Urartu: The Forgotten Kingdom (2020) - full transcript

It is said in the Bible, Noah's Ark
came to rest on the mountains of Ararat…

While this divine salvation, Noah and his descendants
turned a new page in the history of mankind.

For thousands of years this place
of refuge, called the land of Ararat

by the ancient Hebrew people,
remained closed to exploration.

Centuries later, people realized that there
was indeed a powerful country

with a rich culture in the north of Mesopotamia,
in the times of ancient Egypt and Babylon

– a country called Urartu by the Assyrians.

Urartu was ruled by great kings, who rose
and fell while the country lived on.

Numerous cuneiform writings tell us about
the construction of fortresses and temples,

cultivation of vineyards and gardens, and
about highly efficient irrigation canals

that have no analogues in world history.



The Assyrian king Sargon II was stunned by
the objects of art, discovered in Urartu.

The Urartians waged wars
with the powerful Assyrian empire,

conquering new lands and
expanding their territory.

In the first millennium BC, Urartu was among
the greatest empires of the ancient world.

URARTU The Forgotten Kingdom

The Kingdom of Urartu was consigned
to oblivion for over 2,500 years.

The land it used to occupy is
now surrounded by mystery...

According to the Old Testament, Paradise on
Earth, the scene of Adam and Eve's origin

sits somewhere in the Armenian Highland.

The Bible also says that the Armenian Highland
was the place that granted salvation to Noah

and his family during the Flood.

Since ancient times, this land was mostly
populated by the so-called proto-Armenian tribes,

who founded an array of states.

The largest of which - Mitanni -
was formed in the 17th century BC



It had existed for about four centuries,
before suffering a fatal blow from Assyria.

The fall of Mitanni led to a political
split in the entire Armenian Highland.

By that time, Assyria had already conquered
the whole of Mesopotamia,

and turned its eyes to the north, towards the land
that was cradling the heart of its future arch-rival,

a kingdom set to be remembered
in history as Urartu.

The first known mention of Urartu comes from the
Assyrian cuneiform writings of the 13th century BC.

They indicate that a large tribal union
in the Armenian Highland

was already in a fierce military
confrontation with Assyria.

The Assyrians were stronger
by far, and winning.

Their simple goals were those of plunder: the
seizure of valuables, and cattle raiding.

In the 19th century, when in assyriology,
people translated the inscription

and discovered the name
Urartu for the first time,

it was very exciting, because they realized that
it was the same name as “Ararat” in the Bible.

So it's a very important moment.

The generally accepted scientific opinion is that the
words Urartu and Ararat refer to the same country.

In the Bible, Ararat is Urartu.

When it says “the mountains of Ararat”,
it means exactly the Kingdom of Urartu.

In fact, you could have encountered the Kingdom
of Urartu frequently while reading the Holy book,

and not even realize it.

As with all historical names,
“Ararat” has a sacred meaning.

In the Jewish view of the world,

“Ararat” means “the repeal of the curse”
in regard to Noah's Flood.

“Urartu” was the name the Assyrians and the
Babylonians used to identify their neighbour.

The kings of Urartu left chronicles
that don't contain the name “Urartu”.

They called their country
“Biainili”, or “Van”,

which is why the academician Piotrovsky
later called Urartu the Kingdom of Van.

More concrete studies of Urartu would not
begin before the early 19th century.

They were motivated by the translation
of the book by Movses Khorenatsi,

an Armenian historian from the 5th century.

In his “History of Armenia”, Khorenatsi mentions
that the famous Assyrian queen Semiramis

took part in the construction
of a city on the shores of Lake Van.

It was the Ottoman Empire,
in the region of the mysterious Lake Van

where the French Royal Asiatic Society sent
young scholar Friedrich Schulz in 1827.

Schulz made the first description of the so-called “Wall
of Van”, a long-time object of scientific interest.

He found out that it was the main element
of the royal residence of Urartu –

the city of Tushpa, modern Van.

The research team discovered vast rooms in the
rock, presumed to be the royal burial spots.

