The Archaeology of Empire in Ancient Anatolia || Urartian Material Culture As State Assemblage: An Anomaly in the Archaeology of Empire

Urartian Material Culture As State Assemblage: An Anomaly in the Archaeology of EmpireAuthor(s): Paul ZimanskySource: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 299/300, The Archaeologyof Empire in Ancient Anatolia (Aug. - Nov., 1995), pp. 103-115Published by: The American Schools of Oriental ResearchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1357348 .

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Urartian Material Culture as State

Assemblage: An Anomaly in the

Archaeology of Empire

PAUL ZIMANSKY

Department of Archaeology Boston University Boston, MA 02215

The distinctive artifacts associated with the kingdom of Urartu are normally assumed to constitute the material assemblage of a homogeneous culture. This article reviews the characteristics of these artifacts class by class, and argues that for the most part they are deliberate creations of an imperial government, not a broad spectrum of the east Anatolian population. Archaeological research on Urartu has focused on exca-

vating fortresses, which are essentially state enclaves, rather than settlement sites. The model of Inca imperialism is invoked as an alternative to the presumption of cultural

uniformity. The extent to which it applies and the issue of provincialism within the Urartian state can only be addressed by shifting the emphasis of Urartian archaeo-

logical studies toward the governed.

INTRODUCTION

rchaeologically, Urartu is unmistakable. In eastern Anatolia's Iron Age, there is very little doubt about when and where Urartians

appear, because the spread of their kingdom is precisely documented by a concurrent expansion of distinctive styles of architecture, art, and pottery. One can track the conquests of Urartian monarchs not

just through the annals they left at the capital in Van, but also by cuneiform inscriptions carved on cliffs in outlying regions where they campaigned. As the kingdom radiated outward, a transformation of the economic and political structure of the countryside took place: large-scale irrigation projects were initiated, roads laid out, captive populations transported, and fortresses constructed to control each major avenue of communication and parcel of arable land in the vast region bordered by Maltaya, Urmia, and Lake Sevan. With the temporary eclipse of Assyria in the first half of the eighth century B.C., Urartu became the largest and most powerful state in the Near East.

All of this was done in remarkably little time. Although a variant of the name Urartu (as Uruatri)

appears in Middle Assyrian records more than four centuries earlier, the first objects securely associated with an Urartian polity are the inscriptions of Sar- duri I, no earlier than 845 B.C.1 The last are those found in the ruins of great citadels such as Karmir Blur, Toprakkale, and Bastam, and cannot postdate the late seventh century B.C.2

The coherent distinctiveness of material culture generated by this brief outburst of controlled human energy offers an enticement to the archaeological her- esies of confusing pots with peoples, cultures with assemblages, and languages with states. Throughout the literature one finds an underlying notion of "Ur- artian" that embraces a place, a language, a culture, and a government with coinciding spacial/temporal boundaries. These are defined with such precision that things are not "Urartian" by degrees or with qualifications-they either are so, or are not. Kramer (1977: 91) may argue that correlating Habur Ware with the Hurrians as an ethnic group is "a simplis- tic, uninformative, and unwarranted response to the available data," and Muscarella (1987: 111-12) may warn that "any attempt to isolate Median art must take into account both the complex cultural and

103



104 PAUL ZIMANSKY BASOR 299/300

ethnic background of the area and the question of precisely at what time and where in Iran our attention is being focused"; but when it comes to Urartu less disciplined scholars have few qualms about marking out linguistic geography on the basis of

pottery distributions or identifying a specific ethnic influence in unprovenienced artifacts on the basis of

style. Can Urartu really be a case where economy, polity, ethnicity, and ideology are all so snugly bound as to expunge internal diversity, and stand in such clear separation from neighboring cultures in each of these aspects?

If this were the case, one would be hard-pressed to argue that Urartu was, in fact, an empire. Admittedly, no single model or precise definition unites the field (Postgate 1994: 1-3), but most concepts of empire exclude internal homogeneity. Empires are normally "composed of a diversity of localized communities and ethnic groups, each contributing its unique history and social, economic, religious, and political traditions" (Sinopoli 1994: 159-60). Since in all other respects the Urartian state meets the criteria distin- guishing imperial status-forged by conquest, cen- trally controlled, and territorially extensive-it is inherently improbable that the realm actually com- prised a single cultural area.

I believe the solution to this problem of whether the archaeology of Urartu represents the study of a culture or an empire becomes clear when one recog- nizes the very special and limited nature of the assemblage that we have come to call Urartian. Its uniform, unique, and definitive characteristics derive from the way the archaeological evidence was originally produced and has subsequently been recovered in eastern Anatolia. The artifactual remains of Urartu, including the texts from which we derive most of our understanding of nonmaterial elements of the culture, are overwhelmingly the products of a government rather than a broad segment of the population. The apparent coherence of Urartian culture is an illusion enhanced by our own scholarly priorities.

