11 Urartu

Urartu

However, a power vacuum was to allow a new and powerful Hurrian state whose rulers spoke Urartian, similar to old Hurrian, to arise. The Middle Assyrian Empire, after destroying the Hurri-Mitanni Empire, the Hittite Empire, defeating the Phrygians and Elamites, conquering Babylon, the Arameans of Syria, northern Ancient Iran and Canaan and forcing theEgyptians out of much of the near east, itself went into a century of relative decline from the latter part of the 11th century BCE. The Urartians were thus able to impose themselves around Lake Van and Mount Ararat, forming the powerful Kingdom of Urartu. During the 11th and 10th centuries BCE, the kingdom eventually encompassed a region stretching from the Caucasus Mountains in the north, to the borders of northern Assyria and northern Ancient Iran in the south, and controlled much of eastern Anatolia.

Assyria began to once more expand from circa. 935 BCE, and Urartu and Assyria became fierce rivals. Urartu successfully repelled Assyrian expansionism for a time, however from the 9th to 7th century BCE it progressively lost territory to Assyria. It was to survive until the 7th century BCE, by which time it was conquered fully into the Neo Assyrian Empire (911–605 BCE).

The Assyrian Empire collapsed from 620 to 605 BCE, after a series of brutal internal civil wars weakened it to such an extent that a coalition of its former vassals; the Medes,Persians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Scythians and Cimmerians were able to attack and gradually destroy it. Urartu was ravaged by marauding Indo-European speaking Scythian and Cimmerian raiders during this time, with its vassal king (together with the king of neighbouring Lydia) vainly pleading with the beleaguered Assyrian king for help. After the fall of Assyria, Urartu came under the control of the Median Empire and then its successor Persian Empire during the 6th century BCE. During the late 6th century BCE a new wave of Indo-European speakers migrated over the Caucasus into Urartian lands, these being the Armenians, and the region became part of the Armenian Orontid Dynasty. The Hurri-Urartians seem to have disappeared from history after this, almost certainly being absorbed into the Indo-European Armenian population