Kingship Through Words

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW.

Registration is required at THIS LINK.

Urartu is the Assyrian name given to a state that flourished on the Armenian Highlands between the 9th and  the 7th centuries BCE, roughly corresponding to modern-day eastern Turkey, Armenia, and northern Iran. The items labelled in research as “Urartian” appear to be part of a standardized set of objects strictly  connected to the royal dynasty, which used cuneiform writing as an élite marker; cuneiform writing appears  to be a fil rouge linking Urartian objects both to each other and to the kings who produced them. In this talk, I will present a history of writing in Urartu, analyzing the ways and the whys it was employed as it was, and presenting several case studies that highlight the intersection between this immaterial good and the objects characterizing Urartian culture: there is no mute history, and Urartians knew this really well. 

Annarita Bonfanti is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. She  holds a BA and an MA in Classics from the University of Pavia, where she also received her PhD in History (2022). She is interested in the history, philology, and culture of Urartu, through which she intends to study the construction of the Urartian identity, together with the external inputs provided by neighbouring entities.  She has conducted fieldwork in Turkey and Armenia, and she is currently a member of the AMSC (Archaeological Mission to Southern Caucasus).

Image credits: [Bonfanti, A.S. - Dan, R., forthcoming. Introduzione al cuneiforme urarteo: segni, supporti e contesti, in  Gargano, E. (ed.), Dal segno alla parola: lingue e decifrazioni dalle antiche scritture ad oggi. Atti del ciclo di incontri seminariale per l’Accademia delle Antiche Civiltà, 6 maggio - 10 giugno 2023.]

The lecture will be followed by a reception.

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