THE CASE FOR INTERNAL DIVERSITY

Eastern Anatolia is mountainous and has been occupied by a multiplicity of coresiding peoples throughout most of its history. The current population of the territories once governed by the Urartians includes Georgians, Kurds, Armenians, Iranians, Ar- abs, and Turks speaking several different dialects, to mention only the most prominent language groups. In classical antiquity there were Alarodians, Karduchoi,

Khalybes, Khaldaioi, Armenians, Taokhoi, Scyth- ians, and Persians in the area. Urartu as a place in- habited by one ethnic group would be an historical

anomaly. The intersecting chains of the Zagros, Taurus, and

Caucasus naturally segment the countryside, and no-

toriously heavy snowfall impedes communications for much of the year.3 As one would expect in an

upland area, only a small percentage of the land is under cultivation, yields are modest, and overall population density is low.4 Both population and sedentary agriculture are clustered in small, isolated areas of alluvial land, particularly near the shores of the major lakes-Urmia, Van, and Sevan. Pastoral- ism, specifically husbandry of sheep and goat in sea- sonal transhumance, has been an important aspect of the economy in all historical periods; and to judge by the prevalence of animals in booty lists of the Urar- tian kings (Zimansky 1985: 58), was so in the Iron Age as well. These factors would make rapid propa- gation of a homogeneous culture difficult.

In their earliest use of the term Urartu, in the 13th century B.C., the Assyrians refer to a region, not a specific political entity. The archaeological configuration of this area in the centuries immediately prior to the emergence of the monarchy at Van is of great interest but remains poorly understood, not least because no sites significant enough to engage the attention of an excavator have been identified (Bur- ney and Lang 1971: 127). If, in this early connotation, Urartu is archaeologically a tabula rasa, one can at least recognize the traditions of neighboring areas that were incorporated into the Urartian state at the end of the ninth century. For example, Hasanlu IV, which probably lay in the land of Gilzanu in the reign of Assurnasirpal II, 883-859 B.C. (Liverani 1992: 23), was destroyed around 800 B.C., presumably by Urartians.5 This point marks the end of the Iron II ceramic assemblage in Iran (Dyson 1965: 203-5).

The speed with which the kingdom was created has been noted above. Sarduri I left inscriptions only at Van. These were written in Akkadian and used the term Nairi rather than Urartu for the kingdom.6 In the reign of Sarduri's successor, Igpuini, the first texts in the Urartian language appear, but these too are found only in the area of Van, no farther away than Patnos. The most dramatic conquests appear to have taken place late in Igpuini's reign, when his texts also name Menua, his successor. Their campaigns took them as far afield as the area south of Lake Urmia, and it is in their joint inscriptions that the native term for the



1995 URARTIAN MATERIAL CULTURE AS STATE ASSEMBLAGE 105

kingdom, Biainili,7 is first seen (Melikisvili 1960: nos. 19, 25). By the end of his reign, Menua had campaigned as far west as Malatya, built a fortress on the south side of the Araxes, and secured the Ushnu plain. Although later Urartian kings campaigned somewhat farther afield, the kingdom had grown from local polity to empire in three genera- tions; and most of its territorial gains appear to have been effected in the much shorter span of the active life of Menua. It is hard to believe that local customs and institutions were completely purged by this military conquest.

Even if they had been, the policies of the con- querors more or less insured cultural diversity within their realm. Booty lists in royal annals of the eighth century make clear that capturing populations was one of the primary objectives of campaigning.8 For an empire with a low population density and a vast appetite for labor-intensive building projects, this is hardly surprising. Sometimes large foreign population groups were settled in a given place in Urartian territory, as when Argi'ti I installed 6600 captives from Hatti and Supani in Erebuni (Melikilvili 1960: no. 128A2, lines 20-22).

Although virtually all the cuneiform records that survive from Urartu are in one sense or another royal, they provide clues to the existence of linguistic diversity in the empire. There is no basis for the a pri- ori assumption that a large number of people ever spoke Urartian. Urartian words are not borrowed in any numbers by neighboring peoples, and the language disappears from the written record along with the government.9 Even some of the rulers may have come from different linguistic backgrounds, to judge by their names. For example, no Urartian words be- gin with an initial I/r/, and thus the name Rusa, borne by several kings, was probably unpronounceable in the language. It is not altogether surprising that the Assyrians rendered it as Ursa on occasion, because that is probably what they heard Urartian speakers calling their king. Rulers with foreign names are hardly anomalous in empires, and Rusa is not the only case in Urartu.10

The rapid disappearance of Urartian culture after the fall of the empire also speaks for its lack of ethnic integration.11 When Xenophon and the 10,000 marched through erstwhile Urartian territory in retreat from the battle of Cunaxa in the winter of 401-400 B.C., he recorded the presence of Kardukhoi, Taokhoi, Armenians, and Khaldaioi, all subject to, but generally oblivious to the Great King of Persia. He, like other classical sources and early Armenian historical

tradition, was utterly unaware that a great native empire had once held sway here.12

In sum, the geographical, historical, and linguistic evidence give grounds for skepticism that the remains we call Urartian are the products of a deeply rooted culture shared by a population with some cog- nizance of its own unity. The thesis that they are, in fact, a group of artifacts created directly by a government remains to be examined.

ASPECTS OF THE URARTIAN ASSEMBLAGE

Although the study of its inscriptions dates back to the dawn of Assyriology, archaeological investi- gation of Urartu does not have a long history. Prior to the Second World War it was a fiasco. A few objects, emerging from poorly conducted and recorded excavations in the vicinity of Van, were used to define spheres of Urartian art style and influence long before there was sufficient contextual information to give them any validity. The first respectable site reports appeared in 1950, produced by the excavator of the citadel at Karmir Blur (Piotrovskij 1950). Since then, progress has been rapid and survey has been added to the tools of analysis, but the emphasis has been on a very limited range of sites and artifacts. If Urartu became known first through texts, then through art, and most recently through fortress architecture and associated materials, the next logical step in this progression would be to define an "Urar- tian" domestic assemblage. But does such a thing really exist? An examination of the general cate- gories of material evidence that the "Urartian" rubric embraces is in order.

