Urartian language

Urartian
Spoken in	formerly in Urartu
speaker	extinct
Linguistic classification	Hurro-Urartian language group Urartian language
Official status
Official language in	Urartu (9th to 7th century BC)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	xur

Urartean inscription in cuneiform, exhibited in the Erebuni Museum in Yerevan . Translation:
“ Argišti I , son of Menua , built this temple and this mighty castle to the god Ḫaldi, the Lord . I determined Irbuni (= Erebuni) as their name, the Biai countries (= Urartu) the rule and the Lului countries (= foreign countries) the submission. Because of the size of Ḫaldi, I, Argišti, son of Menua, am the strong king, the king of the Biai countries, the shepherd of the city of Tušpa . ”
For the transliteration and grammatical analysis of the text see below .

The Urartean language (in the older specialist literature also Chaldic language after the god Ḫaldi or Vanisch after the first place of discovery Van ) was established in the 1st millennium BC. Spoken by the Urartians in the area of ​​today's Eastern Turkey and Armenia . The name "Urartian" is derived from the Assyrian name of the area as "Urartu". The Urartians themselves called their area Biai-nili , the name of the language is not known.

Map of the last years of the Urartian Empire, between 610 and 585 BC Chr.

The oldest surviving texts come from the reign of Sarduri I , from the late 9th century BC. With the fall of the kingdom of Urartu about 200 years later, the written sources from this period also disappear. Nothing is known about the further development of the Urartian; Based on the sources, it can be assumed that the spread of the Urartian was limited in time and space to the Empire of Urartu. After the (New Assyrian) cuneiform script was deciphered , the language became accessible again for research, but remained relatively unexplored until the 1930s.

classification

Urartian is closely related to Hurrian . However, the Hurrian-Urartian language family could not yet be assigned to any other, larger language family. A relationship with the Northeast Caucasian languages is suspected by many scientists, but has not yet been proven. Because the group of Northeast Caucasian languages ​​is highly diversified and the possibility of reconstructing a common Northeast Caucasian proto-language is unclear, an effective argument would also be made more difficult.

Urartian is an agglutinating ergative language with a sentence structure subject-object predicate . As in many other ergative languages, there is the phenomenon of suffix inclusion , but the lack of an antipassive is atypical .

Relationship with the Hurrian

Hurrian was spoken in an area from eastern Turkey to northern Iraq , about the settlement area of ​​today's Kurds . It is considered the extinct official language of the Mittani empire. Hurrian was spoken a whole millennium earlier than Urartian, until around 1200 BC. BC, and seems to disappear from the traditional findings about 4 centuries before the first evidence of the Urartian. In comparison, Urartian and Hurrian are still closely related languages. Extensive matches are e.g. B. present in nominal morphology; Personal pronouns are also similar, while the relative pronouns and verbal morphology differ greatly. A common previous language is assumed, but no certificates are available anymore. The much better known Hurrian, which has already been investigated by research, has therefore also made an important contribution to the understanding of Urartian.

The following table is intended to show the similarities and differences in vocabulary and grammar between the two languages ​​using a few examples.

urartan	Hurrian	meaning
it I	eše	place
šuri	šauri	weapon
mane	mane	3rd Sg. Pers.
-Hi	-Hi	Affiliation Suffix
-še	-š	Ergative
-di	-tta	1.Sg. Para.
ag-	ag-	to lead
ar-	ar-	give
man-	man-	be
now-	U.N-	come
-di	-there	Directive
-u-	-O-	Transitivity marking
qiura	eše	earth
lutu	ašte	woman

font

There is evidence of three different script types for Urartian:

• Cuneiform
• Urartean hieroglyphs
• Luwian hieroglyphs

Cuneiform

The Urartian cuneiform goes back to the Neo-Assyrian cuneiform. It is mainly a syllabary, but logograms are also used. In contrast to other cuneiform scripts, the script shows a great regularity, i. That is, the characters are largely standardized. Basically two variants of the script are attested, one for writing on clay tablets, the other for rock inscriptions. In the case of rock inscriptions, the wedges do not cross, which is supposed to simplify the stonemason's "paperwork".

