Armenia, Travels and Studies (Volume 2 of 2) / The Turkish Provinces

by H. F. B. Lynch

II.—The Ancient Empire of Van

Deep in the curve of the bay, which with minor indentations extends from the promontory and island of Ktutz to Artemid, lies the isolated rock with the mediæval city at its southern foot and the long line of gardens stretching eastwards across the plain towards the slopes of Mount Varag. These various features are disclosed or suggested in my illustration ([Fig. 123]), which was taken from those distant slopes. But before I invite my reader to explore the ancient township, something must be said upon a topic which here fascinates the traveller’s interest equally with the characteristics of the strange lake beside which he sojourns. I have already on several occasions remarked upon the insignificance of the human element in these Armenian landscapes. At Van for the first time we become sensible of a different impression, derived, not indeed from the peoples who now inhabit the country, but from the monuments of a remote civilisation which abound in the neighbourhood, and of which the spirit is wafted towards us across the ages. Here the massive substructures of an aqueduct, there the Cyclopean masonry of the fragment of a wall tell the tale of man’s mastery over Nature, and insensibly conjure the vision of the plains crossed by great roads, the rivers spanned by bridges, the fertilising waters brought from afar. Our curiosity is enhanced by the inscriptions in the cuneiform character which are deeply incised in the hard stone of the various works. But it rises to the degree of fervour when we survey the rock of Van, clearly recognised as the very navel of this old polity. Its precipitous sides are quite a library of inscriptions, carved upon their face in spaces polished by human hands. Square-cut shadows disclose the entrances of chambers hewn into the calcareous mass at a considerable height above the level of the plain. And something in the spirit of the works and in the choice of situation at once distinguishes them from the rock dwellings, such as those at Vardzia near Akhalkalaki, with which we have become familiar during the course of our journey south. It is evident that in their original purpose they were only a feature of a large design which mocks the scale of the existing fortifications.

Fig. 123. Van from the Slopes of Mount Varag.

By what people were they inscribed, these regular lines of elegant characters; and who were the kings who sojourned upon this delightful platform, which seems to have been raised by a freak of Nature in the midst of the plain with its westerly extremity almost reaching into the lake? Armenians, Persians, Arabs, Seljuks, Tartars, Turkomans, Turks—all have come and passed or stayed, and none have been able to return an answer to the question invited by the writings on the citadel. They have had recourse to the resources of Oriental legend, or have been content with the explanation that these inscriptions are talismans, sealing treasures long since buried in the heart of the rock. The fame of the place is widely spread over all the surrounding country, forming as it does the kernel of a populous city on the confines of Armenia and Kurdistan. It has been described by the national historian of the Armenians in terms which in many respects portray the existing features in a singularly faithful manner. Moses of Khorene attributes the works to an Assyrian queen Semiramis, and relates on the authority of Mar Abas Katina and from Chaldæan sources the story of her fruitless passion for the reigning king of Armenia, Ara, and of the death of that monarch while resisting her endeavours to obtain his person by force. The queen is said to have accompanied her armies to the northern kingdom, and to have founded the city as a summer residence for her luxurious court. The tale is beset by incidents which reveal its fabulous nature; and the historian informs us that several such legends relating to Semiramis were current among his own countrymen.[17] At the same time he deplores the lack of culture among his ancestors, to which he ascribes the absence of native annals.[18]

It has been reserved for our own age to penetrate the mystery, which, indeed, is only now as I write being dispelled. Quite early in the nineteenth century, while the future excavators of the Assyrian cities were either unborn or were still in their nurseries, a young French student, Jean Antoine Saint Martin, the son of a tradesman in Paris, was fired by the account of the inscriptions at Van contained in the pages of Moses of Khorene.[19] Mainly through his efforts the French Government—always solicitous of the interests of culture—were induced to despatch a mission to Armenia in 1827, engaging the services of a young German professor, Friedrich Eduard Schulz. The first report of the explorer was published by Saint Martin in 1828.[20] By a piece of misfortune, happily rare in the annals of travel in these countries, Schulz was murdered by the Kurds in 1829. But his papers were recovered and brought to Paris, where they seem to have awaited in obscurity the awakening of interest in Oriental antiquities which was consequent upon the discoveries of Burnouf, of Lassen, and of Rawlinson. An instructive memoir, together with copies of forty-two inscriptions at Van and in the neighbourhood, appeared under his name in 1840 in the pages of the Journal Asiatique. Schulz’s copies have been found to be in the main remarkably accurate, although he had not the smallest knowledge of the language in which they were composed. Little by little the contents of the tablets in a similar character which are spread over Persia yielded up the secrets which they had so long maintained; and the excavations in Mesopotamia furnished Orientalists with the necessary material to enable them to understand the languages of the cuneiform inscriptions furnished in such profusion by the buried cities of the plains. But with the exception of the great tablet in three columns and as many tongues which is such a conspicuous object on the southern face of the rock of Van (Schulz, Nos. IX., X., and XI.), and an inscription on a stone in the remains of a wall at its base (Schulz, No. I.), none of the Vannic records agreed with the syllabaries already discovered, or could be translated into any known language. Schulz had indeed perceived that the first of these monuments contained the names and titles of Xerxes, son of Darius; and when Layard visited Van and took new copies in 1850, it had come to be recognised that this tablet of Xerxes resembled other Achæmenian inscriptions, and was very nearly word for word the same as those of this Persian monarch at Hamadan and Persepolis.[21] The characters upon the stone in the wall were exactly the same as those of Assyrian writings; and, although the inscription had not been satisfactorily deciphered when Layard’s book was published, that investigator was able to discern that the language also was Assyrian, while that of all the remainder, in spite of the similarity in character, was peculiar to Van, and baffled decipherment. In the meanwhile other equally perplexing inscriptions had been discovered in districts of the tableland remote from the city of Semiramis; and a partially successful endeavour had been made by the English Orientalist Hincks to read the mysterious texts.[22] But the problem remained unsolved for very many years, while the stock of inscriptions collected by travellers in various parts of Armenia was continually increasing. A great step forward was made by the discovery by M. Stanislas Guyard, announced in 1880,[23] that the phrase at the conclusion of many of the Vannic texts represented the imprecatory formula found in the same place in their Assyrian and Achæmenian counterparts; and this enabled Professor Sayce of Oxford to proceed rapidly with their decipherment, upon which he had been engaged for some years.[24] Mainly as the result of his labours we are now enabled to gather their meaning, and to add a new language and a new people to the museum of the ancient Oriental world. Since he has written, the number of known Vannic texts has been doubled by the German scholars and travellers, Professor Lehmann and Dr. Belck. They have also, in a series of most instructive articles, called up the vanished civilisation from the grave.[25]

