Dear reader, it has been a while since I’ve made a post on this blog. The long delay was partially caused by the latest situation in Artsakh, after which, like many of us, I’ve lost some emotional energy for writing, and partially because I was, as much as I possibly could, researching the kingdom...
Toponyms Armenia and Urartu

Armenia and Urartu are synonymous. In the trilingual Behistun inscription of Darius the Great (c.520 BC), the Babylonian toponym βUrashtuβ appears in Old Persian as βArmina,β and in Elamite as βHarminuia,βcorresponding to modern βArmenia.β [1] [2] In Hebrew (as recorded in the Bible) this land was called Ararat. The toponym βUrartuβ emerged as a...