Photo: Erebuni, Uraturian God .
Right
after the fall of the mighty empire of the Hittites, and at the dawn of the
first millennium B.C., a new kingdom was created in the eastern part of
Anatolia in Asia Minor. This remarkable kingdom was Urartu which flourished
from the 9th century to the 6th century B.C. and
enjoyed a formidable military and economical powers. The Urarturians were
related to the Hurrians
and to the Hittites from whom
originally they adopted many of
their traditions and customs and particularly the shape and form of monarch
faces, beard style, hairdo and attire they depicted later on in their
artifacts, tablets and inscriptions in the first millennium, but, later to
create their own style and way of
life including particular characteristics in art, architecture, fashion and
metal work art.
ORIGIN OF THE ANCIENT URARTURIAN:
Where did the
Urarturians come from? Who are the Urarturians?
Photos
from L to R: #1. Armenia’s bronze age figurines.
Often called the first kingdom or empire in Armenia's history, the Urartians are actually one of a long line of powerful entities that cultivated the Armenian Plateau and created the borders called "Greater" or "Historic" Armenia. They were a powerful tribe which belonged to a federation led by the Nairi. Before Urartu were the Nairi, before the Nairi the Metsamor Kingdom, and before that untold numbers of now anonymous kingdoms and states that sprung from the Indo-European race born on the Armenian Plateau, spreading their language, ethnic identity and the secrets of bronze, iron and astronomy to both Asia and Europe. As a part of the land and people interchangeably called "The Nairi", Urartians were recognized as early as 2000 BC on Assyrian cuneiform as coming from the "land between the rivers", a land known to hold about 60 tribes and 100 cities. Until their rise, Urarturians were subservient to a tribe also called the Nairi, which were in turn one tribe among many, but they held a predominant position during the 2nd millennium BC, and became the namesake for the entire region. Beginning about 2000 BC, the Assyrians used the term "People of the Nairi" to describe the peoples on the Armenian Plateau. The territory and people both were called Nairi, but the word meant "country or land of rivers", and contemporary Assyrian accounts describe about 60 different tribes and small kingdoms and about 100 cities included in this land. From what we know of the tribes in Nairi , indigenous customs and traditions were similar to those found in Mesopotamia, and some were of Semitic or Ugaritic origin. This suggests that Ancestral Armenians are descendants of other, older cultures in the region. However, recent discoveries and studies have turned the tables on history, showing that the cultures that developed the "Cradle of Civilization" are now pre-dated by Ancestral Armenians in Armenia's Cradle by at least 2000 years. The "people" in this description were an alliance of tribes led by a dominant tribe, the Nairi. They were by now more than tribes; they were city-states in a common alliance. The Nairi alliance was based around Lake Van, which together with the Ararat Valley has the most fertile land in Western Asia, as well as the largest mineral deposits in Asia Minor and Mesopotamia.