An ancient human footprint from the Iron Age kingdom of Van (also known as Urartu / Ararat) was recently discovered at a castle in the historic Armenian city of Van (today part of Turkey). The footprint, measuring some 26 centimeters long and fitting a modern shoe size of 36, was found at Van Castle...
Ruins of a 3000 year old Armenian castle found in Lake Van – Turkey
A team of Turkish archaeologists has discovered the remains of what is believed to be a 3,000-year-old castle from the Armenian kingdom of Urartu (Ararat) submerged underwater in Lake Van. The underwater excavations were led by Van Yüzüncü Yıl University and the governorship of Turkey’s eastern Bitlis Province. The castle is said to belong to the...
Iron age Armenian antiques found by Hungarian police in a truck
Hungarian police released footage of ancient artifacts smuggled last year by a Turkish truck driver under way to Lithuania. The trove included ancient Sumerian, Persian, Assyrian and most of all Armenian antiquities of the Urartian era (Kingdom of Van). The artifacts dated to as early as 900 BC., included a helmet, small bells and horse tack, were...
The Last King of Babylon – The Armenian Rebel Arakha
The last independent king of Babylon was an Armenian by the name of Arakha also known as Nebuchadnezzar IV. After the Achaemenid conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, several attempts were made by the Babylonians to rebel against the Persian conquerors. The first attempt was led by Nidintu-Bêl and was violently suppressed by Darius the...
Discovering the kingdom of Van
Did you know that the discovery of the ancient kingdom of Urartu/Ararat was made due to records from a medieval Armenian history book? Well, the existence of the Kingdom of Ararat, or Urartu, was unknown to science until the year 1823 when a French scholar, J. Saint-Martin, chanced upon a passage in the ‘History of...
Erebuni 782 BCE
After the unification of the Nairi states by Arame (858 BC–844 BC), historic Armenia known to Assyrians as Urartu became one of the mighty states of the Ancient East. Among the earliest and biggest towns of historic Armenia there was Erebuni situated on Arin-berd hill (the south-eastern outskirt of what is now Yerevan), a major administrative and...
Toponyms Armenia and Urartu
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...
Armenia the heir of Urartu
Art of Urartu Urartu was an Iron Age Armenian kingdom famed for one of the finest examples of ancient art. Urartu at its zenith had a profound cultural influence on its neighbors reaching as far as Asia and Europe. Supported by discoveries of Urartian artifacts inside Etruscan burials, it has been hypothesized that much of...
The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III and his conquest of an Armenian city of Arzashkun
The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III is a black limestone Neo-Assyrian bas-relief sculpture from Nimrud, commemorating the deeds of King Shalmaneser III (reigned 858-824 BC). The archaeologist Henry Layard discovered this black limestone obelisk in 1846 during his excavations of the site of Kalhu, the ancient Assyrian capital. It was erected as a public monument in...
Massive Urartian Cemetery Found Under Yerevan
BY ALISA GEVORGYAN Source: Armenian Public Radio YEREVAN—A massive cemetery found as a result of three years of archaeological excavations in the ancient site of Karmir Blur (Red Hill) in Yerevan is of huge scientific significance, says Hakob Simonyan, head of the expedition and Director of the Historical Cultural Heritage research center of the Ministry...
