Armenia and Urartu are synonymous. In the trilingual Behistun inscription of Darius the Great (c.520 BC), the Babylonian toponym “Urashtu” appears in Old Persian as “Armina,” and in Elamite as “Harminuia,”corresponding to modern “Armenia.” [1] [2] In Hebrew (as recorded in the Bible) this land was called Ararat. The toponym “Urartu” emerged as a regional description rather than ethnic. Historian Boris Piotrovsky argued that “the Assyrian name of Uruatri [which gave birth to the Urartu toponym] had no ethnic significance but was most probably a descriptive term (perhaps meaning “the mountainous country”).”[3] In the Babylonian chancelleries the name of Urartu (under its Babylonian form, Urashtu) continued to be used, while simultaneously in old Persian it was called Armenia. [4] As Assyrian language gradually disappeared from historic records (after decline of Assyria and rise of Media) so did the toponym Urartu ceased to be used. [5] Instead only the name Armenia survived henceforward in the annals of history.

As Herodotus tells us, a decisive part was played by the arrival of a large Scythian army led by Madyes, son of Protothyes (the Partatua of the Assyrian sources). The last Assyrian king, Ashur-uballit, was compelled to withdraw to Harran, where he managed to hold out until 610 B.C.; then in the year 605, after the fall of Carchemish, the Assyrian kingdom ceased to exist. [6] And thus “Urartu” has not been recorded as such in Assyrian sources anymore. The name of Urartu is mentioned for the last time in a document of the time of Darius II (c. 415 B.C.).[6] By then the Armenian Orontid dynasty has already been well established since c.a. 553 BC. Thus Urartu in these records again, undeniably, refers to Armenia. The disappearance of “Urartu” from records merely signifies the disappearance of its exonym, not the country, as various nations continued to call Armenia with different names only dropping certain toponyms when the usage of these languages shifted or disappeared. Thus during Persian dominance Urartu lived on as a satrapy, and later as an independent kingdom simply known as Armenia. [7]
There can be no doubt about the way Urartu, Urashtu, Ararat, Armenia and Harminuia, have been used in the antiquity; simply as synonyms. Hence, there are no records of any invading Armenians into Urartu, there are no records of any power struggles or outside invasion of (the sometimes) supposed ‘Armen’ tribes, simply because these events never occurred. No such records from Assyrian, Babylonian or even Urartian sources. Such a powerful geopolitical shift would have certainly been noticed and recorded. Instead, Armenia and Urartu have been used as synonyms side by side as the aforementioned records clearly demonstrate that toponyms Urartu and Armenia are synonyms for the same country.

Sources:
1) Jona Lendering, The Behistun inscription
http://www.livius.org/be-bm/behistun/behistun-t15.html#2.29-37
2) Potts D. T. (2012), A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East
3) The Ancient Civilization of Urartu, translated from Russian by James Hogarth (N.Y., 1969)
http://rbedrosian.com/Ref/Piot/uh2.htm
4) John Boardman, I. E. S. Edwards, N. G. L. Hammond , E. Sollberger (1982),The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. 3, Part 1: The Prehistory of the Balkans, and the Middle East
5) Gevork Nazarian (http://www.armenianhighland.com/)
6) The Ancient Civilization of Urartu, translated from Russian by James Hogarth (N.Y., 1969)
http://rbedrosian.com/Ref/Piot/uh5.htm
7) http://www.livius.org/arl-arz/armenia/urartu.html
I LOVE the work you’re doing Aram, T H A N K Y O U. There is so much out there to be discovered.
Thank you for your support! And more is underway, there is a lot to be unveiled.
Thanks for posting the above mentioned information. It was very informative.
Barev Aram,
I have a question, as Armenians, are we also the descendants of Hurrians, Phrygians, Hittites ? Or are the Urartians our sole ancestors ? What do you think about the claims made on this site (http://www.palaeolexicon.com/default.aspx?static=14&Language_ID=2) ?
I’d like to thank you again for the amazing work you’re doing,
Pretty much this. Ive been following your blog for some time also Aram jan, it’s about time I stuck my head in here to ask you also lol
So who were the original Armenians, or what tribes are Armenians made up of and which is the majority of Armenian DNA? The more you can elaborate, the better.
Hi Jack, You have an interesting amount of questions 🙂 But I’ll try to answer them in detail The ancestors of Armenians or the original Armenians as you say, were a group of people inhabiting the Armenian highland. There is an abundance of Neolithic remains that provide us clues of their lifestyle and habitation. As humans started to abandon nomadic life of hunting and gathering our ancestors began to settle down and develop agriculture and animal domestication. This is called the “neolithic revolution” which took place in about 10.000 BC. It is from these times that we can trace the… Read more »
You just wrote a whole article in the comments! Haha! Great explanation by the way!
lol yes it does seems like it 🙂
Thanks for the reply Aram jan. I was familiar with most of the tribes but some sounded new. After reading about the recent excavation near Van, i feel like a little boy in a candy shop just waiting for the results to return from Coppenhagen. With that said, if it is revealed, what family branch do you think Armenian will fit with? Ive heard a few theories on Greek and Armenian being clustered together and even some calling us “Persians.”
