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The Urartian Cemetery at Igdyr

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

R. D. Barnett
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Extract

In 1943 the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian S.S.R. published at Tiflis, as Part XIII.B of the Bulletin of the Georgian Government Museums, a book of 171 pages by the late B. A. Kuftin (1892–1953), entitled Urartskii “kolymbarii” u podoshvy Ararata i Kuro-Arakskii Éneolit [An Urartian “Columbarium” on the slopes of Ararat and the Copper Age of the Kur-Araxes basin]. The terminus technicus “columbarium” (Latin = a pigeon-cot) is translated in German as “Urnenhalle”. More appropriate here would be to call it an “Urn-field” but “columbarium” is retained here as having no adequate English translation. In the original the Russian text is followed by a version in Georgian and a very brief English summary. This book in fact contains two essays, the first dealing with the “columbarium”, the second with the Copper Age remains under the lava to the south of the “columbarium”, and called the “Clay Citadel”. We are here only concerned with the first.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 13 , December 1963 , pp. 153 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1963

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References

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2 [The site is described below sometimes as Igdyr, sometimes as Malaklyu.—R.D.B.]

3 [These lion-headed armlets are described in the Russian as “bracelets”. I have below, p. 180, n. 43, shown reason from Assyrian analogies for substituting the term “armlet” as they were apparently worn on the upper arm.—R.D.B.]

4 [I have described these typically Urartian seals, a cross between cylinder-seals and stamp seals (as I have elsewhere), as “stamp-cylinders”. The term used in the Russian text is “columnar seal”.—R.D.B.]

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59 Presented to the Armenian Museum in 1929.

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