{"id":29927,"date":"2011-01-04T23:56:32","date_gmt":"2011-01-04T21:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=29927"},"modified":"2023-04-05T14:24:11","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T11:24:11","slug":"urartian-kings-burial-chamber-opened-for-first-time-in-e-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2011\/01\/04\/urartian-kings-burial-chamber-opened-for-first-time-in-e-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"Urartian king’s burial chamber opened for first time in E Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"

The burial chambers of an Urartian king and his family have been opened for the first time for Anatolia news agency. The graves in the ancient Van castle, an important work of architecture from the Urartian Empire that ruled eastern Anatolia between the ninth and sixth centuries B.C. are normally off limits to visitors, but were revealed to the agency<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The burial chambers of Urartian King Argishti I and his family in the western wing of an ancient castle in the eastern Turkish province of Van have been opened for the first time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe burial chamber is in the western part of Van castle and bears workmanship of the highest quality. It is reached through a 24-step staircase,\u201d said Rafet \u00c7avu\u015fo\u011flu, a professor at Van Y\u00fcz\u00fcnc\u00fc Y\u0131l University\u2019s Archaeology Department.<\/p>\n

King Argishti I was buried in a rock burial chamber called \u201cHorhor Cave,\u201d said the professor, who specially opened the doors to the graves to Anatolia news agency.<\/p>\n

Van castle, which is 120 meters by 80 meters and was built on a rocky peak along Lake Van, has been the site of recent excavations headed by lecturer Altan \u00c7ilingiro\u011flu of Ege University.<\/p>\n

\u00c7avu\u015fo\u011flu said Urartian writing on the wall of the burial chamber was very interesting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are nail holes in spaces between doors opening to the chambers inside. These holes were used to hang torches and gifts,\u201d said the Y\u00fcz\u00fcnc\u00fc Y\u0131l professor. \u201cThere are four inner chambers and each chamber has four alcoves on the walls. The location of the alcoves and doors and the dimension of the chambers are similar to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said religious ceremonies were held in the hall in burial chambers and valuable objects were buried in the adjacent chambers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe burial chambers are described as caves in the 17th-century Ottoman plan and Evliya \u00c7elebi\u2019s travel book. They served as an armory, a food depot and a workshop in the time of the Ottomans,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Before kingdom in ancient times<\/strong><\/p>\n

Centered in eastern Anatolia, the Kingdom of Urartu ruled between the ninth and sixth centuries B.C. until its defeat by Media in the early 6th century B.C. The best monuments of Urartu exist in Van as the city was the capital of the kingdom with the name Tushpa.<\/p>\n

The ancient castle, which has traces of a 3,000-year-old civilization and is composed of five separate sections, draws hundreds of visitors from Turkey and overseas every year. However, because the burial chambers of Urartian King Argishti I and his family are kept closed to visitors, only Anatolia was allowed in to take photographs of the graves\u2019 interior.<\/p>\n

Argishti I was the sixth known king of the ancient kingdom, reigning from 786 B.C. to 764 B.C. As the son and the successor of Menua, he continued a series of conquests initiated by his predecessors. Victorious against the Assyrians, he conquered the northern part of Syria and made Urartu the most powerful state in the post-Hittite Near East.<\/p>\n

H\u00fcrriyet<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The burial chambers of an Urartian king and his family have been opened for the first time for Anatolia news agency. The graves in the ancient Van castle, an important work of architecture from the Urartian Empire that ruled eastern Anatolia between the ninth and sixth centuries B.C. are normally off limits to visitors, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":29928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2939,89,922],"tags":[4854,4856,4855],"class_list":["post-29927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cultureart","category-turkey","category-world","tag-urartian-king","tag-urartian-king-argishti-i","tag-van-castle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}