Friedrich Schulz sketched the cuneiform inscriptions
he found on the walls of the fortress city,

which he sent back to the
Royal Asiatic Society.

The cuneiform writings were not
yet deciphered in that time,

so Schulz had no idea what they said
and which kingdom they described.

Schulz was tasked with
studying the city of Van.

He spent a couple of years there and busied
himself with discovering various artifacts

and trying to figure out
which culture produced them.

Unfortunately, he was killed
by Kurdish bandits in 1829.

The studies were halted
after the murder of Schulz.

However, the road to studying
Urartu was finally open

after British orientalist Archibald Sayce
deciphered the cuneiform inscriptions in 1882.

What they revealed was essentially
an absolute sensation for science,

as the Kingdom of Urartu was not known to
exist in Armenian Highland before that.

The main sources of our knowledge of Urartu are
the cuneiform chronicles from Urartu itself,

and neighbouring Assyria.

For the most part, these are royal chronicles
depicting campaigns and conquests.

The first known king of Urartu is Arame, who
ruled for about 15 years starting from 859 BC.

It was in King Arame's time that Urartu
became a state: he united scattered tribes,

founded the capital city, Arzashkun, and formed
an army to resist the permanent Assyrian threat.

Shalmaneser III ascended the
throne in Assyria at that time.

He conducted a campaign against Arame
in the very first year of his rule,

heading to the lands
adjacent to Lake Urmia.

The merciless conqueror
thus described those events:

“I approached the fortified city of Arame of
Urartu, laid a siege to it and seized it,

killed many warriors, built a tower
from their heads in front of the city,

and burned 14 surrounding settlements.”

In the third year of his rule,
Shalmaneser III invades Urartu again,

and this time the capital itself,
Arzashkun, becomes the key battleground.

"While I was in Arzashkun, Arame of Urartu
placed his hopes on the might of his army,"

indeed raised his entire army,
and marched to meet me.

I defeated him, killed 3,000 of his warriors
and filled a vast steppe with their blood.

I seized and destroyed, and burned Arzashkun,
the royal city of Arame of Urartu...

The dynasty of Arame was no longer dominant
in the territory of historical Armenia

after the campaigns of Shalmaneser III.

A new dynasty emerged, and a new core of
statehood came with it - Van, or Biainili.

Sarduri I became king
in approximately 843 BC.

He founded the new capital of Urartu,
the walled town of Tushpa.

The main task of this ruler
was to confront Assyria.

He turned the whole country into a unified
front and started preparing for a new war.

The cuneiform writings about Sarduri I indicate that
he succeeded in cutting short the Assyrian campaign

in the west of the Armenian Highlands.

In other words, king Sarduri
essentially stopped the Assyrian army

at the borders of the Armenian Highland,

stripping it from the ability to strike a
powerful, lethal blow to the Kingdom of Van.

So, we can say that the rule of Sarduri I
was the beginning of an era of prosperity

for the Kingdom of Urartu.

Tushpa eventually became the economic
and political centre of the country.

You can still see the fortification wall in
the western bottom part of the Van Fortress.

It is built from large stones,
some 6 meters long and 1 meter high.

The wall bears inscriptions in Assyrian, which
tell about the construction of the fortress.

In fact, they are the first written documents
we have from the Kingdom of Urartu.

Having reached certain military, political
and economic progress,

Sarduri I started calling himself “the king
of kings” and “the king of the universe”,

as did the Assyrian leaders.

During the rule of Sarduri I,
a new royal dynasty originated in Urartu.

The kings of Urartu were living and working
in very troubled times,

and you can see it from the city plans.

These towns were essentially fortresses.

The fortresses of Urartu could not be taken
without siege weapons.

The Assyrian army had no way to carry them around
during the harsh winters of the Armenian Highland,

so Assyria was forced to reserve
military campaigns solely for summertime.

Urartu was considered Assyria's main rival.

That antagonistic relationship is similar to
what the Soviet Union and the United States had

during the Cold War.

