Читать книгу A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire, 2 Volume Set - Группа авторов - Страница 188

Sarduri's son Išpuini (end of the ninth century BCE) introduced the use of the indigenous Urartian language, the language of the dynasty. He left us some building inscriptions celebrating the construction of a system of fortresses around Van (CTU A 2). Very soon he involved his son and heir apparent Minua in his military expeditions directed to far‐lying countries such as the region north of the river Araxes, the basin of Lake Urmia, and the province of Nakhičevan.

The two kings campaigned against the tribes of Luša, Katarza, and Uiterui in today’s Armenia (CTU A 3‐4–A 3‐7) and in the modern territory of Nakhičevan (CTU A 3‐8).

King Išpuini, “Lord of the city of 瞈ušpa,” achieved the final unification into one state of all the peoples settled over a wide territory of the Armenian highland, and also the annexation of the territory east of the Zagros mountains, the modern territory of Iranian Azerbaijan. We have no idea of the ethnic composition of the new state. All we can say for the Urartians, who were the driving force and center of the kingdom, is that according to the language of the royal inscriptions, they were neither Semites nor Indo‐Europeans. They were related only to the Hurrians who are attested from the end of the third to the beginning of the first millennium BCE in many regions of the Near East (Salvini 2000). However, the element binding the peoples unified in the Urartian kingdom was not only the use of the Urartian language in progressive substitution of the Assyrian one.