HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS

History of the language and its speakers

From the late ninth to the late seventh century BC, Urartian was written in the empire of the Urartian kings, stretching from present-day Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iranian Azerbaijan, and northeastern Iraq to the Euphrates. Neither its geographical origin can be conclusively determined, nor the area where Urartian was spoken by a majority of the population. It was probably dominant in the mountainous areas along the upper Zab Valley and around Lake Van. The center of Urartu is the region surrounding Lake Van with its capital of Ṭušpa (citadel of Van). We do not know when the language became extinct, but it is likely that the collapse of what had survived of the empire until the end of the seventh or the beginning of the sixth century BC caused the language to disappear.

Urartian is closely related to Hurrian (see Ch. 9, §1.1), especially to the dialect conventionally called Old Hurrian (see Ch. 9, §1.3). Presumably Urartian branched off from Hurrian not much later than approximately 2000 BC.

The earliest inscriptions of the Urartian kings are written in the Neo-Assyrian script and language (a dialect of Akkadian; see WAL Ch. 8), though after a single generation the Urartian language, for most purposes, replaced the use of Assyrian. The eighth century BC witnessed the climax of Urartian power and the greatest production of Urartian royal inscriptions (the Annals of Argišti I and Sardure II).