All political processes in the Middle East
were related to and went through the rivalry

between Urartu and Assyria.

By the end of the 9th century BC, the Assyrian
influence on the region faded for a long time.

The era of a different power was dawning –
the era of Urartu.

The new kingdom squared its shoulders properly
by around 810 BC, during the rule of king Menua.

Menua was the grandson of Sarduri I.

He ruled alongside his father Ishpuini
since the young age,

and learned a lot from successful military
campaigns in which he was involved.

Menua's father, king Ishpuini implemented
a religious reform in Urartu,

recognizing Haldi as the supreme god.

In the eyes of the Urartians, Haldi,
who is also worshipped in Assyria,

could take on Assur himself –
the supreme god of the Assyrians.

As the God of Sun,
Haldi was also the god of everything.

People prayed to Haldi for luck,
happiness, success.

Pilgrimage is also associated with Haldi,

so there is no coincidence
that most temples were dedicated to him.

Once the faith in Haldi consolidated
in the minds of the Urartians,

Menua organized several successful
campaigns to the northern borders,

and expanded the territory of the kingdom.

Assyria was gathering significant forces
at this time.

The Assyrians conquered Manna, and that
country became the apple of discord,

and a permanent battleground between
Assyria and Urartu for many years.

Menua was able to take
a stand against Assyria.

He took back Manna and other lost lands,
and even reached the Assyrian borders.

Striving to raise the combat readiness
and power of his army,

Menua covered Urartu with fortresses.

The fortresses were built to thwart
enemy attacks in the central regions

as well as in the lands from Malatia
to the southern shores of Lake Urmia.

Town building was a priority in the period of prosperity,
because it directly concerned national security.

On the slopes of Mount Ararat, in the South
Caucasus, rose Menuakhinili - the city of Menua.

One of the wonder structures of that period
is the 70 kilometres long channel

that supplied water to the
capital and adjacent villages.

Surprisingly, it still stands,
and serves its original purpose.

It is a huge construction.

Some walls above the gorges
reached 15 meters in height,

so that the aqueduct could
deliver water to Van.

From the technical viewpoint, that construction
had no analogue in the ancient world.

It must be noted that the engineers
of Biainili had one major task:

secure one meter of pipeline
pitch per kilometre.

They had to cut through rocks, round the
gorges, and go above them in all cases.

Construction of the channel drastically increased
the agricultural potential of central Urartu.

Later on, Menua used similar channels to actively
develop farming in order to feed his huge army.

Apart from the cuneiform writings
from the period of Menua's rule,

the only other documents to mention this channel are
the works of the Armenian historian Movses Khorenatsi.

He ascribes construction of the channel
to the famous queen Semiramis,

who ruled in Assyria in the same period
as Menua in Urartu.

Undoubtedly, she surpassed him by fame.

Literally everyone knows about her famous
Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

As time went by, people started calling Menua's
channel “the channel from the times of Semiramis”,

and later simply “the
channel of Semiramis”.

Menua was reformer-king.

Menua strengthened both the army and
economy over the course of his rule.

As years went by, he expanded his kingdom,
kept the score with rival Assyria balanced

in his favour and consolidated the power
of Urartu in Western Asia.

Menua made Urartu a powerful kingdom,
an empire even.

Menua ascended to the throne
when his country was relatively weak,

and he left it a strong kingdom with an army
capable of fighting any enemy on equal terms.

After Menua died in 786 BC,
he was succeeded by his son Argishti I,

who would proceed to become the greatest
commander in the history of Urartu.

The kingdom found itself in a dangerous situation
into the very first weeks of his rule:

Assyria moved its armies against Urartu.

Simultaneously with these worrying news from the south,
Argishti I was troubled by reports from the north.

Northern tribes and states formed a rather
strong coalition over a short period of time,

and started raiding Urartian settlements.

A major war was underway.

Argishti was well-aware that Urartu could
not fight on two fronts for very long.

Most likely, that is why the king decided
to crush his enemies in the north first,

as the northern coalition
was weaker than Assyria.