We now know who built Van and by whom these tablets were engraved upon the face of the citadel. As the horizon opens with each advance in our acquisition of the vocabulary and with each addition to the catalogues of texts, we are introduced to no obscure dynasty which slept secure behind the mountains, but to a splendid monarchy which for at least two centuries rivalled the claims of Assyria to the dominion of the ancient world. The native designation of the imperial people was that of Khaldians or children of Khaldis, just as the Assyrians reflect the name of their god, Assur. The constitution of the State was that of a theocracy in which Khaldis occupied the supreme place. The company of the remaining deities were spoken of as his ministers, and the whole land appears to have borne his name.[26] It was the wrath of Khaldis that was invoked against whosoever should destroy the tablets; and with him were coupled in a kind of Trinity the god of the air and the sun-god. The seat of Khaldis was the city of Dhuspas, the modern Van; and all conquests were made by the king in his name. Dhuspas was the capital of the territory of Biaina, from which the king derived his title. We can readily trace through literature the corruption of the word Biaina into the existing form, Van; it figures in the shape of Buana in the writings of Ptolemy and in that of Iban as late as Cedrenus.[27] In the course of time it had come to be applied to the city; while the name of the city was transferred to the province in which it was placed, and became the Dosp or Tosp of Armenian writers.[28] The contemporaries and rivals of the Vannic monarchs, the rulers of Assyria, styled the northern kingdom Urardhu or Urarthu; and this is the same name that appears in the Bible in the familiar form of Ararat. They make no mention of the local appellation of Biaina; although it seems possible that the district called Bitanu or Bitani in the Assyrian inscriptions may be connected with the latter name.[29] On the other hand there can be little doubt that the Turuspa of the Assyrian annals is the Dhuspas of the monuments of Van.

The Khaldians take their place in this new chapter of history at least as early as the latter half of the ninth century before Christ. Their language was neither Semitic nor Indo-European; and it is therefore impossible to connect them either with the Assyrians, who were Semites, or with the Armenians, who belong to the Indo-European family. They ruled over the tableland which is now Armenia before the Armenians had appeared upon the scene; and it was the movement of races with which was connected the Armenian immigration that seems ultimately to have occasioned their dispersal and the overthrow of their power. Their dominion appears to have been due in no small degree to the happy choice of Van as their capital. Assyrian history ranges beyond the probable date of that foundation, to a period when Urardhu was perhaps an obscure province in the neighbourhood of the modern Rowanduz in Kurdistan. The Assyrian armies in their marches northwards were opposed by a confederacy of petty princes whose country is called Nairi in the Assyrian inscriptions. That loose term evidently embraced a considerable portion of the Armenian tableland; for it was in the plain of Melazkert that the Assyrian king, Tiglath-Pileser I. (c. 1100 B.C.),[30] overthrew the united forces of the kings of Nairi and erected a memorial tablet which has been preserved to the present day.[31] In a restricted sense the name Nairi was applied by the Assyrians to the province about the middle and upper course of the Great Zab; and the lakes of Van and Urmi, between which that territory was situated, were both known as the Upper seas or seas of the land of Nairi, Lake Van being sometimes distinguished as the Upper sea of the West, and Lake Urmi as the Eastern or even as the Lower sea.[32] The kingdom of Urardhu is for the first time mentioned by the Assyrians in the reign of Ashur-nasir-pal (885–860 B.C.); but it is not before the ensuing reign of Shalmaneser II. (860–825 B.C.) that we have certain evidence of an Assyrian army marching into Armenia to attack the territories not of a league of Nairi princes but of a monarch of Urardhu. This prince, of whom no records have been discovered in Armenia, is called Arame. His capital, of which the site is at present unknown, but which certainly lay to the north of Lake Van, bears the name of Arzasku. Arame was signally defeated in 857 or 856 B.C. and abandoned his capital. His cities as far as the sources of the Euphrates (Murad?) were taken by Shalmaneser in 845 or 844 B.C. When next we hear of a king of Urardhu we are able to recognise in his name the earliest of the rulers who appear in the Vannic texts. And this monarch, Sarduris the First, the contemporary of the same Shalmaneser and his antagonist about 833 B.C., was the founder of the fortress of Van.

