Urartian language
Urartian or Vannic is an extinct Hurro-Urartian language which was spoken by the inhabitants of the ancient kingdom of Urartu, which was centered on the region around Lake Van and had its capital, Tushpa, near the site of the modern town of Van in the Armenian highlands, now in the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey. Its past prevalence is unknown. While some believe it was probably dominant around Lake Van and in the areas along the upper Zab valley, others believe it was spoken by a relatively small population who comprised a ruling class.
First attested in the 9th century BCE, Urartian ceased to be written after the fall of the Urartian state in 585 BCE and presumably became extinct due to the fall of Urartu. It must have had long contact with, and been gradually totally replaced by, an early form of Armenian.
Classification
Urartian is an ergative, agglutinative language, which belongs to the Hurro-Urartian family, whose only other known member is Hurrian. It survives in many cuneiform inscriptions found in the territory of the Kingdom of Urartu. There have been claims of a separate autochthonous script of "Urartian hieroglyphs" but they remain unsubstantiated.Urartian is closely related to Hurrian, a somewhat better documented language attested for an earlier, non-overlapping period, approximately from 2000 BCE to 1200 BCE, written by native speakers until about 1350 BCE. The two languages must have developed quite independently from approximately 2000 BCE onwards. Although Urartian is not a direct continuation of any of the attested dialects of Hurrian, many of its features are best explained as innovative developments with respect to Hurrian as it is known from the preceding millennium. The closeness holds especially true of the so-called Old Hurrian dialect, known above all from Hurro-Hittite bilingual texts.
The external connections of the Hurro-Urartian languages are disputed. There exist various proposals for a genetic relationship to other language families, e.g. Northeast Caucasian languages, Indo-European languages, or Kartvelian languages, but none of these are generally accepted.
Indo-European, namely Armenian and Anatolian, as well as Iranian and possibly Paleo-Balkan, etymologies have been proposed for many Urartian personal and topographic names, such as the names of kings Arame and Argishti, regions such as Diauehi and Uelikulqi, cities such as Arzashkun, geographical features like the Arșania River, as well as some Urartian vocabulary and grammar. Surviving texts of the language are written in a variant of the cuneiform script called Neo-Assyrian. Comparison:
| Urartian | Hurrian | Meaning |
| esi | eše | Location |
| šuri | šauri | Weapon |
| mane | mane | 3. Sg. Pers. |
| -ḫi | -ḫi | Affiliation affix |
| -še | -š | Ergative |
| -di | -tta | 1. Sg. Abs. |
| ag- | ag- | to lead |
| ar- | ar- | to give |
| man- | mann- | to be |
| nun- | un- | to come |
| -di | -da | Directive |
| -u- | -o- | Transitivity marking |
| qiura | eše | Earth |
| lutu | ašte | Transitivity marking |
Decipherment
The German scholar Friedrich Eduard Schulz, who discovered the Urartian inscriptions of the Lake Van region in 1826, made copies of several cuneiform inscriptions at Tushpa, but made no attempt at decipherment. Schulz's drawings, published posthumously in 1840 in the Journal Asiatique, were crucial in forwarding the decipherment of Mesopotamian cuneiform by Edward Hincks.After the decipherment of Assyrian cuneiform in the 1850s, Schulz's drawings became the basis of the decipherment of the Urartian language. It soon became clear that it was unrelated to any known language, and attempts at decipherment based on known languages of the region failed. The script was deciphered in 1882 by A. H. Sayce. The oldest of these inscriptions is from the time of Sarduri I of Urartu. Decipherment only made progress after World War I, with the discovery of Urartian-Assyrian bilingual inscriptions at Kelišin and Topzawä. In 1963, a grammar of Urartian was published by G. A. Melikishvili in Russian, appearing in German translation in 1971. In the 1970s, the genetic relation with Hurrian was established by I. M. Diakonoff.
