Urartians

Urartians were an ancient people who inhabited the kingdom of Urartu, also known as the Kingdom of Van, in the mountainous region around Lake Van in eastern Anatolia (present-day eastern Turkey) from about the early 9th to the mid-6th century BCE. They spoke Urartian, a non-Indo-European language related to Hurro-Urartian, and wrote in a variant of cuneiform used for monumental inscriptions and administrative texts.

Urartu emerged as a distinct state in the early Iron Age and reached its height in the 8th century BCE under kings such as Sarduri II and Argishti I. The capital shifted to fortified centers like Tushpa (modern Van) and Erebuni. The Urartians built extensive city walls, royal palaces, and irrigation networks, and their metalwork and stone carvings were notable in the region. They maintained both conflict and coordination with Assyria and controlled parts of the Armenian plateau, western Iran, and adjacent lands for a time.

Religion in Urartu was centered on a supreme god, Haldi (Khaldi), with a pantheon that included spirits associated with natural forces and landscapes. Royal inscriptions describe temple construction and campaigns, revealing a state ideology that fused kingship, religion, and field administration.

Decline began in the late 7th century BCE as Assyrian power waned and external pressure increased. By the early 6th century BCE Urartu was under pressure from Median and later Persian expansion and was eventually absorbed into the Achaemenid Empire. The Urartian state left a distinctive archaeological and linguistic record that illuminates a culturally rich, but geographically networked, kingdom of the early Iron Age.