No better position for a stronghold against a Power operating from the lowlands in the south could have been discovered by the builders of an empire on the Armenian plains. In the later phases of the history of Armenia the movements of empires and peoples have generally proceeded between the east and the west. Against such currents the city of Van composes a minor obstacle, which they avoid on their more normal and northerly course. Always secure with a fleet on the lake and the passes of Mount Varag fortified, the true military value of the place only advances into first-rate importance when the centres of the hostile forces lie in Mesopotamia. It is screened in that direction by perhaps the most impenetrable section of the entire outer or Iranian arc of the peripheral mountains which support the tableland.[33] Moreover, the circumstance that the arc has snapped and sent out a splinter into the districts on the north, represented by the mountains in which the Great Zab has its source, and, further north, by the elevated but not impassable waterparting between the basin of Lake Van and that of the Araxes, has had the effect of concealing Van within the fork of a twofold parapet where it reposes with its back against the complex barrier and defies attack from the south or south-east. The approach from the west along the southern shore of the lake is interrupted by the spurs of the great range; and the Assyrian armies were compelled to make the détour by the plain of Melazkert, gaining the plateau by one of the passes north of Diarbekr and leaving it upon their return home through one of the passages east of Rowanduz where the sea of mountains settles down to a regular course. Such an immense circuit through a hostile country necessitated resources on a vast scale, the existence of which among the Assyrians fills the mind with admiration when we contemplate the squalor of the Oriental empires of the present day. But there can be no doubt that all the advantages lay on the side of their northern adversaries, to whom was offered a reasonable chance of annihilating their hosts, or, in the event of defeat, the secure alternative of shutting themselves up in their capital and there awaiting the passing over of the storm. These considerations serve to explain the comparative immunity and the rapid development of the empire of the successors of Sarduris the First; at a time, too, when Assyria was governed by such warlike monarchs as Shamshi-Ramman and Ramman-nirari.[34] It was reserved for Tiglath-Pileser the Third to beard the lion in his den, and to appear before the walls of Van. But even this gigantic figure failed to capture the citadel, although he appears to have destroyed the garden town at its feet (735 B.C.).[35] The ultimate effects of his campaign may be measured by the fact that the inveterate and sometimes successful adversary of Sargon (722–705 B.C.) was the Vannic king Rusas the First. And the northern empire is still a force with which the Assyrians have to reckon as late as Ashur-bani-pal, the Sardanapalus of the Greeks (668–626 B.C.).

Fig. 124. Bronze Shield from Toprak Kala (British Museum).

Fig. 125. Bronze Fragment from Toprak Kala (British Museum).

So far as our knowledge at present extends we may regard Sarduris the First as the initiator of a remarkable and far-reaching revolution among the peoples of the tableland. The title which this monarch bears, that of king of Nairi, as compared with that of his successors, kings of Biaina,[36] connects him with the earlier period of the confederacy of Nairi princes which his dynasty under the ægis of the god Khaldis was destined to supplant. His son, Ispuinis, and his grandson Menuas at once extended the empire and added to the works upon the citadel of Van; and the latter was the principal author of that magnificent canal which to the present day under the fanciful name of Shamiram-Su, or river of Semiramis, conducts the waters of the Khoshab to the suburbs of Van.[37] Menuas may, therefore, be considered as the founder of the garden town; although at that time it is probable that it was situated south of the citadel rather than, as is now the case, at some distance to the east.[38] During the reign of the successor of Menuas, Argistis the First, the Vannic dynasty reached the zenith of its power. The kinglets of the valley of the Araxes had been dispossessed of their fertile territories, and the great city which was afterwards known as Armavir rose from the banks of the river in honour of the god of Van. The whole extent of the Armenian tableland, such as it is described in the present work, with the possible exception of some of the most northerly districts, was subject to the rulers residing on the shore of the great lake; and their inscriptions recording conquests are found as far east as the province south of Lake Urmi and as far west as the Euphrates near Malatia. In that direction they came in contact with the Hittites; while their neighbours on the east were none other than the Minni of Scripture, residing in the more southerly portion of the Urmi basin and the adjacent districts.[39] The inscriptions on the rock of Van enumerate the feats of arms of Argistis the First and Sarduris the Second. No records have yet been found further north than Lake Gökcheh, Kanlija, near Alexandropol, and Hasan Kala, near Erzerum. South of their capital the wild districts of Shatakh, Norduz and Mukus have been scoured by travellers in quest of such monuments, but hitherto without result.

Fig. 126. Ornament from Toprak Kala (British Museum).

