The Kingdom of Van (Urartu)
A. H. Sayce
II. Early History to c. 720 B.C.
The very existence of the Vannic kingdom was unknown and unsuspected before the decipherment of the cuneiform texts. There are references to it in the Assyrian annals (see pp. 19 sqq., 26 sqq.), the most important of which is Sargon's history of his campaign against Musasir, first published and translated by Thureau-Dangin (see pp. 51 sqq., 56), but the greater part of our information is derived from the native monuments. These begin with inscriptions in the Assyrian language belonging to Sarduris son of Lutipris, and recording the construction of the citadel of Van with stones from the city of Alniun. He calls himself 'king of the world' and 'king of kings,' as well as 'king of Nairi,' the name under which the 'Riverland' of the north was known to the Assyrians, and we must accordingly see in him the founder of Van and the Vannic empire. In 831 B.C. he was defeated by the general of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III, who entitles him 'king of Ararat' (p. 24). A few years previously, in 859 and 855 B.C., the 'king of Ararat,' [The more familiar Ararat is used in this chapter for Urartu] who was Shalmaneser's antagonist, had been Arame, whose capital was Arzaskun on the northern shore of Lake Van (p. 20 sq.). The imperial titles assumed by Sarduris, therefore, as well as his selection of a new capital, which henceforth remained the centre of the kingdom, make it probable that he was the founder of a new dynasty, Arame having been one of the 'kings' of whom he claimed to be overlord.
The next king whose monuments are found at Van is Ispuinis, 'the establisher,' the son of Sarduris. There is no reason for thinking that this Sarduris was not identical with the son of [174] Lutipris; the continuity of the epigraphic and architectural monuments of Van, in fact, is against such a supposition. He introduced the use of the native language instead of Assyrian into the inscriptions; tentatively at first, however, since the record of his victories and prowess which he erected in the pass of Kelishin (between Rowanduz and Ushnei), was written in Assyrian as well as Vannic. But it was he who first established the empire and carried his arms as far east as Rowanduz and he therefore felt justified in placing his new dominion on a level with Assyria. Before his death he associated his son Menuas with himself on the throne, and the Kelishin inscription was drawn up in their joint names. In this the Assyrian title 'king of Nairi,' still takes the place of the native title 'king of Biainas.' Musasir, called Ardinis, 'the city of the Sun-god,' by its Vannic conquerors, had already been annexed to the Vannic kingdom; temples were erected in it by the two Vannic sovereigns and sacrifices offered on a sumptuous scale to the supreme god Khaldis.
Menuas imitated the action of his father by associating his own son Inuspuas in the sovereignty. He seems to have been one of the ablest, and was certainly one of the most successful, of the Vannic monarchs, and the number of his monuments and the extent to which they are scattered over the country imply a long reign. Inuspuas could have been his associate only at the beginning of his reign, since an inscription ascribes the rebuilding of a ruined portion of the citadel at Van to the joint labours of Ispuinis, Inuspuas and himself, and after the death of Ispuinis the name of Inuspuas is recorded in only one other text.
Parsuas had already been attacked by Ispuinis, and Menuas now proceeded to subdue the Manna, farther east, on the southern side of Lake Urmia. Here at Tashtepe, near Mianduab, called Mesta by Menuas, an inscription was set up celebrating his victories. Later on in the same year he led an expedition against the Hittites in the north-west, capturing some of their cities and penetrating into the land of Alzi at the sources of the Euphrates. Before his reign was ended, he had subjugated the 'country of Diaus,' the Dayaeni of the Assyrians, on the Murad Chai, not far from Melazgert (Menuasgert) to which he conducted a canal.
The Euphrates was made the western boundary of the empire and here at Palu Menuas engraved an inscription on the cliff recording his march through the country of the Hittites and his conquest of Milid (Malatiah, Melitene). The king of Malatiah [175] was made tributary and relations established with the peoples of Asia Minor which were to issue in later days in the league of the northern nations against the Assyrian menace. Northward the Vannic armies made their way to Erzerum, as is shown by an inscription of Menuas found in a neighbouring town, and the country of Etius north of the Araxes was overrun. From this time forward the district between the Araxes and Mount Ararat formed part of the Vannic kingdom.