In contrast to Akkadian , one character corresponds exactly to one sound value, KVK signs are rare, characters with sound values ​​V, VK and KV appear almost exclusively (V = vowel, K = consonant). Double consonance is not expressed in Scripture. To avoid hiate in the script, the character gi is used, e.g. B. the name Uīšdi (Assyr.) Is written as u-gi-iš-ti .

Urartean hieroglyphs

The Urartian hieroglyphs have not yet been deciphered; To date, too few written sources have been discovered and published for a successful decipherment to be carried out. Another obstacle arises from the fact that the known documents are relatively brief and thus hardly offer any starting points for deciphering. Only a few hieroglyphs on vessels could be interpreted as measurements, namely the unit of measurement aqarqi and the unit ṭerusi . The interpretation was possible because different vessels at the edges contained the markings alternately in hieroglyphic or cuneiform script. Further attempts at deciphering have so far failed or are purely speculative in nature.

Luwian hieroglyphs

Luwian hieroglyphs are the least documented font for Urartian and are only known from Altıntepe . Nevertheless, the few evidence led to some changes in the reading of the Luwian hieroglyphs, in particular the reading of an arrow-like hieroglyph as za . As a consequence, several other readings of Luwian hieroglyphs had to be corrected, which also led to a better understanding of the Luwian language. Here, too, the measurements on the vessels were the trigger, namely á - ḫá + ra - ku for aqarqi and tu - ru - za or tu + ra - za or for ṭerusi . The deviations from the Urartian form are due to the special orthography of the hieroglyphic Luwian.

Decipherment and History of Science

Traces of the Urartian culture were discovered in 1827 by the German orientalist Friedrich Eduard Schulz in the former Urartian capital Tušpa . Schulz also made several copies of cuneiform texts discovered there, but without being able to decipher or classify the script used. For a long time, however, his copies formed the basis on which European researchers tried to understand writing and language.

After deciphering the Neo-Assyrian cuneiform, in which all the Urartian texts known at the time were written, it quickly became clear that Urartian was not Assyrian or any other known language. Various attempts to open up the language with the help of more modern languages ​​failed ( François Lenormant 1871 with Georgian , Andreas David Mordtmann 1872–1877 with Armenian ). Finally, the processing of the Urartian-Neo-Assyrian bilinguals by Kelišin and Topzawä brought progress in the interpretation of the language.

After a short break in research during the First World War, Albrecht Götze and Johannes Friedrich finally achieved decisive breakthroughs in the development of vocabulary (Götze 1930) and grammar (Friedrich 1933, Götze 1935) by studying bilingualism. The similarities with the Hurrian language, which was also known in the meantime, were registered and helped with the further interpretation of Urartian, even if a genetic relationship between the languages ​​was not yet investigated in more detail at this point in time.

In 1964 GA Melikishvili published an extensive grammar of Urartian in Russian and the only word list that is still considered correct to the present day. However, this work was only published in German in 1971 and was only then made accessible to most ancient orientalists. Igor Michailowitsch Djakonow finally established the genetic relationship between Hurrian and Urartian in the 1970s. Until today Urartology has made further advances, especially in the area of ​​grammar, but has not achieved any major breakthroughs; a substantial part of the vocabulary is still unknown.

For the history of research that is not language-specific, cf. the article Research History of Urartu .

Phonetics and Phonology

The knowledge of Urartian phonology is based on the texts written in New Assyrian cuneiform and the differentiated speech sounds. The actual pronunciation therefore remains unclear, the presentation given here is based on the probable pronunciation of the cuneiform script in Akkadian. The spelling used in transliteration / transcription is given in brackets, which can be found in the specialist literature for this sound if it differs from the phonetic sign.