His troops covered the northern lands
like a swarm.

That campaign destroyed the
northern coalition for good.

The strategic task was fulfilled, and peace
reigned at the northern borders of Urartu.

Military actions carried on in the south.

Argishti I threw Assyrians
away from the borders,

invaded the country as far as the mountains
of Assyria, and defeated the rival army.

After these events the Assyrians described Argishti,
the king of Urartu, as “frightening as a heavy storm”.

It was during the rule of Argishti I that the
Urartian army switched from bronze to iron weapons.

Most likely, it was the first army
in the world to make that transition.

Later, Assyria reformed its army
by the Urartian example.

Argishti continued his father's policies,
actively building new settlements and fortresses.

He constructed the walled town of Erebuni
in 782 BC as a stronghold in Ararat Valley.

The fortress standing on a high mountain
was of strategic significance:

it secured the valley within
view for many kilometres.

The guards would notice any movement of
groups of people or armed units at once.

On October 25, 1950 Armenian scientist
Konstantin Hovhannisyan

was in the middle of a research on Urartu.

He discovered two basalt stones covered
with cuneiform writings, which read:

“By the greatness of the God Haldi,
Argishti, son of Menua,

built this mighty stronghold, and proclaimed
it Erebuni, for the glory of Biainili,

and to instill fear among
the king's enemies”.

Over time, Erebuni would grow into the
modern capital of Armenia, Yerevan,

and the discovery of Konstantin Hovhannisyan finally
revealed the date of its foundation – 782 BC.

Yerevan turned out to be 29 years older
than the Eternal City, Rome.

In 2018, Yerevan celebrated
its 2,800th anniversary.

For instance, in Armenia, most important is
Argishti I, who extended the Kingdom of Urartu

in Ararat plain, so it's very important.

Argishti I was firmly
settled in Ararat Valley.

The channels he built secured irrigation
for fertile lands,

and his efforts in agriculture
were crowned by rich harvests.

Argishti could sit back for a while
and enjoy the fruit of his labour.

The king no longer had to invest so much
of his energy and work to develop farming.

Argishti was a business person.

The economy of Urartu
thrived during his rule.

He had to feed a huge army,
and he dealt with it very well.

However, the period of peaceful creation,
and labour did not last long:

Assyria breached the borders of Urartu once
again, and launched another military campaign.

The power of Urartu was a
mortal threat to Assyria,

so its rulers had to invade the Kingdom
of Van, and crush it at any cost.

At the time when Urartu was at its height,

Argishti I threw his forces
to meet the enemy in a counterattack.

He expanded the borders of the kingdom
to the upstream of Euphrates,

outflanked the Assyrian army, and cut
its connection with crucial resources.

King Argishti was certain he would prevail
in the war against Assyria.

He began implementing an ambitious plan
he had on his mind.

Meeting next to no resistance on his way,

Argishti marched on the lands under the
Assyrian rule, and conquered several cities.

He went as far as the land of Babilu, which
certain experts consider to be Babylon.

We can see that Urartu closed in on Assyria
in Argishti's term.

The Urartian military command was able
to organize a combined attack on Assyria

from the north, and from the southeast.

Argishti put Assyria on the brink
of military catastrophe.

The Assyrians had to assess their situation
with all seriousness.

They gathered what forces they had left,

and counterattacked the Urartian army
to drive it out of their territory.

Assyria won back the lands Argishti had
seized, and avoided the impending disaster.

It appears that the two neighbours soon
signed an agreement defining their borders.

Argishti I retained the rest of the areas
conquered by him and his father.

The outcome was that Argishti made Urartu
the most powerful state of Western Asia.

His son Sarduri II inherited a strong, prosperous
kingdom with a large and formidable army.

The next Assyrian king
was Tiglath Pileser III.

He reorganized and
reinforced the Assyrian army,

returned the lands his predecessor
had lost to Argishti and invaded Urartu.