Victories abroad were accompanied by building operations at home. Menuas was the founder of the garden-city of Van which extended to the Lake and was made possible by the construction of a large and important canal, now known as the Shamiram Su, which was cut through the rock and brought through Artemid. Other canals were cut in various parts of the country, at Bergri north-east of the Lake, at the city of Kera, the modern Arjish, at Melazgert and Ada, and elsewhere. Melazgert itself was re-built, Arjish founded, and we hear of the building or restoration of numerous temples, palaces and forts all over the kingdom.
The Assyrian king, Shamshi-Adad V (p. 26 sq.), states that in his second campaign his general penetrated as far as the Lake of Van, capturing on his way 200 cities belonging to Uspina. Uspina is evidently Ispuinis, and we may therefore place the accession of Menuas about 810 B.C. [So Lehmann-Haupt.]
Argistis I, the son of Menuas, was a worthy successor of his father. The record of his campaigns is inscribed on the rock of Van, where he added largely to the fortifications of the citadel, and we may see in it the prototype of the great inscription of Darius on the rock of Behistun. Year after year the Vannic armies went forth and returned with the prisoners and spoil that were employed in the construction of the public works. Fourteen campaigns are recorded, which resulted in establishing Vannic rule in Etius and Dayaeni beyond Melazgert and the Araxes. South of that river, the country had now become an integral part of the Vannic kingdom, and the foundation of the city of Armavir by Argistis was a standing witness of the fact. The inscriptions of the Vannic conqueror are found as far north as Alexandropol and the road between Kars and Erzerum.
At least one campaign was directed against the Hittites and Malatiah. But it was in the east that the activities of Argistis were greatest. Here in the lands of Parsuas and the Minni (Manna) on the shores of Lake Urmia he found himself threatened by the Assyrians, and here, accordingly, a large part of his military [176] operations took place. Most of the reign of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser IV (782-772) was occupied in wars with Ararat, and the annals of Argistis show where the field of battle must have lain. Assyria was then temporarily in a decadent condition, and the rise of the new power in the north was a serious menace to it. (See p. 29 sq.)
Argistis I was succeeded by his son Sarduris II. Under him the Vannic kingdom or rather empire reached its furthest limits. Near Isoglu (or Izoty) he engraved an inscription on a rock over- looking the Euphrates in which he describes his invasion of Malatiah and the capture of its cities. There was as yet no league or common policy between Van and.the Hittite peoples of Cappadocia. That was to come later, when the new Assyria had arisen and threatened the independence of both.
Meanwhile Sarduris could boast of his victories over Ashur-nirari V, the Assyrian king (754-745 B.C.). Assyria was seething with insurrection. Ashur, the ancient capital of the country, had broken away from Nineveh along with other cities, and civil war was still intermittently raging there. Sarduris could consolidate his power in the north without hindrance, could exact tribute from the tribes beyond the Araxes and become the predominant power in northern Syria. Then came the change. A revolution overthrew the old Assyrian dynasty, and a military dictator named Pul made himself master of the state, under the title of Tiglath-pileser III (745 B.C.). Attempts at revolt were mercilessly suppressed, the government of the country was centralized at Nineveh, and the army reorganized and made the most perfect fighting instrument in the world. A punitive expedition put a stop to Kurdish raids and the Babylonian frontier was secured. Mesopotamia was occupied by the Assyrian troops, and the Euphrates crossed with the fixed intention of annexing Syria and so gaining command of the high-road of commerce to the sea. This brought the Assyrian armies within what had now become the Vannic sphere of influence (see p. 34 sq.). In 743 B.C. the clash came. Tiglath-pileser laid siege to Arpad, the key to northern Syria. Sarduris hurried at once to the rescue and along with the Syrian forces attacked the enemy. A common peril had made the northern princes forget their own rivalries and unite against the common foe under the leadership of the premier power in the north. In the train of Sarduris was his erstwhile antagonist, the king of Malatiah, as well as Kustaspi, king of Kumukh (Commagene), whom a recently discovered text, the longest yet known, and computed by Belck to have consisted of more than 500 lines, tells us had been conquered by the Vannic king in an earlier part of his reign. But the allies were no match for the newly-trained and newly-armed forces of Tiglath-pileser; they were driven northward, and finally, near Kishtan and Khalpi in Commagene, were signally defeated and pursued as far as the bridge over the Euphrates, which marked the boundary of the Vannic kingdom. The Assyrian king claims to have captured the state carriage and chariot of Sarduris, his palanquin and royal necklace, 72,950 soldiers and an enormous spoil. From henceforward Syria was lost to Ararat.