Sites and Settlements

For the most part, Urartian archaeology has been the archaeology of fortresses. Toprakkale, Bas- tam, Kefkalesi, Qal'eh Ismail Agha, (;avuptepe, Kayalidere, Armavir, Arinberd and Karmir Blur, Altmintepe, Aznavurtepe (Patnos)-the sites at which the primary legitimate excavations have been conducted-were not primarily settlements, but rather deliberate foundations to defend and facilitate control over specific parts of the realm. The rather minimal amount of associated pottery (Kroll 1976a: 12-13) warns that these are in no sense cities. Although resi- dential areas did come to be associated with some, they were short-lived and never densely populated.13 In the citadels themselves there is a great emphasis on storage, which can be seen in the large amount of




space given over to magazines at Bastam and Karmir Blur. These sites were cultic centers, royal residences, and foci of military power, but essentially government installations.

Lower levels in the known site hierarchy are simi- larly oriented toward specific tasks rather than habitation. For example, one category of Urartian site is

way stations-rectangular enclosures, which appear to have no settlement associated with them. None has been excavated, but their general structure and function are clear enough. Examples include Uzub Tepe, along a road connecting Bastam with Van (Kleiss 1976: 31); and Zultimtepe, beside a roadway that went from the Van region to the west (Sevin 1991: 98, 105, 108).

Tells are not unknown in Urartu, but at the two most celebrated examples, Hasanlu and Haftavan, the Urartians appear to have used the previously in- habited settlement for new purposes. A new city wall converted the former into something very like a fortress (Dyson 1989: 5-7), and at the latter not enough survives to establish that there was anything much more than a single public building (Burney 1975). In neither instance were masses of Urartian living debris actually recovered.14

The one description we have of the countryside, Sargon's letter to the god Assur reporting on his eighth campaign (Thureau-Dangin 1912), suggests that the population was essentially dispersed throughout the countryside in small settlements-perhaps no more than individual farmsteads-which were un- fortified and indefensible (Zimansky 1985: 45-46). The royally constructed fortresses served as places of refuge as the Assyrians approached. It has been argued that Urartian fortresses were so large they could not have been adequately garrisoned on a permanent basis, and many were designed for emergency rather than continuous occupation (Kroll 1976a: 174). If we are to establish the cultural homogeneity or hetero- geneity of the Urartian realm, it is the habitation sites in different, widespread localities that we must excavate, rather than the state-constructed system of de- fense. This remains to be done.

Building Techniques

In surveys, Urartian ruins are recognized by a limited range of architectural forms and construction practices, which are standardized throughout the kingdom. For example, footings carved as steps in bedrock to provide firm foundations for walls are seen as a hallmark of Urartian workmanship. To a

certain extent, this must have been linked to iron

technology. The Hittites had pioneered the technique earlier, but never practiced it in this area, or on the same scale as the Urartians, who would have had more and better iron tools. In my own experience as a member of the Bastam expedition, I recall seeing tiny rust stains on the prepared rock surfaces, presumably from particles of iron chipped off the builders' picks.

This fondness for carving bedrock was not limited to the creation of wall foundations. Staircases, tomb chambers, and cult niches were also cut into living rock, as were inscriptions. Prior to the appearance of the Urartians, these practices are unknown in eastern Anatolia, and since they required considerable in- vestment of skilled manpower, it is not unreasonable to associate them with the activities of the state.

The professionalism of Urartian architecture generally, is extraordinary. Throughout the kingdom, sun-dried mudbrick sizes were highly uniform. Walls made of these were normally put on a stone socle, roughly 1 m high. No mortar was used, but the stone foundations were extremely solid because of the care with which stones of different shapes and sizes were selected and put together. A thin layer of limestone powder was produced by hammering the top of the stone portion of the wall flat before the mudbricks were put on it. At Bastam, I was impressed that I could predict the elevation at which we would en- counter this white powder in a given trench, within 1 or 2 cm, because the Urartian builders had used levels that were just as good as those used today. In the walls of the most important buildings, including temples, ashlar masonry of high quality appears.

Although the topography of the elevated ground upon which the Urartians chose to build clearly had an influence in the overall plan of structures, there were certain stylistic regularities in the shape of fortress walls, particularly buttresses. Fortification walls of the eighth century B.C. tended to display a pattern of alternating large and small buttresses, whereas those of the seventh century tended to be laid out with a single-size buttress at regular intervals (Kleiss 1976: 35-36).

All of these traits, which are taken to be quintes- sentially Urartian, speak for a centralized direction of architectural planning. It is not unlikely that the same builders moved from one site to another at the direction of the Urartian king. Architectural features of domestic structures that did not use such elegant stone foundations, for example, would be much more difficult to recognize and date in a survey, and would




probably not be located on the same kind of terrain as these state-sponsored projects.