With one exception no systematic excavations have yet been made upon any of the sites of the cities and strongholds of the Vannic kings. When these shall have been undertaken we may expect to have drawn an impressive picture of the attainments of their people in the arts. The single instance of such efforts—and it is not one of which we need be proud[40]—has been directed to the low limestone hills which overlook the gardens of Van upon the north, and which in their neighbourhood bear the name of Toprak Kala. In or about the years 1879 and 1880 operations were conducted upon this eminence under the direction, as I have gathered, of Captain Clayton, then our consul at Van, and of Mr. Hormuzd Rassam.[41] Tunnels were opened into that part of the site which disclosed the buried remains of an ancient settlement, and which was found to have been covered with buildings composed for the most part of sun-dried bricks. The most important result of the enterprise was the laying bare of a temple, still containing quite a number of bronze shields with cuneiform inscriptions, embossed and chased with ornamental designs and the figures of animals. Some of these may be seen in the British Museum and others in the Museum at Berlin. They represent votive offerings on the part of the kings, and were suspended upon the walls in the manner shown by an existing bas-relief from the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad. Indeed that sculpture portrays the destruction by the Assyrians of the temple of Khaldis in the city of Mutsatsir, not very far from the present town of Rowanduz. The dimensions of the edifice were small, only 69 feet by 44 feet, measured at the foundations. But the walls were built of great blocks of hewn stone, and traces of a pavement in a kind of mosaic were found. The doors appear to have been of bronze. Outside the entrance stood a block of marble which was hollowed out and was probably used for sacrifices. At the time of my visit little was to be seen of this interesting structure, for the vandal townspeople had removed its masonry for building purposes. Large faced blocks, taken thence and perhaps from other edifices, were being rolled down the hillside. Only a fraction of the objects found was brought away by Messrs. Clayton and Rassam; their workmen abstracted the remainder, from whose hands some portions have filtered into Europe. Toprak Kala has quite recently (1898) been the scene of further excavations, this time on the part of Messrs. Belck and Lehmann. They have dug out the substructures of the temple to its foundations, cleared away the rubbish which obstructed a long subterraneous passage, debouching into a large chamber which may have served as a reservoir, and which was fed by an artificial duct deriving its water from a neighbouring spring; and discovered a wine-cellar containing colossal vats, some engraved with Vannic writing and one with a Persian cuneiform inscription. We also owe to their labours the discovery not far from the temple of a space which seems to have been set apart to receive the bones of the sacrificial animals and of the human beings, captives of war, who had been offered up to the god. They have acquired numerous objects, of silver as well as of bronze and iron, including weapons and ornaments of various kinds. But the principal service which they have rendered is the identification of Toprak Kala with the city of Rusas mentioned in the stele near Keshish Göl on the slopes of Mount Varag. The inscription on that monument, if rightly deciphered, leaves little doubt that King Rusas, probably the first of that name, made use of that little lake as a partly natural and partly artificial reservoir, and conducted its waters along the foot of the Toprak Kala heights to the region occupied by the present site of the garden town. The earliest ruler mentioned on the shields is Rusas the Second; while we know from their contents that the temple was built or restored by Rusas the Third in honour of the god Khaldis. All the indications favour the assumption that in consequence of the depredations of Tiglath-Pileser the Third some change was made in the disposition of the city. The heights of Toprak Kala seem in some degree to have usurped the importance of the citadel, and to have been used as defences for the extension of the gardens in that direction.[42]

The culture of the Vannic kingdom was perhaps borrowed from the Assyrians and was certainly derived from the Mesopotamian plains. The legend of the passion of the queen of Assyria, the consort of the eponymous hero Ninus, for an Armenian king who suffers death at her hands and is restored to life,[43] contains, so far as it expresses the intercourse of the pre-Armenian peoples, a considerable kernel of truth. Ara and Semiramis are none other than Tammuz and Istar, the Adonis and the Aphrodite of the Hellenic myth; and the advent from Assyria of the voluptuous queen in quest of a beautiful but reluctant lover may be connected with the introduction from abroad of the worship of Istar.[44] However this may be, it is certain that the earliest inscriptions found at Van are in the Assyrian language and character; while those of the successors of Sarduris the First, although composed in the Vannic tongue, show but slight deviations from the cuneiform writing as practised at Nineveh. There is evidence to show that long after the disappearance of the empire of the Khaldians Assyrian influences lingered on in the land. I shall have occasion to remark these traces in the study of the architecture of the church at Akhtamar; and they compose a factor which should never be quite absent from the mind when examining the masterpieces of Armenian mediæval art. The Vannic dynasty are not the symbol of resistance on the part of rude mountaineers to the approach of civilisation moving up from its immemorial seats. Far rather do they represent the beneficent spread of arts and letters over the Armenian plains. The favourite sites of their cities are not the recesses of the mountains of the tableland, but some small eminence from a wide extent of level and fertile ground, as typically embodied by the rock of Van and the mound of Armavir. They are builders of canals to irrigate the land, of roads to traverse even the scarcely passable ridges of the peripheral region, of bridges to span the great rivers. If we are still in the dark with respect to their ethnic affinities, we need harbour no doubts upon the character of the civilisation which they contributed to diffuse.