Consonants

	bilabial		labio- dental		alveolar		palatal		velar		glottal
	stl.	sth.	stl.	sth.	stl.	sth.	stl.	sth.	stl.	sth.	stl.	sth.
Ejectives					t ' (ṭ), ts' (ṣ)				k ' (q)
Plosives	p	b			t	d			k	G	ʔ (ʾ)
Affricates					ts (s), tɬ (š)	dz (z)
Fricatives			f						x (ḫ)
Nasals		m				n
Vibrants						r
lateral  approximants						l
central approximants		w						j (y)

The existence of the consonants q, ṭ, f and the plosive ʾ is controversial, they are not consistently differentiated in writing, a possible f is also always represented as p , so it is speculative. The distinction between s and š is also not always made consistently in writing, which is why it is not clear whether these consonants are really different in Urartian.

Vowels

Urartian knows the vowels a , e , i and u - both the short and the long variants of the vowels. Long vowels are occasionally indicated in writing by plene notation , but in some cases plene notation is used even when short vowels are to be expected.

The existence of the vowel o cannot be inferred based on the script; its existence is possible, but cannot be proven from the written sources. The differentiation between i and e is usually not made in writing, which sometimes leads to problems with the text interpretation, since corresponding morphemes exist that only differ by i / e .

Sound developments

Often occurring sound developments are:

• ai can become a , e.g. there is the form kauki next to kaiuki ("in front of me / me")
• iu can become i , e.g. qira next to qiura ("earth")
• The consonant n is very weak and is sometimes lost if it is appended in the form of the suffix -ni or -na and other suffixes are added, for example šurawe is formed from šuri + na + we .

grammar

Ergativity

Urartian is an ergative language, i. That is, there are two different cases for the subject : on the one hand the ergative for the subject of the transitive verb and on the other hand the absolute for the subject of the intransitive verb. The absolute is also used for the direct object of transitive verbs.

Examples of the ergative construction:

Urartian	translation	comment
ereli + Ø now + a + bi	The king is coming.	ereli ("king") is in the absolute. The verb is intransitively marked -a- .
ereli + še esi + Ø tur + u + Ø + ni	The king destroys a place.	ereli is in the ergative, esi ("place") in the absolute. The verb carries the transitivity mark -u- .

Nominal morphology

Most nouns are i-stems, but there are also a- and u-stems. There is only one declension for all nouns, regardless of gender or stem class.

Urartian cases and their functions are:

case	function	Case ending singular	Case ending plural
Absolutely	intransitive subject, direct object, predicate nouns	-O	-li / -Ø
Ergative	transitive subject	-še	-še
Genitive	Affiliation	-i / -ie / -ei	-we
dative	indirect object, target of a movement	-e / -ie	-we
locative	Location	-a	-a
ablative	origin	-tane	-štane
Instrumental ablative	Origin, means	-ni / -ne	-ni / -ne
Comitative	Accompaniment	-rani	-rani
Directive	Goal of a movement	-edi	-edi / -šte

In the singular it is often not possible to distinguish genitive and dative, and the genitive or dative ending is sometimes omitted in the singular; in the plural, the forms of genitive and dative are identical. The relationship between ergative and absolute has already been explained in the section on ergativity. The functions of the genitive and dative are essentially the same as in other languages, such as Latin or German. In addition to its primary function as specifying the destination of a movement, the directive is also used as a second indirect object if the absolute for the direct object and the dative for a first indirect object are already used.

items

In Urartian there is a certain article that appears as a suffix before the case ending. However, its function does not exactly correspond to that of the specific article of the German language. The exact meaning is controversial, but in translation it is traditionally given as a definite article, as that meaning comes closest to it in most cases.

	Singular	Plural
Absolutely	-O	-nili
Other cases	-ni	-n / A

In the absolute singular it is not possible to decide directly whether a word carries the specific article, since the specific article is not specially marked in this case.