Inscriptions

The degree to which writing is associated with the central government in Urartu is overwhelming. One would expect this, of course, in stone display inscriptions, which, according to standard ancient Near Eastern practice, are invariably executed in the name of the king. However, cuneiform tablets written for administrative purposes rather than public consumption also show a close association with the court, and often the king himself. Admittedly, hardly more than a score of these have been unearthed so far,15 but they offer little indication that any private documentation existed in Urartu. Some show the king involved in quite minor affairs, such as mar- riage arrangements for a cook (Diakonoff 1963: no. 3). Most are sealed with the royal seal or the seal of another high official (see below, n. 16). So far, tablets have been found at only the largest of the Urartian sites: Toprakkale, Bastam, and Karmir Blur.

As in the Hittite Empire, cuneiform was not the only system of writing used in Urartu: on one tablet, numerous metal objects, and countless pieces of pottery there are incised "hieroglyphs" that somewhat resemble the glyphs used to write Luwian to the west of Urartu at the same time (Barnett 1974). In fact, at Altintepe, Luwian glyphs themselves were used to write Urartian words for vessel capacity (Hawkins, Davies, and Neumann 1973). It is not clear, however, whether "Urartian hieroglyphs" formed a coherent writing system or represent a multiplicity of inde- pendent popular attempts at recording limited types of information graphically-quantities and personal marks of identification. Unlike the situation in the Hittite Empire, hieroglyphs were not used for display inscriptions. It is not out of the question that they appear, in limited numbers, on seals and vessels, precisely because cuneiform had so close an association with the court. In any case, an exploration of how objects inscribed with these glyphs correlate with other Urartian artifacts might yield interesting results; here, again, the primary desideratum is an investiga- tion of a multiplicity of smaller sites.

Pottery

The distinctive, highly burnished, red pottery dubbed "Toprakkale Ware" by Charles Burney (1957: 42) was recognized early as the hallmark of the Urar-

tian ceramic assemblage. It appears to have a special association with large fortresses and is rarely seen in smaller ones (Kroll 1976b: 62). Vessels with this fabric and large pithoi whose presence appears linked to the storage functions of the fortresses can be regarded as Urartian in a political sense, since they do not appear outside of Urartu's frontiers (Kroll 1976b: 62). However, the vast majority of sherds at all Urar- tian sites-95% in Kroll's estimations (Kroll 1976b: 62)-are of simple, undecorated, brown and buff wares whose distribution shows no comparable cor- relation with the state's boundaries:

Die tongrundige Keramik ist nimlich keineswegs auf das Gebiet des Reiches von Urartu beschrinked, sondern ist Teil der Keramikmode, die sich von Nordsyrien iber den n6rdlichen Irak nach Ana- tolien, Transkaukasien und Iran erstreckt. Es hand- let sich dabei um rein handwerkliche Produkte, die gewisse Funktionen in einem normalen Haushalt erftillen sollen, ohne alle kiinstleriche Ambitionen (Kroll 1976b: 62).

Comparative work on this more mundane pottery from excavations in different areas inside and outside the kingdom might well reveal subtleties of al- legiance, but for now it is the state-associated wares that give coherence to the concept of an Urartian assemblage.

That much may be lost in a notion of "Urartian" pottery restricted to one relatively uncommon ware and storage vessels is illustrated by the vexed question of the Urartian presence at Hasanlu (above). The wares and vessel forms currently regarded as most characteristically Urartian have functional as- sociations with fortress storage and the sumptuary practices of the royal economy. Many sites under Urartian control may not have participated in these activities, particularly those serving as a fortified refuge area. If ceramic evidence fails to corroborate an Urartian presence strongly suggested by architecture at Hasanlu-probably the most carefully excavated site in northwest Iran-one cannot help wondering how much we are missing elsewhere. The customary type fossils cannot be expected to identify all the minor habitation sites of the period, or places where the presence of the state is less obtrusive. Thus they further distort our view of the cultural landscape in favor of a state assemblage.

Glyptic

The most characteristically Urartian form of seal was the stamp-cylinder, which could make an




impression either by rolling or stamping. There are isolated earlier examples of this type in other cultures, but no line of transmission to Urartu can be traced, and in any case the stamp-cylinder seems to have enjoyed unprecedented popularity there (Seidl 1976: 61). While one may thus argue that it is an essential feature of the Urartian assemblage, the excavations at Bastam have shown that many other varieties of seals were also in use (Seidl 1988b). So far, the only sites at which any quantity of glyptic evidence has been found in context are Bastam and Karmir Blur, so there is no basis for recognizing re- gional styles or patterns of distribution.

There does seem to be an interesting coincidence of cuneiform inscriptions on seals associated with the Urartian court. Seidl has defined official seals as those that have inscriptions above and below the frieze on the cylinder (Seidl 1976: 61). Beyond the tautology that official seals are part of a state assemblage, it is of some relevance that every personal name on an inscribed seal or seal impression is either royal or sounds royal. Some name a ruling king. Best attested is one depicting a procession of a crowned figure followed by a smaller attendant who holds a parasol, a trident, and a lion. Above and below this scene is a legend reading: "this is the seal of Rusa, son of Argi'ti" (i.e., Rusa II). Multiple impressions indicate that the form of the seal was a stamp- cylinder, on the end of which was a lion. It has none of the grandeur of a Hittite aedicula seal or an As- syrian royal seal, and it is clear from minor details that there were several versions of this in use at different sites (Seidl 1988b: 146-47). In all proba- bility it represented the king's authority at fairly low levels of the administrative hierarchy. Another type of inscribed seal is associated with the enig- matic title

IA.NIN.16 It bears a representation of

genii fertilizing a sacred tree on the cylinder and a centaur on the stamp (Seidl 1979: 137-38; 1988b: 145-46). The people who held the title luA.NIN had names like Rusa, Sarduri, and Argi'ti; and it is a moot point as to whether or not some of them actually became kings. We do not know enough of the Urartian onomosticon to know what percentage of the population had these royal-sounding names, but it seems unlikely that it was anywhere near as high as the 100% found on seals.

