  - City 227 km²  (87. ... Khaldi is the supreme god of the Urartians. ... Argishtis I (Argishtish) was the fifth known king of the ancient country of Urartu (in Anatolia) from 785 to 763 BC. A son and successor of Menuas, he continued the series of conquests initiated by his predecessors. ... Menuas was the fourth known king of Urartu, an ancient country in Anatolia, from ca 810 to 785 BC. A younger son of the preceding Urartan king Ishpuinis, he was made a co-ruler by his father in the last years of his reign. ... Urartu at its greatest extent 743 BC 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). ...

Approximately two hundred inscriptions written in the Urartian language, which adopted and modified the cuneiform script, have been discovered in the past. ^[8].

Writing

Cuneiform

Urartian cuneiform is a standardized simplification of Neo-Assyrian cuneiform. Other than in Assyrian, each sign only expresses a single sound value. The sign gi 𒄀 has the special function of expressing a hiatus, e.g. u-gi-iš-tifor Uīšdi. A variant script with non-overlapping wedges was in use for rock inscriptions.

Hieroglyphs

Urartian was also rarely written in the "Anatolian hieroglyphs" used for the Luwian language. Evidence for this is restricted to Altıntepe. Drawing of the hieroglyphic seal found in the Troy VIIb layer. ... Luwian (sometimes spelled Luvian) is part of the Anatolian branch of the Indo European language family and has been preserved in three forms: (1) Cuneiform Luwian, (2) Hieroglyphic-Luwian and (3), the somewhat later Lycian. ... Altıntepe is an ancient Urartian site located in Ãœzümlü district of Erzincan Province in the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey. ...

There are suggestions that besides the Luwian hieroglyphic inscriptions, Urartu also had a native hieroglyphic script. The inscription corpus is too sparse to substantiate the hypothesis. It remains unclear whether the symbols in question form a coherent writing system, or represent just a mulitiplicity of uncoordinated expressions of proto-writing or ad-hoc drawings.^[9] What can be identified with a certain confidence are two symbols or "hieroglyphs" found on vessels, representing certain units of measurment: for aqarqi and for ṭerusi. This is known because some vessels were labelled both in cuneiform and with these symbols.^[10] Writing systems evolved in the 4th millennium BC out of neolithic proto-writing. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Hieroglyph_Urartian_aqarqi. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Hieroglyph_Urartian_tyerusi. ...

See also

• Urartu
• Hurrians
• Hurrian language
• Armenian language

Urartu at its greatest extent 743 BC 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). ... For the history of the kingdom of Mitanni (1500–1300 BC), see Mitanni. ... Hurrian is a conventional name for the language of the Hurrians (Khurrites), a people who entered northern Mesopotamia around 2300 BC and had mostly vanished by 1000 BC. Hurrian was the language of the Mitanni kingdom in northern Mesopotamia, and was likely spoken at least initially in Hurrian settlements in... The Armenian language (, IPA: — , conventional short form ) is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. ...

Literature

• C. B. F. Walker: section Cuneiform in Reading the Past. Published by British Museum Press, 1996, ISBN 0-7141-8077-7.
• J. Friedrich: Urartäisch, in Handbuch der Orientalistik I, ii, 1-2, pp. 31-53. Leiden, 1969.
• Gernot Wilhelm: Urartian, in R. Woodard (ed.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World’s Ancient Languages. Cambridge, 2004.
• Mirjo Salvini: Geschichte und Kultur der Urartäer. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1995.
• Jeffrey J. Klein, Urartian Hieroglyphic Inscriptions from Altintepe, Anatolian Studies, Vol. 24, (1974), 77-94.

References

Jona Lendering is a Dutch historian and the author of books on antiquity, Dutch history and modern management. ...