In 1962, after completing his military service, kurdish man Mehmet Kuşman, started to work as a guard in the Çavuştepe castle, built by the Urartians between 764–735 BC. He became fascinated with the mysterious language when an excavation team found an inscription at the site, but did not know how to decipher it. A quote reads: "I used to think that professors know everything in this world, but it wasn't like that." Despite being a primary school graduate, he started to learn the Urartian script from the archeologists and linguists who came to the region for excavation work and the books they gave, later traveling to study Urartian-Assyrian bilingual inscriptions. He reached a point where he needed an alphabet, traveling to Iran, Syria, and Armenia illegally without a passport for field study. In Armenia he got a tip of a village near the Georgia border where a man lived who could help him. After 3 years he learnt the Urartian script, becoming one of a handful of people who could could read and write it fluently. Despite various lucrative offers, Kuşman did not pursue an academic career abroad, instead teaching on location of his old job.
Corpus
Image:Urartian language stone, Erebuni museum 3.jpg|thumb|An Urartian cuneiform stone inscription on display at the Erebuni Museum in Yerevan. The inscription reads: For the God Khaldi, the lord, Argishti, son of Menua, built this temple and this mighty fortress. I proclaimed it Irbuni for the glory of the countries of Biai and for holding the Lului countries in awe. By the greatness of God Khaldi, this is Argishti, son of Menua, the mighty king, the king of the countries of Biai, ruler of the city of TushpaThe oldest recorded texts originate from the reign of Sarduri I, from the late 9th century BCE. Texts were produced until the fall of the realm of Urartu, approximately 200 years later.
Approximately two hundred inscriptions written in the Urartian language, which adopted and modified the cuneiform script, have been discovered to date.
Writing
Cuneiform
Urartian cuneiform is a standardized simplification of Neo-Assyrian cuneiform.Unlike in Assyrian, each sign only expresses a single sound value.
The sign gi has the special function of expressing a hiatus, e.g. u-gi-iš-ti for Uīšdi. A variant script with non-overlapping wedges was in use for rock inscriptions.
Hieroglyphs
Urartian was also rarely written in the "Anatolian hieroglyphs" used for the Luwian language. Evidence for this is restricted to Altıntepe.There are suggestions that besides the Luwian hieroglyphic inscriptions, Urartu also had a native hieroglyphic script.
The inscription corpus is too sparse to substantiate the hypothesis. It remains unclear whether the symbols in question form a coherent writing system, or represent just a multiplicity of uncoordinated expressions of proto-writing or ad-hoc drawings.
What can be identified with a certain confidence are two symbols or "hieroglyphs" found on vessels, representing certain units of measurement: 100x33px for aqarqi and 100x33px for ṭerusi. This is known because some vessels were labelled both in cuneiform and with these symbols.
Phonology
Hachikian gives the following consonants for Urartian inferred both from Urartian writing as well as loans into neighboring languages, mainly Armenian:The three-way laryngeal contrast for stops and affricates was faithfully represented in Urartian writing, except for the "emphatic' /pʼ/ which the Semitic-based cuneiform writing system did not have a distinct symbol for. Their values are confirmed by loans in Armenian. Urartian voiceless stops and affricates were loaned as voiceless aspirates in Armenian, while Urartian "emphatic" stops are found as unaspirated voiceless stops in Armenian. E.g., Urartian ul-ṭu 'camel' ↦ Armenian ուղտ ułt, Urartian ṣu-pa- 'Sophene (toponym)' ↦ Armenian Ծոփ- Copʰ-. Contrasting the last example with Urartian ṭu-uš-pa- ‘Tushpa (toponym)’ ↦ Armenian Տոսպ Tosp, Hachikian reconstructs an "emphasis" distinction in the bilabial position.
The cuneiform signs usually transliterated with ‹s, z, ṣ› were not fricatives, but affricates, as again shown by loans in Armenian. E.g., Urartian ṣa-ri ‘orchard’ ↦ Armenian ծառ caṙ ‘tree’, Urartian al-zi- ‘Arzanene (toponym)’ ↦ Armenian Աղձնի- Ałʒni-. Urartian ‹š› was loaned into Armenian as /s/: Urartian ša-ni ‘kettle’ ↦ Armenian սան san.