Like Adonis they have been carried down the stream of time, and over them the eddy has long since closed. The spade of the archæologist reveals the charred remains of their later stronghold on the heights of Toprak Kala overlooking the gardens of Van. But by what people and at what date were they stricken to the ground, and their temples and palaces given to the flames? It is the disadvantage of a history which is derived from inscriptions, that issues as well as origins must remain obscure. I am not aware that any certain answer can be given to the first part of the question, and the date of the supreme catastrophe which must have overtaken the city can only be approximately fixed. The Vannic records differ in one important respect from those of Assyria; they do not contain a single date. The chronology is therefore dependent upon the mention in them of an Assyrian monarch or by the Assyrians of a contemporary ruler of Urardhu. The latest inscriptions hitherto discovered belonging to the northern kingdom are those of Rusas the Third, the son of Erimenas, who lived in the time of Ashur-bani-pal. But a successor of this prince is mentioned in the Assyrian annals as having sent an embassy to Nineveh about 644 B.C. His name is the familiar one of Sarduris, and he takes his place as the third king of that name. It would appear likely that at the time of his embassy he had only just begun to reign; and we should probably be justified in protracting the span covered by the Vannic dynasty at least as late as the death of Ashur-bani-pal (c. 626 B.C.). This date brings us down to the dawn of Oriental history as contained in the works of Greek writers. In the pages of Herodotus the Armenian tableland as well as Assyria form portions of the great empire of Darius (521–486 B.C.) and Xerxes (485–465 B.C.), which had succeeded the loose rule of the Scythians. And this new era has left behind it one of the most impressive of the monuments upon the rock of Van. On its southern face, in full view of the walled town at its base, is inscribed the trilingual record of the Persian conquest. “A great god is Ormazd, who is the greatest of gods, who has created this earth, who has created that heaven, who has created mankind, who has given happiness to man, who has made Xerxes king, sole king of many kings, sole lord of many. I am Xerxes the great king, the king of kings, the king of the provinces with many languages, the king of this great earth far and near, son of king Darius the Achæmenian. Says Xerxes the king: Darius the king, my father, did many works through the protection of Ormazd, and on this hill he commanded to make his tablet and an image; yet an inscription he did not make. Afterwards I ordered this inscription to be written. May Ormazd, along with all the gods, protect me and my kingdom and my work.[45]

Years before this noble pronouncement was engraved in its imperishable arrowheads the empire of Assyria had come to an end. Nineveh was laid desolate in 606 B.C. by her Babylonian subjects assisted by the hordes of the Scythian king.[46] Within a very brief period of the history of these countries ethnic changes on a vast scale had taken place. New nations had appeared upon the scene. The Cimmerian nomads, followed closely by the wild tribes of Scythia, had penetrated southwards from the countries on the north of Caucasus and swarmed over the settled lands. Ancient kingdoms tottered and fell into the human surge. It is just at this period that we come to hear of the Armenians. All the evidence points to the conclusion that they entered their historical seats from the west,[47] as a branch of a considerable immigration of Indo-European peoples crossing the straits from Europe into Asia Minor and perhaps originally coming from homes in the steppes north of the Black Sea. Just as their kinsmen, invading Europe, drove the old races before them, such as the Etruscans, the Ligurians, and the Basques, so the Armenians seem to have filled the void which may have been created by the ravages of the Scythians and to have supplanted the subjects of the old Khaldian dynasty in the possession of the plains of the tableland.

That this revolution was not accomplished until at least as late as the fifth century before Christ may be gathered from the pages of Herodotus. The Armenians are known to this father of historians as inhabiting the mountainous country about the sources of the Halys and those of the Tigris, extending round towards the Mediterranean in the neighbourhood of Cilicia, their boundary on this side being the Euphrates.[48] On the other hand the Khaldians or Urardhians have not already disappeared, although they have obviously declined to a subordinate position. They are mentioned under the name of Alarodians,[49] and they are joined with the Matienians and Saspeires or Sapeires in the eighteenth satrapy of the Persian empire.[50] Herodotus leaves us in the dark as to the exact localities in which they lived, although he indicates that the seats of the Saspeires lay to the south of the Kolchians, who inhabited the southern shore of the Black Sea in the neighbourhood of the Phasis.[51] He informs us that Alarodians and Saspeires were both armed like the Kolchians, and the fact that the satrapies were organised with a view to ethnic affinities suggests the possibility that the two names first mentioned had come to be applied to one and the same race. Other considerations seem to point in the same direction. Down to a comparatively recent period we find a people called Chaldians (as written in the Greek character) or Chaldæans occupying the mountains between Trebizond and Batum. There can be little doubt that they represented the remnants of the Vannic people, and they were almost certainly the same as the Alarodians of Herodotus and probably the same as the Saspeires, who have perhaps left their name to the present town of Ispir.[52] When the Armenians had expelled the ancient inhabitants from the settled country we know from a most interesting chapter in the Cyropædeia of Xenophon that the latter took refuge in the mountains. They fortified inaccessible peaks and lived by plunder, raiding down upon the plains.[53] Our knowledge of the geography may at this point assist our historical investigations; and we may be reasonably sure that we shall find the relics of the dispossessed Khaldians inhabiting the fastnesses of the peripheral ranges which border Armenia upon the north and south.