Suffix recording

A noun that is connected to another noun as an attribute in the genitive or with the affiliation suffix -ḫi must congruent with this so-called headword in the attributive construction, which means that it takes up the suffixes of the headword. This behavior is known as suffix inclusion . The definite article comes before the included suffixes. There is no suffix inclusion in the ending absolute, which also has no marking for the specific article in the singular. For example, in the absolute (endlessly) esi + Ø ušmaši + i "place of power" and in the directive with article (ending + ni + edi ) esi + ni + edi ušmaši + i + ni + ni + edi "to the place of Power"

The arrangement of the various suffixes, the so-called suffix chain, is subject to a strictly defined order:

1	2	3	4th	5
noun	items	possessive pronouns	case	recorded suffixes

Forms with simultaneous occupation of positions 2 and 3 are not known, so the so-called definite article behaves like a pronoun in this regard.

Examples

	analysis	grammar	translation
Biainili	Biai + nili	"Biai" + article pl.	the Biai countries = Urartu
Bianaidi	Bia (i) + na + edi	"Biai" + Article Pl. + Directive	into the Biai countries = to Urartu
erelawe	ereli + na + we	"König" + Article Pl. + Gen./Dat. Pl.	the kings
taršuanarani	taršuani + na + rani	"Mensch" + article pl. + Comitative pl.	with people
Ḫaldinawe šeštinawe	Ḫaldi + i + na + we šešti + na + we	"Ḫaldi" + Gen. Sg. + Suffix chain "Tor" + article Pl. + Gen./Dat. Pl.	the gates of Ḫaldi
Argištiše Menuaḫiniše	Argišti + še Menua + ḫi + ni + še	"Argišti" + Erg. Sg. + "Menua" + affiliation + article Sg. + Suffix chain	Argišti, son of Menua, ... (add.)

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

The personal pronoun occurs in two forms: a stand-alone form and enclitic when attached as a suffix to another word. Only a 1st and 3rd person are occupied.

In the absolute, the known forms are as follows:

	Singular, independent	Singular, enclitic	Plural, enclitic
1st person	ište	-di
3rd person	mane	-ni / -bi	-li

In addition, an ergative yeše and a dative -me are known in the 1st person singular .

The enclitic personal pronoun is used in the conjugation of the intransitive verb to indicate the person acting and in the transitive verb to indicate the direct object. The suffix -bi occurs only with the transitive verb and only in a certain constellation, for details see the section on verb morphology.

The meaning of the enclitic personal pronouns is very weak, they also occur in combination with the independent pronouns and sometimes only serve to mark an otherwise ending absolute, e.g. B. Argišti + ni Menua + ḫi “(That is) Argišti, son of Menua”.

Demonstrative pronouns

The demonstrative pronoun only appears in an independent form, but has a partial equivalent in the enclitic definite article.

	Singular	Plural
Absolutely	ini + Ø , ina + Ø + ni	in (i) + nili , ina + nili
locative	in (i) + na + a
instr. ablative	in (i) + na + ni , ina + na + ni

No satisfactory explanation has yet been found for the occurrence of the two strains ini- and ina- . The two most frequently represented hypotheses are based either on a phonetic development a → i or on two different demonstrative pronouns, whereby ina should be understood as referring back in the sense of “the named”.

possessive pronouns

Few forms are known. The possessive pronoun occurs both independently and enclitically:

	Singular, independent	Singular, enclitic
1st person	šusi	- (u) ki
3rd person	masi	-i

Most Urartian nouns end in -i ; For this reason, the suffixed possessive pronoun of the 3rd person singular is often not recognizable, e.g. šuri from šuri + i "his weapon".

More pronouns

Individual forms of relative and indefinite pronouns are also known. The relative pronoun ali (in the absolute; ergative aluše ) is often used, from which other words that are no longer used as relative pronouns are derived, e.g. B. aliki "a certain" or aliki ... aliki ... "the one ... the other ..." The indefinite pronouns are two non-declinable words ainiei "someone" and giei "something", of which the negations ui ainiei "nobody" and ui giei " nothing ”are known.

Verbal morphology

The verbal morphology of Urartian is only poorly known, many forms are missing or their meaning is unclear.

