ARMENIAN - Erevangala500

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Cuneiform writing from the eighth century В. C. on the castle
o f Van, which, as the capital o f the kingdom of Urartu, bore the
name Tushpa (after a deity common to both Hurrians and Urartians:
Tashpuea). The founder o f the kingdom o f Urartu was
King Sardur I (840-830 В. C). He also built the castle o f Van
(Tushpa). The name "Ararat", which is mentioned by the
Hebrews, is "Ura-rat" in the Qumran texts, "Urartu" in
Assyrian. The Urartians called themselves "Biainili". The name
"Van" may well be derived from this word. (View from the castle-rock
o f Van, looking out on the old Ottoman part of the city,
which was destroyed by the Armenians in 1915.)
A royal inscription on the castle of Van in eastern Anatolia. The
Urartian script has recently been deciphered. It has now been
firmly established that the Urartian language is o f Asian origin.
It belongs, like Turkish, to the agglutinative languages.
Linguists believe that the Hurrians came to Anatolia from the
steppes and mountains o f central Asia. The Urartians came
from the same area, splitting with the Hurrians around the middle
o f the third millennium В. C. Today, we know for certain
that there is no connection between Urartian or Hurrian and the
Indo-European Armenian language (aside from certain Urartian
elements that were taken over by the speakers o f Armenian
after their immigration). Armenian belongs to the Satem group
of Indo-European languages, whereas Urartian has the peculiar
feature o f forming new words by simply adding suffixes to a
given root. It shares this feature with the Ural-Altaic languages.
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