Revision of the Post-Urartian Deposits of Bastam Fortress

Subject Areas : Interdisciplinary studies

Mansour Hamdollahzadeh ¹ , Mehrdad Malekzadeh ² , Maryam Dara ³

1 - Ph.D. Candidate in Pre-Islam History of Iran, Department of History and Archaeology, Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran.
2 - Assistant Professor, Iranian Centre for Archaeological Research, Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism, Tehran, Iran.
3 - Assistant Professor, Linguistics, Texts and Inscriptions Research Center, Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism, Tehran, Iran.

Received: 2023-05-23 Accepted : 2023-07-15 Published : 2023-08-23

Keywords: Media, urartu, Bastam, post-Urartian deposits, the collapse of Urartu,

Abstract :

Studies on the Urartu Civilization took a serious form from the beginning of the 19th century when Schulz was sent by the Asian Society around Lake Van. As a result of Schulz’s discoveries and other studies, Urartu rose from silence for centuries. Decoding cuneiform lines helped researchers in other fields read Urartu inscriptions. Urartu research in Northwest Iran, with the discovery of an inscription related to the second rulers (680-646 BC) near the village of Bastam, located in the north of Lake Urmia, drew the attention of the Urartu research community to Iran. Archaeological excavations by Wolfram Kleiss started in 1967 and continued until 1978. The study of the post-Urartian deposits in the Bastam area and its comparison with the Urartian deposits in other Urartian sites, including eastern Anatolia, indicate the Urartian collapse from the time of the collapse of Assyria by the Medes, and even before that. The Urartian lands in Northwest Iran were occupied by the Medes at that time. The impact of the post-Urartian deposits found in the investigated sites is one of the objectives of this research. Historical, analytical, and descriptive methods were used for this research, and the information collection method was the library. Finally, based on the investigation of the post-Urartian deposits and historical analysis, it was concluded that the collapse of Urartu started in about 635 BC, and according to the cultural and architectural works found from Bastam and Sansem Along with other sites in eastern Anatolia, the eastern lands of Urartu were occupied by Medes and Iranian tribes.

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