INTRODUCTION
THE POLITICAL BACKGROUND
LONG before the Armenians came to occupy the lofty plateau, south of the Caucasus, now known by their name, it had been the home of peoples about whom we possess only scanty information. It matters little for our present purpose, whether the older inhabitants consisted of different ethnic types, having many national names and languages, or whether they were a homogeneous race, speaking dialects of the same mother tongue and having some common name. For the sake of convenience we shall call them Urartians, as the Assyrians did. The Urartians formed a group of civilized states mostly centreing around the present city of Van. Although they left wonderful constructions and many cuneiform inscriptions, we depend largely on the Assyrian records for our information concerning their political history.
It would seem that the Urartians belonged to the same non-Aryan and non-Semitic stock of peoples as the so-called Hittites who held sway in the Western Asiatic peninsula long before Indo-European tribes such as Phrygians, Mysians, Lydians, and Bithynians came from Thrace, and Scythians and Cimmerians from the north of the Black Sea to claim the pen insula as their future home.
The Urartians were quite warlike and bravely held their own against the Assyrian ambitions until the seventh century b.c., when their country, weakened and disorganized through continual strife, fell an easy prey to the Armenian conquerors (640-600).