A distinction is made between 2 numbers, singular and plural, as well as 3 persons, whereby the second person is only used in the imperative. (Letters where the 2nd person would be expected are incomprehensible and do not contribute to a better understanding of the verbal morphology.) The verbs have no tense marking. On the other hand, in addition to the indicative, numerous modal forms are documented. T. also show passive meaning. Antipassive forms are not known.

indicative

With a few exceptions, the known forms are all to be translated preterial, in particular only one transitive verb form is known, which is to be interpreted as the present tense: ali "he says".

In the intransitive verb, the intransitivity -a- is behind the stem. To identify the intransitive subject, an enclitic personal pronoun is added to the absolute. Eg. Now + a + di "I came", now + a + bi "he came", now + a + li "they came". In the case of the transitive verb, on the other hand, the transitivity marking -u- is placed after the stem, and the following endings are used to identify the transitive subject (ergative):

	Singular	Plural
1st person	-O
3rd person	-Ø / -a	-itu

The ending -a of the 3rd person singular is only used if the direct object is in the plural. Due to legal reasons, the transitivity marking -u before itu is mostly canceled .

In addition, an enclitic pronoun is usually attached to the transitive verb to identify the direct object. A special feature is the subject-dependent choice of the enclitic pronoun, which denotes the direct object: For the direct object, either -bi , if the subject is in the 1st person singular, or -ni , if the Subject is in the 3rd person singular. This removes the ambiguity that can arise from the use of the subject marking -Ø in the case of the 1st and 3rd person. In the other cases, the usual enclitic personal pronouns are used. The indirect object is rarely also marked, the pronoun -me is then added for the dative.

Finally, taking into account the direct object, the verb morphology can be represented as follows. The “deviations” already mentioned are highlighted in bold.

Transitive verb
subject	direct object	Suffixes
		transitive	subject	to you. object
1st person Singular	1st person Singular	+ u	+ Ø
	3rd person Singular			+ bi
	3rd person Plural			+ left
3rd person Singular	1st person Singular		+ Ø	+ di
	3rd person Singular			+ ni
	3rd person Plural		+ a	+ left
3rd person Plural	1st person Singular		+ itu	+ di
	3rd person Singular			+ ni
	3rd person Plural			+ left
Intransitive verb
		intransitive	-	subject
1st person Singular	-	+ a		+ di
3rd person Singular				+ bi
1st person Plural				+ left

Imperative active

	Singular	Plural
2nd person	-i
3rd person	-inini	-tinini

Modal forms

Other verb forms of not fully clarified modal meaning are known. These are usually formed with the help of an infix -li- and additional, not yet fully understood markings. The marking of the direct object may be missing or in any case no longer follows the pattern of the indicative. The meaning varies between the optative ( qapqar + u + li + ni "I wanted to ... besiege"), conditionalism ( tur + u + li + e "if he ... destroys") and desiderative ( ḫa + i + li + a + ni " he wants to ... conquer ”).

Participles

With the suffixes -auri and -uri , participles are formed to transitive or intransitive verbs. The participle of a transitive verb is to be translated as passive, the participle of an intransitive verse as active.

Examples

	analysis	grammar	translation
uštadi	ušt + a + di	"Move out" + intrans. 1. Sg.	I moved out
nunabi	now + a + bi	"Come" + intrans. + 3rd section	he / she came
terubi	ter + u + Ø + bi	"Determine" + trans. + 1st Sg. Erg. + 3rd section	I determined it
arume	ar + u + Ø + ni + me	"Give" + trans. + 3rd Sg. Erg. + 3rd Sg. Abs. + 3rd Sg. Dat.	he gave it to me
zatume	zad + u + itu + me	"Do" + trans. + 3rd pl. Erg. + 3rd Sg.Dat	they made me
turutinini	tur + u + tinini	"Destroy" + trans. + Imp. Pl.	destroyed ...!
šidauri	šid + auri	“Found / build” + passive participle	built

Word formation

Urartian has no compound words like German, instead genitive compounds are used instead. Thus, the words are each derived from a single word stem. However, a number of word formation suffixes are known that can be used to derive new words; the most important are compiled here in this overview.