The precise phonetics of emphasis is not recoverable. It possibly may have been ejectivization or glottalization /pʼ, tʼ, t͡sʼ, kʼ/ as in Semitic languages of the time and the nearby endemic languages of the Caucasus, or just plain unaspirated as in Armenian, in either case, contrasting fully with the respective aspirated and voiced series. Near front vowels, /g/ was palatalized and probably merged with, or at least became perceptibly close to, /j/. A distinct /v/ is suggested by variant spellings alternating between and and by the toponym rendered in Armenian as Վան Van ‘Van’ and written bi-a-i-ni- in Urartian.
Hachikian also suggests and. For a phonemic distinct from, there is limited evidence from the Greek rendering of the toponym Κομμαγηνή Kommagēnḗ ‘Commagene’ for Urartian qu-ma-ḫa-; thus, and were not orthograpically distinguished.
Vowels
The script distinguishes the vowels a, e, i and u. Hachikian believes that there was an /o/ as well, as reflected in loans such as the rendition of Urartian ṭu-uš-pa- ‘Tushpa (toponym)’ as Armenian Տոսպ Tosp and Greek Θοσπ- Thosp-. There may have been phonemic vowel length, but it is not consistently expressed in the script. Word-finally, the distinction between e and i is not maintained, so many scholars transcribe the graphically vacillating vowel as a schwa: ə, while some preserve a non-reduced vowel. The full form of the vowel appears when suffixes are added to the word and the vowel is no longer in the last syllable: Argištə 'Argišti' - Argištešə 'by Argišti '. This vowel reduction also suggests that stress was commonly on the next-to-the-last syllable.In the morphonology, various morpheme combinations trigger syncope: *ar-it-u-mə → artumə, *zaditumə → zatumə, *ebani-ne-lə → ebanelə, *turulyə → tulyə.
Morphology
Nominal morphology
Nouns
The morphemes which may occur in a noun follow a strict order:| slot | stem | article | possessive suffix | number and case suffix | suffixes received through Suffixaufnahme |
| attested morphemes | various | -ne- -na- | -uka- -i- | -Ø-, -lə-, -š-, etc. | = article + number and case suffixes |
Stem
All nouns appear to end in a so-called thematic vowel - most frequently -i or -e, but -a and -u also occur. They may also end in a derivational suffix. Notable derivational suffixes are -ḫə, forming adjectives of belonging and -šə, forming abstract nouns.Article
The forms of the so-called "article" are -nə for the singular, -ne-lə for the plural in the absolutive case and -na- for the other forms of the plural. They are referred to as "anaphoric suffixes" and can be compared to definite articles, although their use does not always seem to match that description exactly. They also obligatorily precede agreement suffixes added through Suffixaufnahme: e.g. Argište-šə Menua-ḫi-ne-šə 'Argišti, son of Menua '. The plural form can also serve as a general plural marker in non-absolutive cases: arniuši-na-nə 'by the deeds'.Possessive suffixes
The well-attested possessive suffixes are the ones of the first person singular -ukə and of the 3rd person singular -i- : e.g. ebani-uka-nə 'from my country', ebani-yə 'his country'.Number and case suffixes
The plural is expressed, above all, through the use of the plural "article", but some of the case suffixes also differ in form between the singular and the plural. Therefore, separate plural version of the case suffixes are indicated below separately. The nature of the absolutive and ergative cases is as in other ergative languages.Since the "complete" plural forms also include the plural definite article, they appear as -ne-lə, -na-šə, -na-wə, na-də or na-š-tə, etc.
Suffixaufnahme
A phenomenon typical of Urartian is Suffixaufnahme - a process in which dependent modifiers of a noun agree with the head noun by absorbing its case suffixes. The copied suffixes must be preceded by the article. Examples: Ḫaldi-i-na-wə šešti-na-wə 'for the gates of Ḫaldi ', Argište-šə Menua-ḫi-ne-šə 'Argišti, son of Menua '.Pronouns
The known personal pronouns are those of the first and third person singular.| absolutive intransitive | absolutive transitive | ergative | other | enclitic possessive | enclitic dative | |
| 1st p. sing. | ištidə | šukə | iešə | šu- | -uka- | -mə |
| 3rd pers. sing. | manə | manə | -iya- |
The first person singular has two different forms for the absolutive case: ištidə as the absolutive subject of an intransitive verb, and šukə as the absolutive object of a transitive verb. The ergative form is iešə. Judging from correspondences with Hurrian, šu- should be the base for the "regular" case forms. An enclitic dative case suffix for the first person singular is attested as -mə.
