Tušpa (Van)

The citadel of Van today. Photo Marco Prins.

The citadel ofofTušpa

Tušpa: name of an ancient Urartian fortress on the eastern shore of Lake Thospitis, not far from the modern city of Van.

The first reference to the Urartian city of Tušpa is the inscriptions on the Balawat Gate from the Assyrian capital Nimrud, now in the British Museum, which tells that king Šalmaneser III (r. 859-824) "descended to the sea of Urartu [= Lake Van] and washedhis terrible weapons in its waters". He had defeated king Sarduri I, who had just united Urartu.

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An Urartaean inscription, west of the citadel of Tušpa. Photo Marco Prins.

An inscription, in Assyrian cuneiform, in the Tower of Sarduri

An inscription, in Assyrian cuneiform, on a small fortification west of the citadel ofTušpa, mentions him as builder of a wall, and it is likely that he is in fact the founder of the town.

This is the inscription of king Sarduri, son of the great king Lutipri, the powerful king who does not fear to fight, the amazing shepherd, the king who ruled the rebels. I am Sarduri, son of Lutipri, the king of kings and the king who received the tribute of all the kings. Sarduri, son of Lutipri, says: I brought these stone blocks from the city of Alniunu. I built this wall.

The citadel, seen from the northwest

His successors expanded the kingdom. King Minua (r. c.810-c.785) ordered the construction of large irrigation works nearTušpa, including a canal with a length of no less than fifty kilometers. (The land of another Urartian citadel,Çavustepe, is still irrigated with ancient canals; the land north and south ofTušpa must have resembled the land now surrounding Çavustepe.) The land was famously fertile,butin the end, Urartu was held in check by another Assyrian ruler,Tiglath-Pileser III, who repeatedŠalmaneser's success against the Urartian capital in 742. King Sarduri II, whose tomb is in the citadel of Tušpa, was defeated.

One of the Urartian royal tombs. Photo Kees Tol.

In 714, the Assyrians were even more successful: Sargon marched almost unopposed through Urartu. Nevertheless, the kingdom survived, although it suffered heavily from new invasions by the Cimmerians, the Scythians, and the Medes. It is hard to reconstruct the events, but in the end, the area was part of the satrapy of Armenia in the Achaemenid Empire. The site was soon eclipsed by Yerevan. The citadel itself was abandoned, although the name "Tušpa" was not forgotten: it lived on in the name of the lake, Thospitis. The people now lived south ofthe old citadel, in a town that had mixed fortunes until it was destroyed during the First World War. Only the mosque survives.

Inscription XV

King Xerxes (r.486-465) left an inscription, known as XV, on the south face of the citadel. It is almost funny, because it states that Xerxes' father Darius had prepared the place for an inscription but had never inscribed it, and that therefore - Xerxes tells you - there had not been any inscription. And by recording that there was no inscription, from now on, there was something to be read.


Western part of the citadel	Lake Van, seen from the citadel	Tomb, south of the citadel

South side of the citadel	Tomb, south of the citadel	Jetty of Sarduri

An Urartian lion (Museum of Van)	Eastern part of the citadel	Urartian inscription (Museum of Van)

Tombstone with Urartian and Christian motifs (Museum of Van)

Tušpa - or Van Kalesi, to use its modern name - is a remarkable and impressive site; it is about two kilometers long, more or less east-west, and just a hundred meters wide. There are several royal tombs, often reused as storage rooms under the Ottomans, who also built the walls that catch the attention today.

Modern Van, several kilometers east of the old city and the Urartian citadel, has a museum, which was being reconstructed when we went there