Urartian (also called Vannic, in older literature also "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. Lake Van (Van Gölü Gola Wanê Վանա լիճ Daryacheye Van ("Lake of Van" is the largest Lake Turkey (Türkiye known officially as the Republic of Turkey ( is a Eurasian Country that stretches ^[1]

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. The Armenian language (hy հայերեն լեզու hajɛɹɛn lɛzu —, conventional short form) is an Indo-European language spoken by the 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. An agglutinative language is a Language that uses Agglutination extensively most Words are formed by joining Morphemes together The Semitic languages are a Language family whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, The Hurro-Urartian languages are an extinct Language family of the Ancient Near East, which comprises only two languages Hurrian and ^[3] It survives in many inscriptions found in the area of the Urartu kingdom, written in the Assyrian cuneiform script. Early history The most Neolithic site in Assyria is at Tell Hassuna, the center of the Hassuna culture There have been claims^[4] of a separate autochthonous script of "Urartian hieroglyphs" but these remain unsubstantiated.

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 Assyrian 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 languages 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 bilingual inscriptions 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. Yerevan (Երևան Երեւան or Երեվան ˌjɛrəˈvɑːn sometimes written as Erevan, Iravan, Erewan, Ayrivan, and Erivan The inscription reads: For the God Khaldi, the lord, Argishti, son of Menua, built this temple and this mighty fortress. Khaldi (also written as Haldi is the supreme god of the Urartians. Argishtis I ( Urartian: Argištiše, Արգիշտի Argishti was the sixth known king of the ancient country of Urartu (in eastern Anatolia Menua was the fifth known king of Urartu, an ancient country in the Armenian Highland, from ca 810 to late 7th century BC A younger son of the preceding 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. Sarduri I ( reign - 834 BC - 828 BC) also known as Sarduris was the king of the ancient Armenian kingdom of Urartu ^[7] With the fall of the realm of Urartu approximately 200 years later disappeared the written sources from his time.

Approximately two hundred inscriptions written in the Urartian language, which adopted and modified the cuneiform script, have been discovered to date. ^[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-ti for 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. Anatolian hieroglyphs are an indigenous Logographic script native to central Anatolia, consisting of some 500 signs Luwian (sometimes spelled Luvian) is an extinct language of the Anatolian branch of the Evidence for this is restricted to Altıntepe. Altıntepe is an ancient Urartian site located in Üzümlü 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 multiplicity of uncoordinated expressions of proto-writing or ad-hoc drawings. The history of writing encompasses the various Writing systems that evolved in the Early Bronze Age (late 4th millennium BC) ^[9] What can be identified with a certain confidence are two symbols or "hieroglyphs" found on vessels, representing certain units of measurement: for aqarqi and for ṭerusi. This is known because some vessels were labelled both in cuneiform and with these symbols. ^[10]

See also

• Urartu
• Hurrians
• Hurrian language

Literature

• C. Urartu ( Assyrian: Urarṭu Urartian: Biainili Ուրարտու was an Iron Age kingdom in Eastern Anatolia ( Transcaucasia) rising The Hurrians (also Khurrites; cuneiform Ḫu-ur-ri 𒄷𒌨𒊑 were a people of the Ancient Near East, who lived in northern Mesopotamia Hurrian is a conventional name for the language of the Hurrians (Khurrites a people who entered northern Mesopotamia around 2300 BC and had mostly 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