That this was the case in the northern region is proved by the long survival of the name Chaldia (= Khaldia) among those inhospitable heights. Professor Lehmann has collected with a thoroughness of which his countrymen alone seem capable, a catalogue of passages in Greek and Byzantine writers making mention either of the Chaldian people or of the province to which they gave their name.[54] That people are sometimes called Chaldæans in classical authors. But that this was an error seems sufficiently proved by the name of the province—Chaldia; by the survival side by side of the variant form—Chaldians, and by the practice of Armenian writers to distinguish between the name of the tribe on their northern frontiers and that of the Chaldæans. Chaldia with the capital Trebizond formed one of the military themes of the Byzantine empire; and I should like to add yet another reference to the lists of Professor Lehmann, this one taken from the travels of the Castilian ambassador, Don Ruy Gonzalez Clavigo, in the year 1404. Setting out from Trebizond on his way to Erzinjan, we find him travelling on the third day out through the snowy mountains of the province of Chaldia to the castle of Tzanich which stood on a crag; and on the morrow, in the evening, he arrives at the castle of the duke of Chaldia, where all caravans pay toll. The territory formed a part of the empire of the Grand Comneni; and the name has survived to the present day as that of a diocese of the Greek Church with the capital Gümüshkhaneh on the road from Trebizond to Baiburt.[55]

It is not so easy to trace the remnants of this ancient people in the southern zone of mountains. Their presence there is attested by the march of Xenophon with the relics of the Ten Thousand. A body of Chaldæan or, more properly, of Chaldian mercenaries oppose his passage of the Bohtan branch of the Tigris.[56] They are described as of independent spirit and warlike nature, and, like the Karduchi, the modern Kurds, as still maintaining their political freedom. One is tempted to enquire whether the present so-called Chaldæan or Assyrian Christians, who are spread about the districts in the neighbourhood of Julamerik watered by the Great Zab, may not supply the necessary and missing link. But here we approach a thorny and difficult question, upon which the limitations of the present enquiry forbid us to touch.[57] It will be better capable of discussion when some unanimity shall have been attained upon the origin and ethnic affinities of the subjects of the old Vannic kings. The Chaldæan Christians are reputed to have fled into the mountains from Mesopotamia as late as the era of Timur. Baghdad and then Mosul would seem to have been the earlier seats of their patriarchate. The name Chaldæan is not one which they apply to themselves, although they believe in their “Assyrian” origin. There is held by some scholars to be the widest etymological and original difference between the name of the people who were called after the god Khaldis and that of the Babylonian Chaldees or Chaldæans. But the question of a possible racial or cultural link between them cannot at present be regarded as already negatived.[58]

Although the whole subject of the Vannic kingdom has scarcely yet arrived beyond its infantile stages, the knowledge already attained serves to throw quite a flood of light upon the early history of Armenia and of the Armenians. In a former chapter[59] I had occasion to remark the obscurity of Armenian chronicles prior to the advent of their Arsakid dynasty. The people known as Armenians to Darius and to classical writers have always been accustomed to prefer the name of their reputed progenitor, Hayk, the son of Togarmah, great-grandson of Japhet. They call themselves the Hayk or children of Hayk. They believe that their ancestor emigrated from Babylon in a north-westerly direction and ultimately arrived upon the shores of Lake Van. They style the line of their primeval kings the Haykian dynasty, and they relate in a fabulous manner the early struggles of this dynasty with the Assyrian Power. Their historians admit that for this period they are destitute of native annals, and they deplore the illiterateness of their forefathers. It would almost seem as if they had presented us with a darkened and legendary account of the history of their predecessors, possibly mingled with the experiences of their own race. That the people of the Vannic kings were not Armenians is proved by the distinctive character of their language. That their empire continued to exist until at least as late as the latter half of the seventh century before Christ is a fact which is beyond doubt. Nothing which we might be inclined to attribute to the Armenians has been found at Toprak Kala. On the other hand, we may gather from Xenophon that after a period of mutual distrust the Armenians intermarried with the Khaldians whom they had dispossessed.[60] To this extent they may inherit the blood of that ancient people which gave to Armenia a degree of civilisation which in many respects it has not been privileged since to enjoy.

The Armenians, like all capable and conquering races, borrowed much from the and attainments of the older inhabitants. Their most ancient cities—Van, Armavir, and perhaps Melazkert and Arjish—were foundations of the Vannic kings. The city of Hayk, as it has long been called, in the Hayotz-dzor, south-east of Van, has disclosed to the first essays of the modern archæologist the familiar features of a Khaldian settlement.[61] But Persian influences left upon them a more visible impression; and their supreme god during the pre-Christian era was not the Khaldis of the Vannic texts but the Ormazd of the inscription of Xerxes, “who has created this earth, who has created that heaven, who has created mankind.”[62]

Sequence of the Vannic Kings.[63]

Arame.—No inscriptions. Known only through those of the Assyrian king, in which he is styled king of Urardhu. Attacked in 860 or 859 B.C. by Shalmaneser II. and again in 857 or 856 B.C. in his capital, Arzasku (site?).[64] His cities as far as the sources of the Euphrates were taken by the same monarch in 845 or 844 B.C.

1. Sarduris I.—Son of Lutipris. Three inscriptions (Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 1899, p. 315) on massive blocks of stone, forming part of a wall which extended from the western extremity of the rock of Van roughly in a northerly direction towards the harbour across the plain (Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, etc., 1897, p. 305). Appears to have been the initiator of the fortifications of the rock of Van. Bore the title: “king of the world (Šar Kiššati), king of Nairi.” Attacked about 833 B.C. by the general of Shalmaneser II.; styled king of Urardhu in the Assyrian inscriptions.