The third person singular has the absolutive form manə.
As for possessive pronouns, besides the possessive suffixes that were adduced above, Urartian also makes use of possessive adjectives formed with the suffix -sə: 1st singular šusə, 3rd singular masə.
The encoding of pronominal ergative and absolutive participants in a verb action within the verb is treated in the section on Verbal morphology below.
Demonstrative pronouns are i-nə and ina-nə. A relative pronoun is alə.
Verbal morphology
The paradigm of the verb is only partially known. As with the noun, the morphemes that a verb may contain come in a certain sequence that can be formalized as the following "verb chain":| slot | root | root complement | ergative third person plural suffix | valency markers | modal suffix | other person suffixes |
| attested morphemes | various | various | -it- | -a-, -i-, -u- | -l-, -in- | -də, -bə, --lə, -nə, -ə |
The meaning of the root complements is unclear. The valency markers express whether the verb is intransitive or transitive. The modal suffix appears in several marked moods. The other person suffixes express mostly the absolutive subject or object. It is not clear if and how tense or aspect were signalled.
Valency markers
The valency markers are -a- for intransitivity and -u- for transitivity: for example nun-a-də 'I came' vs šidišt-u-nə 'he built'. A verb that is usually transitive can be converted to intransitivity with the suffix -ul- before the intransitive valency marker: aš-ul-a-bə 'was occupied'.Person suffixes
The person suffixes express the persons of the absolutive subject/object and the ergative subject. When both subject and object are present, a single transitive suffix may expresses a unique combination of persons. The following chart lists the currently ascertained endings, along with gaps for those not yet ascertained :Examples: ušt-a-də 'I marched forth'; nun-a-bə 'he came'; aš-u-bə 'I put-it in'; šidišt-u-nə 'he built-it'; ar-u-mə 'he gave to me', kuy-it-u-nə 'they dedicated-it'.
As the paradigm shows, the person suffixes added after the valency vowel express mostly the person of absolutive subject/object, both in intransitive and in transitive verbs. The picture is complicated by the fact that the absolutive third person singular is expressed by a different suffix depending on whether the ergative subject is in the first or third person. An additional detail is that when the first-person singular dative suffix -mə is added, the third-person singular absolutive suffix -nə is dropped.
The encoding of the person of the absolutive subject/object is present, even though it is also explicitly mentioned in the sentence: e.g. argište-šə inə arə šu-nə 'Argišti established this granary'. An exceptional verb is man- 'to be', in that it has a transitive valency vowel, and takes no absolutive suffix for the third person singular: man-u 'it was' vs man-u-lə 'they were'.
Mood marking
The imperative is formed by the addition of the suffix -ə to the root: e.g. ar-ə 'give!'.The jussive or third person imperative is formed by the addition of the suffix -in- in the slot of the valency vowel, whereas the persons are marked in the usual way, following an epenthetic vowel --:e.g. ar-in--nə 'may he give it', ḫa-it-in-nə 'may they take it'.
The modal suffix -l-, added between the valency vowel and the person suffixes, participates in the construction of several modal forms:
1. An optative form, also regularly used in clauses introduced with ašə 'when', is constructed by -l- followed by -ə - the following absolutive person suffix is optional, and the ergative subject is apparently not signalled at all: e.g. qapqar-u-l-i-nə 'I wanted to besiege-it ', urp-u-l-i-nə or urp-u-l-ə 'he shall slaughter'.
2. A conditional is expressed by a graphically similar form, which is interpreted by Wilhelm as -l- followed by -yə: an example of its use is alu-šə tu-l-yə 'whoever destroys it'.
3. A desiderative, which may express the wish of either the speaker or the agent, is expressed by -l- followed by a suffix -anə. The valency marker is replaced by -i-: e.g. ard-i-l-anə 'I want him to give …', ḫa-i-l-anə 'it wants to take/conquer …'.