The difference between a "court" and a "popular" style has long been recognized in Urartian glyptic (van Loon 1966: 166-69). The royal seals discussed above obviously belong to the former, as do others

that do not bear cuneiform inscriptions, and have a somewhat limited repertoire of motifs and designs. Siedl notes that these nonofficial, perhaps "private," seals sometimes bear hieroglyphs and are distin- guished by their "Reichsstil" from the quite crude popular seal (Seidl 1976: 61). But since virtually every seal and object that bears a seal impression is

directly associated with a fortress or the royal economy, it is an open question as to whether any of these reflect nonstate activities. Seal impressions in the "popular" style are almost unknown, so it is impossible to say for what the seals were actually used. It may be that we have excavated the wrong kinds of sites to find out.

Metalwork

Urartu is so closely identified with the production of metal cauldrons, figurines, shields, helmets, horse trappings, belts, bowls, and plaques that "metalworking center" has been used as an epithet for the kingdom itself (Merhav 1991). Bronzes are particularly abundant in the archaeological record, although a large percentage of the most elaborately decorated pieces come from clandestine excavations. Early in the history of the study of Urartu, great claims were made for Urartian exports to the west, where stylistically similar materials were found in Greece and Etruria; but recent scholarship has tended to be more skeptical of this (Seidl 1988a; Muscarella 1992).

Despite the numerous metal objects in evidence, there are grounds for believing that the industry that produced them was not particularly widespread. For example, cauldron attachments are generally regarded as the most important trade good, but Muscarella and others have noted that only one specific type of bull's head is securely linked to the Urartian area (Musca- rella 1992: 25). Muscarella convincingly argues (1992: 41) that these were objects of considerable value which circulated as royal gifts, not trade items.

Votive plaques numbering in the thousands are known, but almost all come from a single plundered site at Giyimili (Kellner 1976: 53). Many are made or reworked belts, prompting Kellner (1976: 54-56) to suggest that a single, long-lived workshop produced them for a temple.

Although there is surprisingly little concern for metals exhibited in Urartian booty lists (Zimansky 1985: 57), it would be hard to deny that the production, or at least consumption, of these artifacts was




closely associated with the state. Many are inscribed; and again, the inscriptions invariably give the name of an Urartian ruler. Frequently they are said to be from the urilhe of a king, a term that is sometimes translated "arsenal" or "storehouse" of a given ruler; but occasionally the logogram NIG appears in the same position, which would suggest the nuance is "property of." Nevertheless, the associated proper name is never that of a private individual.

Religion

The features that distinguish Urartian religion are the cult of Haldi, rock-cut niches, and a distinctive form of tower temple. The latter has a square ground plan with reinforced corners and it has been suggested that its tall gates were the focal point of the cultic activities (Tarhan and Sevin 1975). Such temples first appear in the reign of Ispuini at the end of the ninth century B.C., without clear antecedents.17 So far they have been found only on citadels, and only at sites identified by inscription as being created by an Urartian king. Temples of this plan disap- pear with the Urartian state.18

Rock-cut niches frequently are associated with inscriptions and also make their first appearance in the reign of IJpuini. The most impressive of these is the Meher Kapisi, near Van. It frames a text that ordains sacrifices to a long list of gods and goddesses and serves as the basic document for the study of the Urartian pantheon. Apparently these niches were also regarded as gates, and thus were places of worship.19 They may have had other functions-the annals of Sarduri II, for example, were carved on a stele set up in a niche in the citadel rock at Van, and the inscription continues on the walls of the niche itself. While one cannot prove that all of these have royal associ- ations, none is demonstrably nonroyal and the effort involved in hewing so much stone argues against creation by individuals unassociated with mechanism of social power.

Haldi, the supreme god of the Urartians, is not unknown before the rise of the Urartian state,20 but he is comparatively obscure. His cult seems originally to have been centered in the mountainous area south of what was eventually to become Urartu; and Musasir, the chief cult center, was never under the direct control of Urartian kings.21 Moreover, the temple of Haldi located there, which was depicted in a relief of Sargon II, is not a typical Urartian tower temple (Kleiss 1989).

Salvini has pointed out that Haldi is conspicu- ously absent in the earliest Urartian inscriptions- the cult was actually adopted by the state under I'puini, perhaps as something analogous to the cult of Assur (Salvini 1989: 94). Urartian kings seem to have elevated Haldi to a national god, and created architecture to spread a cult that was distinctively their own creation, not something that already existed (Salvini 1987: 405). The cult of Haldi appears so quickly and disappears so thoroughly that it cannot have been very deeply embraced by the population of Asia Minor.