2. Ispuinis.—His son. Several inscriptions, in which he is more commonly associated with his son Menuas. The inscriptions are found as far apart as the Kelishin Pass between Rowanduz and Ushnei, the hill of Ashrut-Darga, east of the village of Salekhane, east of Van and the Van region, and Patnotz, north of Sipan. His title is given in the Vannic text of the Kelishin stele as: king of Nairi, king of Suras (i.e. of northern Syria[65]), inhabiting the city of Dhuspas; and in the inscription of Ashrut Darga as: king of Biaina, inhabiting the city of Dhuspas. Is probably the Uspina from whom the general of the Assyrian king Shamshi-Ramman III. (825–812 B.C.) captured 11 forts and 200 villages during his campaign against Nairi. His newly-discovered inscription near the Tabriz gate at Van appears to ascribe the construction of the works upon the citadel to himself, his father Sarduris, his son Menuas and his grandson Inuspuas (V. Anth. 1898, p. 575).

3. Menuas.—His son, associated with his father in the government, and afterwards with his own son, Inuspuas. To this king belong the largest number of the inscriptions yet discovered, ranging from the Kelishin Pass and the rock of Tashtepe, near the southern shore of Lake Urmi (Sayce, J.R.A.S. vol. xiv. p. 386; Belck, Z. Assyr. 1899, p. 313), the latter of which commemorates his conquests in the kingdom of Minni (V. Anth. 1894, p. 481) in the east, to Palu on the Lower Murad in the west; and from Van and the Van regions in the south to Hasan-Kala, near Erzerum, in the north. Perhaps his most important conquest was that of a great portion of the valley of the Araxes on the northern side of the Ararat system. Menuas may be regarded as the founder of the original garden city of Van, which probably occupied a somewhat different position than at the present day, and extended to the borders of the lake, where it received the waters of the canal since called the Shamiram Su, coming through Artemid—a work on a great scale, which we now know to have been constructed principally by this monarch, and which provided the volume of irrigation necessary for an extensive settlement. Records his conquests. Extensively restored Melazkert (Z. Assyr. 1892, p. 262; V. Anth. 1898, pp. 569 seq.) and founded Arzwapert, north-east of Arjish. His title is: the great king, the king of Biaina, inhabiting the city of Dhuspas.

4. Argistis I.—His son. Numerous inscriptions which show that he extended the conquests of Menuas, especially towards the north. These inscriptions are found as far north as Kanlija, near Alexandropol, and Sarikamish, on the road from Kars to Erzerum, by which route he probably advanced or retired from the districts north of the Ararat system. From those at Van, which are in fact detailed annals of his conquests, we learn that he met and overcame the armies of Assyria on more than one occasion in the regions south-east of Lake Urmi. His reign represents the culminating point of Vannic empire. He ascribes to himself works upon the rock and in the city of Van; and he was the founder of the city of Armavir in the valley of the Araxes (V. Anth. 1896, p. 313). He bore the title of: the great king, the king of Biaina, inhabiting the city of Dhuspas.

5. Sarduris II.—His son. Numerous inscriptions, distributed over a large area of country, one being found in the south-east corner of Lake Gökcheh, another (discovered by us) near the western summit of the Bingöl Dagh,[66] and yet another as far west as the Euphrates near Malatia in Asia Minor. The first and last record conquests in those countries. Ascribes to himself works upon the rock and in the city of Van, and gives a list of his conquests, including some over the Assyrian monarch Ashur-nirari II., 754–745 B.C. (V. Anth. 1898, pp. 570–77). But these successes were followed by disasters which dealt a severe blow at the Vannic kingdom. With the accession of Tiglath-Pileser III. of Assyria (745–727 B.C.) a new area is initiated in the relations of these two great Powers of the day. The clash seems to have come in the year 743 and in connection with the endeavour of Tiglath-Pileser to possess himself of the strong place of Arpad between the present towns of Aleppo and Killis, the key of northern Syria, a country over which the Vannic kings had for several reigns upheld pretensions. Sarduris headed the league against the Assyrians and drew off the king from the siege of Arpad. He was, however, signally defeated “near Kistan and Khalpi, districts of Kummukh” (Kommagene), and pursued as far as “the bridge over the Euphrates, the boundary of his kingdom.” Subsequently, in 735 B.C., Tiglath-Pileser carried the war into the very heart of the Vannic country, and at length appeared before the city of Van. Sarduris was obliged to shut himself up in the impregnable citadel, while his adversary massacred his warriors and his people in the city at its feet, and erected a statue of himself in front of it. He then ravaged the territory of Sarduris over a space of some 450 miles, meeting with no opposition anywhere. (For the sequence of these events, made known to us by the Assyrian inscriptions, see V. Anth. 1896, pp. 321 seq., and Smith’s Assyria, London, S.P.C.K. 1897, pp. 83 seq.). Sarduris increased the importance of the city of Armavir, and ascribes to himself works upon the citadel and in the city of Van. Bore the title: king of kings, king of the land of Suras, king of Biaina, inhabiting the city of Dhuspas. Styled king of Urardhu in the Assyrian inscriptions.

