Urartian language

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Urartian cuneiform tablet on display at the Erebuni Museum in Yerevan. The inscription reads: For the God Khaldi, the lord, Argishti, son of Menua, built this temple and this mighty fortress. 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

Urartian is the conventional name for the language spoken by the inhabitants of the ancient kingdom of Urartu in Northeast Anatolia (present-day Turkey), in the region of Lake Van.

Urartian was an agglutinative language, which belongs to neither the Semitic nor the Indo-European families but to the Hurro-Urartian family. It survives in many inscriptions found in the area of the Urartu kingdom, written in the Assyrian cuneiform script. The Urartians also possessed a native hieroglyphic script, but in later Urartu this script was restricted to use in accounting and religion.

Based on linguistic similarities with Northeast Caucasian languages, some scholars place it and the closely related Hurrian language in the Alarodian family. The possibility of a connection between Urartian and the modern Armenian language is unlikely, given that Armenian is a recognisably Indo-European language.

Reference

section on Urartian in Walker, C. B. F. 'Cuneiform' in, "Reading the Past" (1996). Published by British Museum Press, ISBN 0-7141-8077-7

Friedrich, J. (1969). "Urartäisch" in Handbuch der Orientalistik I, ii, 1-2, Leiden: 31-53.

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