Burial Practices

If Urartu were in fact culturally uniform, one might expect to see more or less uniform burial practices, with allowances for wealth and status differ- ences. Instead, one finds considerable variety. Both inhumation and cremation were practiced in the central part of Urartu, which is the only part of the kingdom for which there is abundant cemetery evidence. Numerous options in grave architecture were exer- cised, ranging from publicly visible, multicham- bered rock-cut tombs to simple urnfield cremation burials with each individual in a single jar, unaccom- panied by grave goods (Ogin 1978). None of these practices is exclusively Urartian; indeed, most find parallels in Assyria, although cremation is much less common there (Ogtin 1978: 676-77).

The most elaborately constructed tombs do appear to have ties to the state in the form of associated inscribed evidence. For example, the annals of Ar- gi'ti are carved outside the entrance to the Horhor chambers in the cliff at Van; a damaged inscription of Rusa II (KOnig 1955-1957: no. 127; Melikilvili 1960: no. 279) is carved in the living rock beside the entrance to a tomb chamber at Kale K6yi/Mazgert (OgUin 1978: 642); and an inscription mentioning Argi'ti II was found in a subterranean tomb at Altin- tepe (Ozgfiq 1969: 70).

Many of the unprovenienced artifacts of putative Urartian origin that appear on the antiquities market undoubtedly come from looted graves that are not royal, but still reasonably wealthy. One would like to know more of the social position of the occupants of these tombs and their relationship to the state, but there have been few legitimate excavations to provide contextual information. One of the few chamber tombs actually found intact, Kammergrab I (Felsen H) at Adilcevaz, apparently served a family. Grave




goods and cremated remains in jars were casually pushed to the back, while the front of the chamber was kept clear for the most recently deceased. Grave goods included belts, metal bowls, silver pins, bronze bracelets, and a golden fibula (Ogin 1978: 660-63). The vast quantities of similar items turning up without provenience on the antiquities market suggests that such tombs were not uncommon in Urartu.

The presumably much greater numbers of burials that were simple inhumations, or single-jar burials of cremated remains, offer much less temptation to tomb robbers. Although one cannot argue that all chamber tombs were closely tied to the central government- as opposed to local nobility, for example-one can at least be certain that there was great variety in the treatment of the dead in Urartu, and that a small percentage of the burials is supplying the vast majority of the known grave goods.

INCA ANALOGIES

While a comparison leaping over two millennia, two hemispheres, and a vast cultural distance cannot be called upon to do more than suggest potentialties, the Inca empire-in which the concept of a state assemblage has received considerable scrutiny-pro- vides some interesting resonances with Urartu. Inca paradigms are enhanced by ethnographic observations unavailable for the ancient Near East.

Both states were confronted with the problem of extending their authority over mountainous terrain, and in both cases a physical manifestation of the im- perium can be seen in its creation of a road network with adjunct settlements. The roads enabled information to move quickly between the capital and outlying regions, and facilitated movement of the army. Inca enclaves are normally classed as either tambus (small way stations) or administrative centers, both of which have fairly clear correspondences in the hierarchy of Urartian fortresses. The importance of the state-created administrative centers vis-a-vis exist- ing pre-Inca population concentrations varied somewhat according to differing local conditions:

In regions where a suitable political mechanism was not in place the Inca probably attempted to cre- ate one. Administrative centers were built from the ground up and the ceramics associated with them made under state supervision incorporating large numbers of Cuzco attributes. Such ceramics were probably limited largely to the state centers and the direct lines of political authority (Morris 1988: 245).

Control of manpower through conscription and corvee is generally taken to be one of the corner- stones of the imperial economy among the Inca. At Huanuco Viejo it is clear that the same people used both the state assemblage and local artifacts that de- rived from pre-Inca traditions. There are few state artifacts in the local villages and few local ceramics in the state settlements, but records indicate the manpower for the state settlements came from these very villages. When people performed the corv6e, they temporarily put their own artifacts aside (Morris and Thompson 1970).

In Urartu there are hints of a similar concern for

manpower, although documentation of corvee is lacking. Certainly the amount of effort that went into the construction of fortresses was enormous, and one

gets an idea of the considerable manpower resources a single king could muster from the fact that Kef Kalesi, Bastam, Toprakkale, Karmir Blur, and Ayanis were all initiated by Rusa II (Zimansky 1995: 94- 100). The booty lists that conclude the annual entries in the two surviving sets of annals make it clear that the number of captives was the variable by which the success of a campaign was measured.

Inca administrative centers tended to emphasize storage, but this was not geared to any extensive re- distributive economy. Goods were stored for the use of the state and the fortress itself, not for feeding local populations (Morris 1972). The productivity associated with them was directed toward creating portable wealth, for the most part in the form of tex- tiles; but metalworking was also very much prized. D'Altroy and Earle (1985) argue that the latter was a device for converting manpower, their primary re- source, into a form of wealth that could be easily moved over long distances.

Here again, one can find much of interest for Urartu. Certainly storage is one of the most impressive archaeological features of the major Urartian enclaves, and it is a peculiarity of Urartian building inscriptions that royally sponsored storehouses are quite well attested (Zimansky 1985: 73-75). What was the reason for the production of so many decorative bronze artifacts, particularly those with the royal name upon them? Could they have circulated as symbols of connection to the sources of power?

Another point of convergence is the settlement history of Inca state establishments and Urartian fortresses. Both were normally erected on a new ground and both, as a rule, were abandoned when the state that created them disappeared. In short, they were an




artificial element in the settlement pattern that existed only because of a certain power configuration and the people who inherited the territory of the fallen empire had no further use for them.

