Destinations: The Impregnable Rock of Van

It’s easy to see why the early first-millennium B.C. Urartians chose the Rock of Van as their capital.

Here, in eastern Anatolia, the surrounding mountains form an almost impregnable barrier. Although Van was less than 100 miles from the great Assyrian capital of Nineveh, the war-like Assyrians, try as they might, were never able to conquer Urartu.

And then there is the rock itself—a massive, vertiginous outcropping that rises dramatically from the shores of Lake Van.

The earliest reference to Urartians comes in Middle Assyrian (mid-second millennium B.C.) texts, which record battles with a number of peoples in the region of Van. By the ninth century B.C., these small kingdoms had coalesced into the fully fledged Urartian kingdom 061and established Tushpa, modern Van, as their capital. These Urartians borrowed Mesopotamian cuneiform to record their language, which is also called Urartian.^a