suffix	meaning	example
-še	forms abstractions	ewriše "rule" from ewri "lord"
-uše	forms deverbal nouns	aruše "gift" from ar- "give"
-tuḫi	forms abstractions	erelituḫi "kingship" from ereli "king"
-Hi	forms affiliation adjectives	Išpuiniḫi "son of Išpuini" (adjective!)
-ḫali	derives adjectives from toponyms
- (u) si	derives adjectives from nouns or pronouns	badusi "mighty" from badu "power"

The affiliation suffix -ḫi is particularly popular in Urartian texts . It is used in royal inscriptions to indicate the name of the king's father according to the pattern (name) (name of father) + ḫi , e.g. B. Menua Išpuini + ḫi ("Menua, son of Išpuini"). The suffix also appears in city names and at the same time denotes the name of the city's founder, e.g. B. Rusa-ḫi + ni + li "the city of Rusa" or Argišti-ḫi + ni + li "the city of Argišti".

The verbs generally have a monosyllabic root, but there are root extensions with a function that has not yet been precisely explained , for example šid-išt- “build” is formed from the verb root šid- “ ground ” with the root extension - (i) št- .

syntax

The syntax of the Urartian has not yet been researched, and the reconstruction of the syntax is made more difficult by the fact that only a few text genres (see below) have survived, which often - for example in building inscriptions - adhere to a relatively rigidly prescribed sentence structure.

The sentence structure essentially follows the pattern subject - direct object - verb , but a more free word order is possible without any problems, for example to emphasize a fact; often the name of a god is prefixed Ḫaldi + e Argišti + še E ₂ sidišt + u + ni dt. "For (the god) Ḫaldi Argišti built the temple".

In the case of genitive constructions, the attributes can appear both before and after the key word. The above- mentioned principle of adding suffixes favors this, as the suffix chain immediately makes it clear which word is the headword and which is the attribute, so on the one hand Ḫaldi + i + ni + ni alsuiši + i + ni dt. "Through the size of the Ḫaldi "and on the other hand Menua + še Išpuini + ḫi + ni + še dt." Menua, the (son) of Išpuini "possible.

The lack of an antipassive for the formation of patientless sentences (analogous to the passive in accusative languages ) is rather untypical for ergative languages , although there is a corresponding construction in Hurrian, which is related to Urartian . In principle, however, there is also the possibility that the antipassive verb forms have not yet been recognized as such due to the still incomplete knowledge of the Urartian grammar.

The associative conjunctions e „a "and", eʾa ... eʾa ... "both ... and ..." and mei "but" are used to structure the sentence structure . Subordinate clauses can be introduced by subordinate conjunctions, namely awie “wo”, aše “if” and iu “as”, or by the relative pronoun ali- . Relative clauses are only attested for reference words in the ergative or absolute.

Example of a relative clause, the verbs are highlighted in bold in the analysis and use modal forms that are not yet fully understood and deviate from the conjugation pattern of the indicative:

	aluše ini DUB-te tulie DIĜIR MEŠše mani UTU-ni pieni mei arḫi uruliani
analysis	alu + še ini + Ø DUB-te + Ø tur + u + li + e , DIĜIR MEŠ + še mani urb + u + l (i) + a + ni
translation	Whoever erases this inscription, the gods shall destroy him.

Text genres

Many typical text genres are missing, in particular no literary texts have survived. The best preserved and easy to understand are the inscriptions carved in stone, including the genres of annals , campaign reports, building inscriptions and lists of victims (especially in Meher-Kapısı ).

Texts handed down on clay tablets are largely unclear; these are mostly letters and decrees from the administration, as well as accounts and regulations. There are also dedicatory inscriptions on numerous objects, including a. Steles, vessels, helmets and arrowheads. Finally, numerous clay bulls and a number of unclear notes on clay and bronze have survived.

vocabulary

The Urartian vocabulary can be made accessible on the one hand by the few bilinguals (Kelišin, Topzawä and Movana bilingual) and on the other hand by comparing it with already known Hurrian words. Nevertheless, the meaning of less than 300 words could only be clarified with some degree of certainty (as of 2004). Despite the relationship to Hurrian, only about 20% of the verb stems could be made accessible in this way, which is due to the very unbalanced text corpus: many Urartian texts deal with campaigns and have no equivalent in Hurrian, conversely, Urartian hardly cares Topics such as religious rituals, which are numerous in Hurrian literature. So far, no Urartian word could be identified as a loan word from another language, the only controversial candidate is kubuši "helmet" from Akkadian kubšu "cap", but not used in a military context.