I do not wish to push this analogy too far, nor do I mean to convey the impression that the Inca and Urartian empires were each ruled with a single tem-

plate. The Inca state was clearly jury-rigged, with different means of transmitting authority in different areas (Malpass 1993), and there is no reason to believe that Urartu was not. The essential point I wish to make is that if we had excavated only the Inca state settlements, we would have a very different concept of the unity of that kingdom than we do, and that is

essentially the position we are in with Urartu.

CONCLUSIONS

The Inca analogy and the concept of a state assemblage help to explain how a relatively small ruling group can constitute an overwhelming archaeological presence in an empire populated by peoples of different and longstanding cultural traditions. When the authority structure that sustains the imperial as-

semblage disappears, the active use and production of the assemblage is instantly suspended. Militarism was manifest in all aspects of what we regard as Urartian culture, and the speed with which its distinctive

temples, fortress architecture, inscriptions, and pottery both spread over a broad territory and then van- ished leaving an almost imperceptible cultural legacy, speaks for a government-issued assemblage that was

only a veneer. There were obviously many different kinds of ar-

tifacts in use in Urartu, but what gives the assemblage coherence is this association with the central government. It is an interesting contrast to, for ex-

ample, the archaeology of the Hittite empire, where detecting material evidence of the presence of the central authority in, for example, northern Syria is often impossible. Urartu was remarkable for creating and maintaining political unity under a ruling ethos. We have come to think of it as something else-a uniform culture-precisely because our understanding from on high has not penetrated below the cloud level of that ethos. It is time to excavate habitation sites in various parts of the empire to see how diverse or uniform it really was.

NOTES

The dates for Sarduri I are bracketed by Assyrian royal inscriptions. Up to his 15th year, Shalmaneser III (858-824 B.C.) campaigned against a certain Arme of Urartu, who is not mentioned in any native sources and does not appear to have been a member of the later Urartian royal line. In his 27th year, Shalmaneser III names his opponent as Seduri, who is generally taken to be Sarduri I, son of Lutipri. Sarduri's successor, is mentioned by Shalmaneser's successor,

?amri-Adad V

(823-811 B.C.) in his second campaign, which probably took place around 818 B.C. (Zimansky 1985: 49-50).

2The date of Urartu's demise is controversial. For many years, it has been assumed to have occurred in the first de- cade of the sixth century B.C. (Diakonoff 1951), but Kroll (1984) has argued strongly for a date some four decades earlier.

3For a discussion of Urartian geography from which this argument is drawn, see Zimansky 1985: 9-31.

4For the part of the area now controlled by Turkey, sta- tistics are conveniently available in Dewdney 1971: 76- 79, 102. Other parts of Urartu are comparable.

5This long-accepted date (Dyson 1965: 203-5) has been challenged by Medvedskaya (1988; 1989; 1991), who argues that Sargon II of Assyria sacked the city in the course of his eighth campaign (714 B.C.). Her arguments are re-

jected by Dyson and Muscarella (1989). The inscriptional evidence that the Urartians controlled this area in the reign of Ispuini and Menua, buttressed by texts in living rock near Ushnu and at Ta'tepe, at the beginning of the eighth century is irrefutable. If Medvedskaya were correct, there would be even more internal diversity in Urartu than I dare argue.

6For the relationship between these terms see Salvini 1967. Both were reasonably fluid designations used by the Assyrians for people living north of them, shifting their

geographical referent over time. The Urartians apparently never used the name Urartu for their kingdom. On one occasion only, in the Assyrian version of the bilingual Topzawa inscription, they used a logogram frequently read "Urartu" in Assyria, in a position corresponding to where "Biainili" is written out syllabically in the Urartian text (Melikilvili 1960: n. 264, Assyrian 1.27; K6nig 1955- 1957: no. 122 ? 12; Pecorella and Salvini 1984: 84-86). Since the Assyrian term Urartu has shifting connotations, and Biainili is very closely identified with the state from which all our artifactual evidence comes, there is something to be said for changing our own terminology accord- ingly, but the conventions of scholarship are too well established to make this a realistic option.

7Much confusion might have been avoided if this term, or perhaps its modern cognate, Vannic, were regularly used




for the Urartian state. Then the distinction between longstanding cultural continuities and the polity of the ninth to the seventh century B.C. would be highlighted. By using Urartian for both, we are drawn into the same sort of com- plications that vex the term Hittite, which was so broadly and erratically applied in the course of a millennium that defining it still makes a good college examination question. Unfortunately, after some vacillation in the 19th century, scholarly literature seems to have settled on the Assyrian name for the kingdom.

8For a summary of booty lists, see Zimansky 1985: 58. 9Diakonoff (1985) identifies 20 Hurro-Urartian cog-

nates in Old Armenian, a relatively modest number in a

language saturated with borrowings and one that presumably reflects other Hurro-Urartian languages and dialects than the one specifically associated with Biainili.

10The great kings of the Hittite Empire had Hurrian names before they came to the throne. Salvini (1987: 399- 400) suggests that the Urartian kingdom may have originally consolidated around a foreigner, whose name, Aramu, means "the Aramean."