Barev Argishti, Yes certainly Hurrians are also one of our ancestors. In fact it is known that the kingdom of Urartu grew out of the fusion of related Hurrian tribes living in the Armenian highlands, particularly in the region round Lake Van, where conditions were especially favorable for the development of the two associated activities of stock-rearing and agriculture. As for Hittites well that is a bit difficult, since they are certainly related, but they might have split from the larger Armenian group forming a group of their own becoming separate from Urartu and Hurrians. I believe genetic overlap is… Read more »
Thank you for your detailed reply,
I definitely agree with you when you say Armenians are native to the Armenian Highland (or the so-called “Eastern Anatolia”). I’m looking forward to your future articles about our ancestry. It seems like there’s not enough books/academical work available in English about the ancient Anatolian civilizations. Hopefully the excavations at Areni and Tigranakert of Artsakh will cause a new interest.
Thanks again for your work,
You’re welcome, yes indeed there is very little indepth (English) literature concerning Armenian history. Either scholars repeat outdated work or make grave generalizations without proper knowledge or study of the complexity of the region. One such example is the supposed “fall of Urartu” which has no substance other than serving a kind of narrative, filling in gaps which they cannot explain. I have also high hopes for the resent excavations at Karmir Blur where they discovered over 5000 artifacts and even human remains from the time. Very exciting finds. Armenian archaeologists are also pleading for establishment of own laboratories for… Read more »
Wow! I hadn’t seen the PoA Library page, very interesting, I found some other books on Amazon that might be interesting, but since I have not read them I can’t really say anything objective about them. 1. The peoples of the Hills by Charles Burney and D. Marshall Lang. 2. The peoples of Ararat by A. Asher and T. Minasian Asher. 3. A history of Armenia by V. Kurkjian. I try to stay away from older books written by Western/Russian scholars because as you said they have a habit of generalizing/simplifying our history. It’s very disrespectful to me when they… Read more »
Thank you, I will certainly check them out. Btw. I think Hittites once did belong to the Armenian ethnic group, but split from us at some point. According to Diakonoff, the ethnonym Hay derives from Proto-Armenian *hatiyos, *hatyos meaning Ḫāti, “the land of Hittites”. This ethnonym survived until today. Whether this theory is correct I cannot say. But I think there is a certain connection between Hittites and Armenians and genetic overlap is certain, but to what degree this connection can be made is difficult to answer. I believe at some point Hittites split from the main Armenian group while… Read more »
Hello again,
I also read that the majority of the inhabitants of the Hittite empire were Hurrians so like you said genetic overlap is certain. Again, great explanation!
ՓՅՈՒՌԻՆԳԵՐԵՆԻ ԳՐՎԱԾ ԲՈԼՈՐ ԲԱՌԵՐՆ ԷԼ ՀԱՅԿԱԿԱՆ ԱՐՄԱՏՈՎ ԲԱՌԵՐ ԵՆ
[…] For an explanation of different toponyms of the Kingdom of Van (Urartu/Ararat) read Toponyms Armenia and Urartu. […]
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[…] Agriculture allowed for the support of an increased population, leading to larger societies and eventually the development of cities. It also created the need for greater organization of political power (and the creation of social stratification), as decisions had to be made regarding labor and harvest allocation and access rights to water and land. Agriculture bred immobility, as populations settled down for long periods of time, which led to the accumulation of material goods and creation of a common culture, that was able to spread with advances of technology. One of such famous kingdoms of the Armenian Highlands was… Read more »
[…] (ruled 858–844 BC) was the first known king of the Armenian Kingdom of Van commonly known by its Akkadian exonym as Urartu. Living at the time of King Shalmaneser III of Assyria (ruled 859–824 BC), Arame united […]
Hello, thanks for the great work, I have a question though, can you provide sources about trilingual version of the inscription, the sources you like only show the Persian version.
I can’t seem to find the source of the Babylonian version which is states “Urashtu” nor the Elamite “Harminuia,”, thank you.
It’s described in the following book: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/A+Companion+to+the+Archaeology+of+the+Ancient+Near+East-p-9781405189880
Unfortunately it’s quite expensive to purchase and I don’t have access to the library anymore to give you a proper scan of the page. I will however search for more details as soon as i have time and hopefully come back to your question soon.
The book seems interesting, something I’d like to read every now and then, it’s a bit pricey though.
While it isn’t very simple and easy to achieve, would be a sane thing for Armenia to get scanned images of the original inscriptions using modern day technology such as structured-light technology and have copies in Armenia’s museums, assuming they haven’t done already and assuming the original inscriptions are still standing and not destroyed.
Thank you so much for sharing!
Absolutely. It is a crucial piece of information and needs to be displayed in its original form. When I first wrote this article it was hard enough finding the Behistun translation. With all the wars in the middle east and destruction of cultural heritage the more people digitize the better. I am absolutely a proponent of disclosure. This is cultural heritage and should not be monetized by a few commercial museums.