Urartu

Sun deities had sometimes the function of judgment during antiquity. Mesopotamian Šamaš and Urartian Šiwini are of similar examples. Their function as the Judge Deity was more significant than the sun function. Šamaš was the great sun in mythological texts but the judge in royal inscriptions. Šiwini is mentiond in ending and cursing formula of the royal inscriptions to punish the destructor and the enemy. He sometims accompanied two other significant deities in Urartian Pantheon, Ḫaldi and Teišeba. Šiwini had been exhibited and pictured as the winged disc or a horse which are both symbols of Šamaš as well. Accordingly, the similarities between Šamaš and Šiwini are doubtless. Simultaneously, they have differences as the way they are mentiond in inscriptions and Šiwini’s third place in Urartian pantheon. It is the aim of the author to compare these two deities through reviewing the texts they are mentioned in to demonstrate the absolute effect of Šamaš over Šiwini and to refuse the exact imitation of Šiwini from Šamaš.

Urartians ruled over the shores of Lake Urmia in Iran, Lake Van in Turkey and Sevan Lake in Armenia between 9th and 6th centuries B.C. and they had left a large number of metal artifacts. Urartians illustrated different human, animal, plant and mythical motifs on their metal objects. But lion was more common among those motifs. Urartian lion was depicted with open jaw, wrinkled face, small ears and short mane. The author suggests to study each figure separately in comparison with other cultures therefore it seems that the Urartian lions are similar to Assyrian, Hittite, Achaemenid and Etruscan lions. This Urartian motif could have been affected by the immigration, travel, savory or employing of the artists or workers from Assyrian or Hittite regions to Urartu. Urartian artists could have affected the other regions with the same reasons. A few scholars have been interested on this motif in comparison with pre and post Urartian culture. It is the aim of the author to field and library research the Urartian lion motif along with its comparison with Assyrian, Hittite, Achaemenid and Etruscan lions to trace the possible effects. 

The Qara Zia-eddin plain is considered a prime example of land use in Southeastern Urartu in the Khoy region of West Azerbaijan. Since 2016, archaeological investigations have been carried out in the Bastam hinterland through the Iranian-Austrian cooperation with the aim of investigating the interaction of settlements with local hilltop fortresses and the use of landscape use in the time of the Urartian Kingdom. The starting point of the project work was in the south of the Qara Zia-eddin plain, with the special focus on the range of hills near the village of Chors. The Urartian fortified settlement of Anaqizly Tappeh was explored using both geomagnetic and archaeological surveys.

The Urartu civilization is one of the old civilizations of the Azerbaijan region. Urartus ruled over northwestern part of Iran, Caucasia, eastern Turkey and even northern part of today Syria. Their language does not belong to Indo-European or Semitic language families. Their language was an agglutinative language. There are lots of inscriptions related to Urartus in East Azerbaijan, West Azerbaijan and Ardabil in northwestern Iran. These inscriptions and Urartu castles in the region have Turkish names. The researcher tried to find out whether there is any relationship between Urartu language and Azerbaijani Turkish language of local people of the region. The cognate based study and comparing roots of the words between ancient Turkish and Urartu language showed that Urartu and Turkish words have the same roots. There are also grammatical similarities between these two languages in using suffixes like –li and –ni for showing relationship and possessiveness. Furthermore, in Urartu language like Kazakh Turkish suffix –u is used to make an infinitive verb. Some Uratian names like Turkish names start with prefix ar/er. The name of some Urartian Gods have meaning in Turkish. As a result, Urartu language must be an Altaic language and a proto-Turkic language.