Negation is expressed by the particle ui, preceding the verb. A prohibitative particle, also preceding the verb, is mi. mi is also the conjunction 'but', whereas e'ə is 'and ', and unə is 'or'.
Non-finite forms
Participles from intransitive verbs are formed with the suffix -urə, added to the root, and have an active meaning. Participles from transitive verbs are formed with the suffix -aurə, and have a passive meaning. It is possible that -umə is the ending of an infinitive or a verb noun, although that is not entirely clear.Syntax
Ergativity
Urartian is an ergative language, meaning that the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb are expressed identically, with the so-called absolutive case, whereas the subject of a transitive verb is expressed with a special ergative case. Examples are: Argištə nun-a-bi 'Argišti came' vs Argište-šə arə šu-nə 'Argišti established a granary'. Within the limited number of known forms, no exceptions from the ergative pattern are known. Example:| Urartian | Meaning | Comments |
| ereli+Ø nun+a+bi | The king is coming. | ereli 'king' stands in absolutive. The verb has a markert of intransitivity -a-. |
| ereli+še esi+Ø tur+u+Ø+ni | The king destroys a place. | ereli stands in Ergative, esi 'land' in absolutive. The verb has a marker of transitivity -u-. |
Word Order
The word order is usually verb-final, and, more specifically, SOV, but the rule is not rigid and components are occasionally re-arranged for expressive purposes. For example, names of gods are often placed first, even though they are in oblique cases: Ḫaldi-ə ewri-ə inə E2 Argište-šə Menuaḫini-šə šidišt-u-nə 'For Ḫaldi the lord Argišti, son of Menua, built this temple.' Verbs can be placed sentence-initially in vivid narratives: ušt-a-də Mana-idə ebanə at-u-bə 'Forth I marched towards Mana, and I consumed the land.'Nominal modifiers usually follow their heads, but deictic pronouns such as inə precede them, and genitives may either precede or follow them. Urartian generally uses postpositions -i-nə 'for', ed which govern certain cases. There is only one attested preposition, parə 'to'. Subordinate clauses are introduced by particles such as iu 'when', ašə 'when', alə 'that which'.
Language sample
The sample below is from inscription 372 by Menua, son of Ishpuini, based on G. A. Melikishvili's corpus of Urartian Cuneiform Inscriptions.For each sentence, the transliteration is given first, the morphological transcription second, the translation third.
Shared lexicon with Armenian
Diakonoff and Greppin present etymologies of several Old Armenian words as having a possible Hurro-Urartian origin. Contemporary linguists, such as Hrach Martirosyan, have rejected many of the Hurro-Urartian origins for these words and instead suggest native Armenian etymologies, leaving the possibility that these words may have been loaned into Hurro-Urartian from Armenian, and not vice versa.- agarak 'field' from Hurrian awari 'field' ;
- ałaxin 'slave girl' from Hurrian alaḫḫenne;
- arciw 'eagle' from Urartian Arṣiba, a proper name with a presumed meaning of 'eagle' ;
- art 'field' from Hurrian arde 'town' ;
- astem 'to reveal one's ancestry' from Hurrian ašti 'woman, wife';
- caṙ 'tree' from Urartian ṣârə 'garden' ;
- cov 'sea' from Urartian ṣûǝ ' sea' ;
- kut 'grain' from Hurrian kade 'barley' ;
- maxr ~ marx 'pine' from Hurrian māḫri 'fir, juniper';
- pełem 'dig, excavate' from Urartian pile 'canal', Hurrian pilli ;
- salor ~ šlor 'plum' from Hurrian *s̄all-orə or Urartian *šaluri ;
- san 'kettle' from Urartian sane 'kettle, pot';
- sur 'sword', from Urartian šure 'sword', Hurrian šawri 'weapon, spear' ;
- tarma-ǰur 'spring water' from Hurrian tarmani 'spring' ;
- ułt 'camel' from Hurrian uḷtu 'camel';
- xarxarel 'to destroy' from Urartian harhar-š- 'to destroy';
- xnjor 'apple' from Hurrian ḫinzuri 'apple'.