Location and Land

How many kingdoms can claim to have not only survived, but even flourished for over 300 years? But that's the club that ancient Urartu belongs to. The kingdom of Urartu with its capital at Tushpa (200 miles south of Mt Ararat, of Noah's Ark fame) occupied much of what is now Eastern Turkey and Armenia --- that mountainous plateau that divides Mesopotamia, Asia, and the Caucasus. Urartu served as a bottleneck, keeping the Cimmerians and later the Scythians out of the area between Ararat and Lake Van. Urartu flourished from the 9th to the 7th century BC, and historically it figured principally as one of the strongest opponents of Assyria. Urartu had a remarkably well- developed culture and they had extensive contact and trade with all the major empires of the Late Bronze Age world stretching from the Mediterranean to India, and Urartu rivaled them all, for trade, military and cultural hegemony.

At its greatest extent in 743 BC, Urartu covered some 200,000 square miles, and sat like an octopus over the Assyrians, with tentacles from the Euphrates on the West to the Caspian Sea on the East.

Urartu's People

Originally the area had many small warring tribes, and they might have been related to the Hurrians. They seemed to have their own language --- which was neither Semitic nor Indo-European in root, but from a Hurro-Urarian family (Hurrians spoke a language that has no other known connections, note 1). Mostly farmers, they were experts in stone architecture and metal work. Wooden timbers from Urartu even ended up in Egypt (note 2). Their work was highly sought after as far away as Phrygia, and that's how the magnificent bull-headed cauldrons of the Urartu came to be found even in Italy (note 3). Urartu had a chain of defensive fortresses to protect their borders. Many of the houses excavated at these sites had two stories, interior decorations and balconies, with water piped in from some distance as well as working sewer systems. So pretty sophisticated for the time.