Didactics of the Urartian

In German-speaking countries, Urartian is taught at universities as part of ancient oriental studies . In comparison to the “big” languages ​​Akkadian, Sumerian and Hittite, Urartian is of little importance. Block courses or one-semester introductions are usually offered. Usually these courses are only offered after an introduction to Akkadian and Sumerian. As a result, the students are already familiar with cuneiform script and know linguistic phenomena such as agglutination and ergativity from Sumerian, which makes it easier for them to get started with Urartian.

The grammar of the Urartian language is - as far as it has been developed to this day - relatively simple and can be learned quickly together with the known vocabulary of a few hundred words. Usually, simpler Urartian inscriptions are translated first and then (at least in part) the known bilinguals, whereby knowledge of Akkadian is a prerequisite.

Text example: Founding inscription in Erebuni

This text is one of the many surviving building and foundation inscriptions, which the Urartians have often applied to buildings or rocks in multiple versions. It is the same text that is shown at the beginning of the article. In the following transliteration , the text is reproduced character by character in Roman transcription, the separation of the individual characters is marked by hyphens and spaces; Hyphens are intended to indicate that the associated characters form a word. So-called determinatives , which specify the following word more precisely, are in superscript for better readability, e.g. ^d for “God” or ^KUR for “country”. Special characters with symbolic value, which were indirectly adopted from Sumerian as logograms with the cuneiform script , are capitalized in Sumerian reading, their Urartian pronunciation is not known.

Transliteration

^d ḫal-di-e e-ú-ri-e i-ni E ₂

^m ar-gi-iš-ti-še ^m me-nu-a-ḫi-ni-še

ši-di-iš-tú-ni E ₂ .GAL ba-du-si

te-ru-bi ^URU ir-bu-ú-ni-ni ti-ni

^KUR bi-ai-na-ú-e uš-ma-a-še

^KUR lu-lu-i-na-ú na-pa-ḫi-ai-de

^d ḫal-di-ni-ni al-su-i-ši-ni

^m ar-gi-iš-ti-ni ^m me-nu-a-ḫi

LUGAL ₂ DAN.NU LUGAL ₂ ^KUR bi-ia-na-ú-e

a-lu-si ^URU tu-uš-pa-ae URU

translation

Argišti, son of Menua, built this temple and this mighty castle to the god Ḫaldi, the Lord.

I determined Irbuni as their name, the Biai countries (= Urartu) the rule and the Lului countries (= foreign countries) the submission.

Due to the size of the Ḫaldi, the Argišti, son of Menua, is the strong king, the king of the Biai countries, the shepherd of the city of Tušpa.

analysis

Transliteration	d ḫal-di-e e-ú-ri-e	i-ni E 2
analysis	Ḫaldi + e ewri + e	ini + Ø E 2 + Ø
grammar	"Ḫaldi" + date Sg. "Herr" + Date. Sg.	"This" + Abs. Sg. "Temple" + Abs. Sg.

m ar-gi-iš-ti-še	m me-nu-a-ḫi-ni-še
Argišti + še	Menua + ḫi + ni + še
"Argišti" + Erg. Sg.	"Menua" + affiliation + Art. Sg. + Suffix chain

ši-di-iš-tú-ni	E 2 .GAL	ba-you-si
šid-išt + u + Ø + ni	E 2 .GAL + Ø	bad-usi + Ø
"Build" + trans. + 3rd Sg. Erg. + 3rd section	"Castle" + Abs. Sg.	"Mighty" + Abs. Sg.

te-ru-bi	URU ir-bu-ú-ni-ni	ti-ni
ter + u + Ø + bi	Irbuni + ni + Ø	tin + i + Ø
"Determine" + trans. + 1st Sg. Erg. + 3rd section	"Irbuni" + Art. Sg. + Abs. Sg.	"Name" + poss. + Abs. Sg.