A few years later, in 736 B.C., Tiglath-pileser determined to carry the war into Armenia itself. The Vannic forces were crushed, and city after city fell into the hands of the Assyrians and was ruthlessly destroyed. The Assyrian army eventually appeared at the gates of the capital. But Sarduris had shut himself up in his citadel which proved impregnable, and Tiglath-pileser was compelled to content himself with destroying the city at its foot, massacring its inhabitants and erecting a statue of himself in full face of his enemy's fortress. Then he ravaged the country over a space of 450 miles, and returned to Nineveh, leaving ruins and desolation behind him, while Van was rendered powerless, at all events for a time.
Sarduris must have died shortly afterwards and was followed by his 'son' Uedipris, who took the name of Rusas, written Ursa in the Assyrian texts. Such, at least, is the natural inference from the native inscriptions. But the long inscription of Sargon in which he describes the capture and sack of Musasir creates a difficulty. Here, the Assyrian monarch seems to emphasise the fact that Sarduris and Rusas belonged to different families. On his way to Musasir two of the towns he destroyed, so Sargon tells us, were 'Arbu the city of the house of his (i.e. Rusas') father and Riar the city of Sarduris' (line 277). After the capture of Musasir, moreover, three royal statues are described in the enumeration of the booty, one of them, it is stated, being a statue of 'Sarduris son of Ispuinis,' which was inscribed with a prayer for the continuance of his sovereignty, while another represented Rusas with his two horses and driver and 'the vainglorious' inscription: 'With my two horses and a driver my hands have obtained the sovereignty of Ararat.' The inscription, however, resembles those which Greek travellers discovered on the monuments of foreign princes, the image of Sardanapalus at Tarsus, for example, or that of the pseudo-Sesostris near Smyrna, and is [178] totally unlike anything we find in the Vannic texts themselves. Nor would a Vannic king have spoken of the 'sovereignty of Ararat': that was purely Assyrian. No historical inference, therefore, can be derived from the Assyrian scribe's pretended translation of the epigraph, much less the supposition that Rusas had conquered Biainas by force of arms. How little acquainted with Vannic history the scribe must have been is shown by his statement that Sarduris was the son of Ispuinis.
Nor can the assertion that Rusas and Sarduris came from different cities be pressed too far, since Sargon adds that there were seven other towns 'surrounding them inhabited by his brothers of the seed royal.' It is evident that each brother had a separate city assigned to him, but that along with Rusas and Sarduris they all alike belonged to 'the seed royal.' In other words, Sarduris had eight sons, the eldest of whom may have been Uedipris who took the name of Rusas. This assumption of a new name on mounting the throne appears to have been a fashion of the time; Tiglath-pileser was originally Pul, his successor Shalmaneser V was Ululai, and the present writer argued many years ago that Sargon had borne the name of Yarib (Hosea v, 13), while inscriptions tell us that Esarhaddon had the further name of Ashur-etil-ilani-mukin-apli. Where there was a doubt about the legitimacy of the title the adoption of the name of an earlier king, famous in history, was an attractive device, and it is possible that Uedipris was not the immediate heir of his father in the line of succession. Indeed he may have been a son by adoption or by an inferior wife.
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