Tiglath Pileser III of Assyria marched
on the Kingdom of Van,

and laid siege to its capital Tushpa, although
he failed to seize the unassailable citadel.

The Assyrian army and
king had to return home,

but their campaign created a complicated
political situation in Urartu.

In these trying times, Rusa I ascended
to the throne in 735 BC.

Several regions of Urartu tried at once to use
the transition of power to gain independence.

Rusa I acted decisively.

He repressed the revolts in key regions of
Urartu, preserved the integrity of the state,

restored order,
and set about to strengthen the borders.

He would tell about these events:

“It is with my two horses and charioteer,

with my own two hands
that I conquered the Kingdom of Urartu.”

In addition to this arduous task,

Rusa I had to build anew the relations with
the religious centre of Urartu, Musasir.

The religious centre of Urartu was located
beyond the boundaries of the kingdom,

in the area bordering Assyria.

It was a frontier between several countries who
were using the rivalry of Assyria and Urartu

to maintain their independence.

Musasir was different, as it was home to the
main temple of the supreme deity of Urartu.

Many Urartians undertook pilgrimage,

and covered a long, dangerous road
to the hardly accessible mountainous region

in order to reach the main temple
of the god Haldi in Musasir.

Farmers and soldiers alike linked their
achievements to the power of their supreme god.

It should be noted that people were
more religious in ancient times.

The main difference between now and then is
that religion was not separate from the state,

art or science.

It was all one complete whole.

Rusa I restored the relations with Musasir
and, having secured the support of Haldi,

resumed the development of Urartu,
consolidating its military and economic power.

Everything changed when Assyria welcomed
a new king in 722 BC

Resolute and hawkish, Sargon II was
the younger son of Tiglath Pileser III.

He dethroned his elder
brother Shalmaneser V.

And was quick to demonstrate an aggressive
attitude towards Assyria's northern neighbour.

Sargon II was an experienced military leader
with typical views of an Assyrian king.

Upon seizing power, he
defined a clear goal:

prevent the strengthening of Urartu,
and defeat the arch-rival of his country.

Sargon II waged wars in the west in the first
years of his rule, against Syria and Palestine.

Afterwards, he turned towards the north.

Sargon always prepared for
campaigns meticulously.

It was especially true when it came
to his worst enemy, Urartu.

His spies provided intelligence reports
that have been preserved until nowadays.

Sargon II was only waiting
for a good moment to attack.

Assyrian scouts and spies of all sorts gathered
everything Sargon needed to know about Urartu,

and the kingdom's economic
and political state.

Both Sargon II and Rusa I did not dare
to go for a direct confrontation.

Their rivalry unfolded in Manna,
the buffer zone.

For several times in this period, Sargon
conquered Manna and enthroned a puppet king…

Rusa responded by organizing rebellions
in favour of the candidate loyal to Urartu.

The situation took a
dramatic turn in 715 BC,

when Sargon II heard the report about
Rusa's failed campaign against Cimmerians.

Written artefacts indicate that Rusa I lost a significant
portion of his army in the battles against Cimmerians,

which was beneficial to the Assyrian king.

Sargon II considered it to be a good moment
to act and moved his troops against Urartu.

He started with punitive expeditions
against Rusa's allies,

and drove the Urartians
out of the region near Lake Urmia.

The first country he attacked was Manna, and
it could not ward off the Assyrian assault.

Sargon punished the rebellious kings viciously:
he skinned them alive and put their corpses

on display for the people of Manna.

Sargon II was essentially annihilating
the elites of the society

in multiple regions west of Euphrates.

It was genocide.

Rusa I gathered his forces,
and hurried to the rescue.

Sargon II did not halt his march, and was
still destroying Urartian settlements,

when a sudden report came in

that Rusa I stopped to camp with a
large army in a gorge east of Lake Urmia

with the intention
to take the Assyrian forces from behind.

Sargon changed his plans at once,
and marched towards Rusa.

The unsuspecting Urartian soldiers
were resting, peaceful,

when Sargon's troops broke into the camp
in an unexpected attack.