11 Harrak (1993) argued that they continued to exist as an ethnic entity for more than a thousand years. The only evidence for this, however, is the vague recollection of names based on Urartu and Ararat in Greek, Syriac, and Arabic sources; but this was not a native term and it did not carry a precise linguistic connotation. For example, in the Behistun inscription of Darius I, Ura'tu of the Akkadian version is equated with Armenia in the Old Persian (Kent 1953: 171).

121 have elaborated my views on the reasons for Xe- nophon's ignorance elsewhere (Zimansky, in press). The disappearance of the Urartian presence was enhanced by physical characteristics of decaying mudbrick on one- period mountain fortresses and by the time gap between its demise and the arrival of a new empire, which prevented cooption of any of its local institutions; but the primary ar-

gument is the one advanced here: Urartu was a government more than a culture and did not have deep roots.

13The mundane findings in the settlement beside the citadel at Karmir Blur (Martirosjan 1961) are rarely cited in discussions of the Urartian assemblage, particularly in comparison with the spectacular results of excavations within the citadel of Karmir Blur. The houses unearthed in the settlement at Bastam are few in number, well constructed, and did not contain much in the way of small finds.

14R. H. Dyson, Hasanlu's excavator, originally did not regard the Urartians as a significant presence there, except as agents of destruction. He set out the chronology of the relevant periods as follows: 1) Hasanlu IVB, with its gray- ware, Iron II tradition, ending in a violent conflagration ca. 800 B.C. at the hands of the Urartians; 2) a squatter occupation in the ruins, from which artifacts are rare (IVA); 3) a period of abandonment that was long enough for considerable erosion of the site to take place, coinciding with the return of Assyrian power to the area (presumably Sar-

gon's campaign of 714 B.C.); and 4) a seventh-century settlement, badly eroded, in which a burnished and painted "Triangle Ware" appears in small quantity (Dyson 1965: 202-5).

In the early 1970s, however, Dyson recognized that the foundations of what he had previously assumed to be the city wall of Hasanlu IVC-B were, in fact, cut into those levels from above, and he redated the wall to Hasanlu IIIB

(Dyson 1989: 5-6). The form of the wall, with its alternat-

ing larger and smaller buttresses, is very much in Urartian

style. Although Dyson would now date the wall to the seventh century B.C., by Kleiss's classification it is eighth cen-

tury. Seventh-century walls had more uniform sizes and

placement of buttresses (Kleiss 1976: 35-36). Also prob- lematic is the consequent contemporaneity with Triangle Ware, which Kroll has argued must postdate the Urartian period, since it does not occur at other Urartian fortresses in Iran but does appear post-Urartian in squatter levels in the settlement at Bastam (Kroll 1975). Muscarella's (1978) arguments in favor of the seventh century date for Triangle Ware might now be harmonized with Kroll's arguments, since Kroll would date the end of the Urartian kingdom in the third quarter of the seventh century B.C. (Kroll 1984); an Urartian wall would have to be earlier, and we are still confronted with an Urartian wall and no Urartian pottery.

15For a list of the tablets known in 1980, all of which come from Toprakkale, Karmir Blur, and Bastam, see Zimansky 1985: 81-83. Detailed studies of these tablets are given in Diakonoff 1963 and Salvini 1979.

16This title is of uncertain significance. Diakonoff suggested that it meant "prince" (1963: 62) but the etymology of the term, itself not entirely certain, is hardly enough to establish this. It is significant that known bearers of the title have names and patronymics that were frequently used by rulers of Urartu, like Sarduri, Rusa, and Argi'ti. For a discussion, see Zimansky 1985: 84-85; Salvini 1988: 126-27.

17It has been argued that these stem from a tradition that goes back to Bronze Age migdol temples in the southern Levant, transmitted via Carchemish to the north (Us- sishkin 1991). Kleiss's argument that four corner towers are the essential element of the structure (1989) would vi- tiate this conclusion.

18Stronach (1967) put forward the thesis that these buildings were imitated by Achaemenian rulers at Pasar- gadae and Naqsh-i-Rustam, and since the Achaemenians inherited Urartian territory it is by no means implausible. Kleiss, however, has argued that there is a fundamental difference in structure between Urartian susi temples and the Achaemenian towers in that the corner buttresses of the latter are purely decorative, whereas the reinforced corners of the former are essential architectural elements in a building that consisted of four attached corner towers (Kleiss 1989).

19The logogram KAmeg ("gates") is used with the de- monstrative to designate the inscription itself. Since the stonework around the edges of the niche, which in this case




is a sort of false door, resembles the frame of tower temple doors, Tarhan and Sevin (1975) have argued that the doors and niches probably served the same function and had similar proportions, enabling them to suggest a height for the temples.

20Haldi is mentioned in proper names of the Middle Assyrian period, but little else is known of him, and there is no justification for assuming that the people who bear these names, which are otherwise Akkadian, are Urartians.

21 The king of Assyria apparently felt he had the right to deny the Urartian king's access to Musasir. A letter survives in which the king of Musasir protests to him that he is powerless to stop either the king of Assyria or the king of Urartu from coming to the temple (Lanfranchi and Parpola 1990: 111-12). This clearly demonstrates that the Assyrian king did not regard the Urartian king as sovereign there, although the site did play some role in coronations.

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The Archaeology of Empire in Ancient Anatolia || Urartian Material Culture As State Assemblage: An Anomaly in the Archaeology of Empire