Urartu

To date, there is no accurate information about the origin of the Urartians. It is known that the Urartians, along with the Akkadians and Hurrites , belonged to the Armenoid group of populations ^[6] . It is assumed that the possible spread of urartans along the Armenian Highlands occurred from the Revanduz region (in the territory of today's north-western Iran, Western Azerbaijan ), where the ancient city of Musashir was located ^{[7] [8] [9] [10]} . It is likely that the ancient Urartian city of Musashir was located on the territory of the original settlement of this tribe ^{[7] [10]} . Since the end of the II millennium BC. e. to VI - II centuries BC e. Urarats along with other peoples participated in the process of the formation of the Armenian nationality ^[11] . Thus, the Armenians are the successors of the physical ^{[3] [12] [13]} and cultural ^[4] component of the entire ancient population of the highlands, primarily the Hurrians, Urartians ^{[12] [14] [15]} and Luvians, who made up the main genetic component modern Armenians ^[15] . It is also believed that the Cimmerians and Scythians took part in the ethnogenesis of Armenians ^[16] .

Urartian language has no descendants ^[12] . Today, there is a consensus among scholars on the direct connection between the Urartian language and the Hurrian language ^{[17] [18] [19]} . Although several unencrypted inscriptions with the use of Urartian ideograms have come down to us, mainly the Urartians used a significantly simplified form of Assyrian cuneiform writing. For example, when borrowing many ambiguous Assyrian ideograms were used by the Urartians only in one sense, various semantic nuances of the Assyrian signs were lost ^[20] . Of the currently known about 500 cuneiform tablets, approximately 350-400 root words are distinguished, most of which are Urartian, and some are borrowed from other languages. To date, it has been determined that in the Armenian language there are a large number of root words common with the Uratian language (more than 70 root words) ^[21] . About 170 root words were found in the languages ​​of the Nakh-Dagestan group, which includes about 60 different languages ^[22]

The religion of the Urartians is closely connected with the religions of Mesopotamia : the Urartians had a large pantheon of deities, many of which are clearly borrowed from the religions of the states of Mesopotamia ( Sumer , Akkad and Assyria ) ^[1] . In Urartu, the practice of sacrifices was widespread, in which mainly bulls and sheep participated. There are also traces of human sacrifices from prisoners of other nations ^[23] . Various rituals of worshiping deities, as well as sacrificial procedures, usually took place in rooms hollowed out in rocks resembling the tops of ziggurats built in Mesopotamia, used in a similar way. In one of these hollowed-out rooms, a tablet was found listing 79 Urartian deities and the number of animals that needed to be sacrificed to each of them ^{[23] [24]} .