Rusa's warriors fought back desperately, trying to
save their king to their last ounce of strength.

But the battle ended
in a bitter defeat on their side.

It was a hard blow for Rusa I.

He had to leave his soldiers to their fate,
and flee to keep his own life.

For Sargon, it was a chance
to move further north.

He destroyed the large Urartian city of
Ulkhu, sweeping everything in front of him,

and burning even the sown fields.

Soon Sargon reached the region where
Rusa's brothers and other relatives lived.

This is how Sargon II
described what happened:

“In passing I marched on Arba,
the residence of the house of Rusa.

The seven adjacent settlements, the
dwellings of his brothers and family,

where the guard was strong,
these towns I destroyed and laid to waste,

burying his sanctuary.”

These blows were even
harder for Rusa I to take.

In a culmination of this destructive campaign,
Sargon approached the boundaries of Tushpa,

dreaming of the seizure
of the capital of Urartu.

However, upon thinking over his
possibilities, and the intelligence reports,

he turned his army around,
and moved back to Assyria.

He was merciless, laying waste to
Urartian towns and settlements on the way.

With a part of his army,
Sargon II undertook a difficult march

through the wooded, mountainous area,

and attacked Musasir,
a sacred place for any Urartian.

The town itself and the temple of the supreme god
Haldi were destroyed in the most barbaric manner.

By the standards of those
times, it was sacrilege,

but Sargon's hatred for Urartu was so great
that he dared to take that step,

and even felt so proud of what he had done

that he ordered a detailed story of the pillage of
Musasir to be carved on the wall in one of his palaces.

The Assyrians took out huge amounts of gold, silver,
other precious metals and stones from Musasir,

as well as figurines of
Urartian kings and gods,

a golden statuette of supreme god Haldi
before everything else.

Sargon II wrote in his chronicles:

“I brought misery upon the whole of Urartu and its land,
and I made the people who live there wail and cry.”

His chronicles also tell that when

“Rusa I heard that Musasir is destroyed,
and his god Haldi is seized,

he took his own life with his own hands,
his own iron dagger.”

The next king of Urartu was
the son of Rusa I, Argishti II.

He inherited the throne in 714 BC,

facing the worst possible consequences
of the recent war with Assyria.

The Urartians lost 430 large settlements
in 7 regions of their kingdom.

The treasury was empty.

The country – devastated.

The state power in Urartu was shaken
for the first time.

Argishti II longed for vengeance for his father
and country, and did not fear a new war.

The retribution for the grief Sargon II caused
Urartu caught up with him a few years later.

Cuneiform sources describe construction works that
Argishti conducted from the central part of Urartu,

and in the regions Sargon II burned
through during his campaign.

This difficult state of affairs along with
new threats from neighbouring countries,

forced Assyria to take an
unexpected diplomatic step.

Assyria and Urartu agreed to change
the nature of their relationship.

Weary of new severe conflicts,

the perpetual enemies began resolving
disputes through negotiation more often.

There is an assumption that Argishti II negotiated
a buy-back of the “chief” bronze statue

of god Haldi, seized in Musasir,
and returned it to Urartu.

Argishti II thus spoke of himself:

“I am the servant of god Haldi,
the loyal shepherd of the people.”

Gradually, Argishti II returned
the regions that broke off

from the Urartian kingdom
in the south, north and east.

He managed to knit back together
the Kingdom of Van for the most part.

Quite possibly, Argishti II reached the
regions closely touching the Caspian Sea,

and moved in that direction further
than any other Urartian king.

Argishti II essentially restored the state
and passed it to his heir reinforced.

It is known that Argishti's son Rusa II
also carried out intense town building

to consolidate the power of Urartu.

Some Urartian inscriptions tell about
the large-scale construction

Rusa II organized to create a new
administrative centre in Ararat Valley.

It was called Teishebani,
“the city of god of war Teisheba”,

built to replace the deteriorating
old centre, Argishtikhinili.

The ruins of Teishebani still
stand on Karmir Blur, in Yerevan.