6. Rusas I.—His son. The author of at least two important extant inscriptions, that of Kölani-Girlan (Alutshalu), on the face of a rock overlooking Lake Gökcheh, and that of Topsanä (Sidikan), in the district of Rowanduz in Kurdistan, discovered by Rawlinson and recently examined by Dr. Belck (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Berlin, 1899, pp. 99–132). The first records conquests and the restoration of a palace; the second, which has, however, not yet been published, conveys noteworthy facts bearing upon the relations with Assyria. We know from the Assyrian inscriptions that the Vannic kingdom was by no means crushed by the campaign of Tiglath-Pileser; for the son of Sarduris, this Rusas the First, displayed great activity in inciting the neighbouring principalities against the successor of the conqueror, Sargon (722–705 B.C.), among which may be specially mentioned the kingdom of Minni, south-east of Lake Urmi, and the almost impregnable territory of Mutsatsir or Ardinis near Rowanduz. Sargon tells us how, in 714 B.C., he penetrated into Mutsatsir, which contained a temple of the god Khaldis, the god of the Vannic kingdom; how its king Urzana fled, and how he plundered and burnt the city, rifled the temple and carried off the statues of the gods. He relates that Ursa, king of Urardhu (i.e. Rusas I.), upon hearing of this disaster to his ally and of the carrying off of the god, committed suicide. The contents of the inscription of Topsanä throw doubt upon this latter statement. They are to the effect that Rusas restored Urzana to his kingdom, led his armies as far as “the mountains of Assyria,” and restored the offerings to Khaldis in Mutsatsir.

If, as seems probable, the Rusas of the shattered stele of Keshish Göl near Van be this first king of that name, then we must ascribe to this monarch the various works which are mentioned in that inscription (Sayce, No. lxxix.), and which, as Messrs. Belck and Lehmann have conclusively shown, should be referred to Toprak Kala, an eminence from the plain some little distance east of the rock of Van and close to the present garden town. These works appear to have been: the constitution of the Keshish Göl into a reservoir, the conduct of its waters to the Rusahina, or city of Rusas, as distinct from Dhuspas; the laying out of this new city, with numerous vineyards and gardens, and the building of a palace there. Rusas I. may therefore be regarded as the author of the transference of the site of the garden town from the south to the east of the rock of Van, where it was protected by the heights of Toprak Kala. The necessary irrigation was drawn from the Keshish Göl instead of or in addition to that derived from the canal of Menuas. The change was probably made in consequence of the destruction by Tiglath-Pileser of the old town, although he was unable to effect the capture of the citadel or rock of Van (Z. Ethnologie, 1892, pp. 141 seq.; V. Anth. 1893, p. 220; Z. Assyr. 1894, pp. 349 seq.; Deutsche Rundschau, Christmas 1894, pp. 411 seq.; V. Anth. 1898, p. 576; Z. Assyr. 1899, p. 320). Rusas I. is styled Ursa, king of Urardhu, in the Assyrian inscriptions. Those of the Vannic Monarchy, hitherto published, do not furnish a title.

7. Argistis II.—His son. The mention of this ruler in a Vannic text was discovered by Messrs. Belck and Lehmann in an inscription on a shield from the temple at Toprak Kala, now in the British Museum (Z. Assyr. 1894, pp. 82–99; cp. Z. Assyr. 1892, pp. 263 seq.; V. Anth. 1895, p. 595); and two of his own inscriptions have recently been found by these investigators in the neighbourhood of Arjish (V. Anth. 1898, p. 573). They have not yet been published. This prince is alluded to in the Assyrian annals. He appears to have endeavoured to repeat the tactics of Sarduris III. against Tiglath-Pileser III., and to have succeeded in inciting the king of Kummukh (Kommagene) against Sargon. But his efforts only resulted in the subjugation of Kummukh by the Assyrian monarch in 708 B.C. (Smith’s Assyria, 1897, p. 116).

8. Rusas II.—His son. So known to us from the inscription on the shield above mentioned (Z. Assyr. 1894, pp. 82–99, and 339 seq.; V. Anth. 1895, p. 596). Two new inscriptions of this king have been found by Dr. Belck at Adeljivas (V. Anth. 1898, p. 573), in which he is stated to have conquered the Hittites and Moschians. He is also mentioned on a clay tablet discovered by Messrs. Belck and Lehmann at Toprak Kala (Van). He was the contemporary of Esarhaddon of Assyria (681–668 B.C.), and is mentioned in an Assyrian inscription of that reign (H. Winckler, Altorientalische Forschungen, 2nd ser. vol. i. 1898, p. 41; and see Z. Assyr. 1894, p. 341).

9. Erimenas.—Known only from an inscription on a shield from the temple at Toprak Kala, now in the British Museum, as being the father of Rusas III.

10. Rusas III.—His son. Rebuilt the temple of Khaldis on Toprak Kala (shield inscriptions in the British Museum published by Prof. Sayce, No. lii. in J.R.A.S. 1882, pp. 653 seq. For Tuprak Kilissa read Toprak Kala, Van, and cp. Z. Assyr. 1892, p. 266; Z. Assyr. 1894, p. 97 and pp. 339 seq.; V. Anth. 1895, p. 595). An inscription of this king has been found at Armavir (Sayce, lxxxv.). Sent an embassy to Ashur-bani-pal of Assyria about 655 B.C. (Z. Assyr. 1894, p. 342). Bore the title: the great king, inhabiting the city of Dhuspas.

11. Sarduris III.—Known through the Assyrian inscriptions as having sent an embassy to Ashur-bani-pal about 644 B.C. (Z. Assyr. 1894, p. 342).