KUR bi-ai-na-ú-e	uš-ma-a-še
Biai + na + we	ušmaši + Ø
"Biai" + Art. Pl. + Date. Pl.	"Dominion" + Abs. Sg.

KUR lu-lu-i-na-ú	na-pa-ḫi-ai-de
Lului + na + we	napaḫ + ia + edi
"Lului" + Art. Pl. + Date. Pl.	"Subject" +? + Dir. Sg.

d ḫal-di-ni-ni al-su-i-ši-ni

Ḫaldi + i + ni + ni alsui-ši + ni

"Ḫaldi" + Gen.Sg. + Art.Sg. + Suffix chain "size" + instr.

m ar-gi-iš-ti-ni	m me-nu-a-ḫi
Argišti + Ø + ni	Menua + ḫi
Argišti + Abs. Sg. + 3rd Sg. Abs.	"Menua" + affiliation

LUGAL 2 DAN.NU	LUGAL 2 KUR bi-ia-na-ú-e
LUGAL 2 + Ø DAN.NU + Ø	LUGAL 2 + Ø Biai + na + we
"King" + Abs. Sg. "Strong" + Abs. Sg.	"König" + Abs. Sg. "Biai" + Art. Pl. + Gen. Pl.

a-lu-si URU tu-uš-pa-ae URU

alusi + Ø Tušpa + i URU (+ i)

"Shepherd" + Paragraph Sg. "Tušpa" + Gen. Sg. "City" + Gen. Sg.

literature

General

• Paul E. Zimansky: Ancient Ararat. A Handbook of Urartian Studies. Delmar, New York 1998. ISBN 0-88206-091-0 .
• Mirjo Salvini: History and Culture of the Urartians. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1995. ISBN 3-534-01870-2 .

Grammars

• Joost Hazenbos : Hurrian and Urartian. In: Languages ​​of the Ancient Orient. Edited by Michael P. Streck. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2005. ISBN 3-534-17996-X
• Gernot Wilhelm : Urartian. In: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of World's Ancient Languages. Edited by Roger D. Woodard. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004. ISBN 0-521-56256-2
• Erlend Gehlken: A sketch sheet for the Urartian verb. In: NABU Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires. Paris 2000, 29. ISSN  0989-5671 .
• Giorgi A. Melikisvili: The Urartean Language. Studia Pohl, Volume 7. Bibl. Inst. Press, Rome 1971.

Texts

• Nikolai Harutjunjan: Corpus of Urartian Cuneiform Inscriptions. Armenian Academy of Sciences, Yerevan 2001 (Russian).
• Friedrich Wilhelm König : Handbook of the Chaldic inscriptions. Archive for Orient Research. Supplement 8. Graz 1955, 1957. Biblio-Verlag, Osnabrück 1967. ISBN 3-7648-0023-2

Web links

Commons : Urartian language  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Dictionary Urartean – English ( Memento of August 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) is based on the list of words by Melikischvili (Melikischvili), 1971
• List of Luwian hieroglyphs (PDF, 244 kB)
• Г. А. Меликишвили, Урартские клинообразные надписи

Individual evidence

1. ↑ sil.org
2. ↑ Mirjo Salvini: History and Culture of the Urartians. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1995, ISBN 3-534-01870-2 .
3. ^ John David Hawkins , A. Morpurgo Davies, Günter Neumann: Hittite hieroglyphs and Luwian, new evidence for the connection. In: News of the Academy of Sciences. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1973. ISSN  0065-5287
4. ↑ ^{a b} Gernot Wilhelm: Urartian. In: R. Woodard (Ed.): The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages. Cambridge 2004. ISBN 0-521-56256-2 .

This article was added to the list of excellent articles on November 2, 2006 in this version .