ABSTRACT
Tiglath-pileser departed from Urartu leaving a trail of destruction behind him. According to the reports of Assyrian agents in Urartu at the time, a number of Urartian princes and chieftains took advantage of the disorganised state of the country and rose in rebellion against their defeated king, Sarduri. It was the eldest of Sarduri’s eight sons, 1 Uedipri, who seized the throne and then not only subdued his rebellious subjects, but also won their support for his various campaigns, which restored to Urartu a number of the provinces so recently lost to Assyria by his father. 2 He thus re-established Urartian power in the west. Uedipri assumed the name ‘Rusa’ (the Assyrians call him ‘Ursa’). The Assyrian scribes describe his statue in the temple of Khaldi at Musasir, bearing the inscription: ‘With my two horses and driver, my hands have seized the Kingdom of Ararat.’