In the first half of the 20th century,
renowned Orientalist scholar Boris Piotrovsky

launched a full-scale
excavation in the area,

the results of which shook
the entire scientific world.

When we started digging,
and got out that many discoveries,

monuments to the daily life,
and the festive life of the Urartians,

the Urartian art,

it became instantly clear that it was
uniquely Urartian style and spirit.

Due to this excavation and these studies,
the science was pushed towards

recognizing Urartu as something tangible,
and comprehensible.

So to say, this is an
example of serious science,

which makes things comprehensible and tangible,
and creates an image of the culture.

The history of human activity in the Armenian
Highland amounts to tens of thousands of years,

which, undoubtedly, affected
the culture of Urartu.

Archeological findings draw an exhaustive picture
of top-level handicraft trades in Urartu:

bronze, iron, gold and silver working,
wood and wool processing, leather working,

as well as the manufacture of decorations,
and war needs from these materials.

Religion ran through all
areas of life in Urartu.

The discoveries of religious items include
bronze figurines of Urartian gods.

There is a statuette of god Teisheba
discovered by my mother.

It is a figure holding an axe, and it can be
identified easily as Teisheba, god of war.

The Teishebani fortress – Karmir Blur –
was named after him.

So, my mother discovered that figurine
of the god of war on June 21, 1941.

On the following day, Germany attacked
the Soviet Union.

Additionally, the excavation in Karmir Blur

unearthed unique storages
for preservation of agricultural products:

the karases, some several meters long.

A "karas" is a large earthen
jug for food and drinks.

People could keep oil, beer, wine and other
products in karases for a long time

without risking spoilage,
all due to a secret:

the larger part of karas was buried
in the ground, which kept it cold.

You could call it a prototype
of the modern refrigerator.

Urartian artefacts have been discovered
in various parts of Armenia.

For instance, the multicolour frescos on palace and temple
walls were carefully recreated in Erebuni fortress,

which is within city limits of Yerevan.

These frescoes depict gods, sacred animals,
and ceremonial and hunting scenes,

all decorated with vegetative
and geometric ornaments.

The cultural heritage of Urartu did not
simply pass down to the next Armenian states.

It possibly influenced others,
Persia and Greece for example.

Urartu outlived Assyria,

which began to lose its territories
in the second half of the 7th century BC

in a fierce confrontation with the
separated Babylonia and the rising Media.

In 612 BC, the Assyrian capital of Nineveh fell
after a long siege laid by the Babylonians,

Medes, Scythians and Armenians.

The Assyrian state ceased
to exist in 605 BC.

Despite more than a century of research
about the mysterious kingdom of Urartu,

we still do not know enough about the
beginning, and the end of its history.

It's relatively unknown now, we have a lot of
problems to understand exactly what happened.

Especially, when it collapsed, and why.

Argishti I to Rusa II – quite clear.

After is unclear. There's change...
The least is not very clear.

Which one was the last one?

Which one was not the king?

In which sense, it's very
difficult to understand that.

But especially I think that in Armenia
one of the keys to understand

what happened at the end of Kingdom of Urartu
– we have one of the keys here in Armenia.

It is believed that Urartu ceased to exist
in early 6th century BC,

but there is no solid data to support the theory that
Urartu met its end exactly in that period of time.

This most important issue is still pending.

Obviously, the kingdom of Urartu
did not fall in a strict sense.

Most likely, what happened was a change
of dynasty in about 648 BC.

It is an indisputable fact
that the Kingdom of Ayrarat, or Armenia,

existed after Urartu in the same area
of the Armenian Highland.

It was ruled by the Yervanduni dynasty, and
governed from the same capital city – Van.

This was the end of the cradle
of civilization called Urartu,

which shone in the mountain heights
of Armenia for three centuries,

from the 9th to the 6th century BC.

Urartu was the first state in the history to unite
numerous tribes of the vast Armenian Highland

into a common kingdom,

thus growing into one of the largest civilizations
of this grand and mysterious ancient world.