TEHRAN -- Seventy Urartian inscriptions have recently been retranslated in a study project at Iran’s Research Institute for Cultural Heritage and Tourism, an expert at the institute, Maryam Dara, said on Wednesday.
Urartu was an ancient kingdom of southwest Asia centered in the mountainous region southeast of the Black Sea and southwest of the Caspian Sea.
The country enjoyed considerable political power in the Middle East in the 9th and 8th centuries BC.
Previous studies on the inscriptions, which had been inscribed on rocks, metal artifacts, stone and clay tablets, seals, and several other objects, will be published with the new the new information that experts gathered about the inscriptions, Dara said in a meeting held at the National Museum of Iran.
She said that about 1700 Urartian inscriptions have been identified so far in the regions where Urartians ruled.
Only 70 of the inscriptions were discovered in the Iranian ancient sites, she stated.
The National Museum of Iran is one of few of the world’s museums that possess objects bearing Urartian inscriptions, Dara added.
The Urartians wrote in hieroglyphic and cuneiform scripts. They spoke in Urartian, Assyrian and Hurrian, a language spoken by the Hurrians, an earlier Middle Eastern people.
MMS/YAW
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