Murat Nagis

Actual Archaeology Murat Nagis

We start a new year by welcoming an important guest: the Urar­tians, the mining craftsmen of Anatolia.

About 3000 years ago, the Near East was under the control of the Assyrian Empire, who was the most powerful group in the region with its trade routes, harbors and all of its area of exploitation. The Urartian Kingdom, who settled around the Lake Van basin, was the only political organization to rival the Assyrian Empire and played an important role in the socio-cultural and socio-political development of the region. They managed to adapt a well-equipped central state system and developed a perfect bureaucratic state system for unset­tled societies. They were also the creator of a homogenous cultural structure varying from architecture to handicrafts.

One of the most problematic fields in archaeological research is the Urartians, because of the meaning of the political identities and spheres which are being attributed to the region. Thus, we aimed to evaluate the Urartians rather objectively.

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