ABSTRACT
The earliest illustrations of Urartian dress and military equipment are depicted as reliefs on the broad bronze strips which at the same time decorate and reinforce the Balawat Gates. The dresses reach down to the ankles of the wearer and they are gathered at the waist by a belt. They are short-sleeved and have a pattern around the hemline. Warriors and even naked prisoners of war wear crested helmets, and the former carry small, round shields, recalling Phrygian shields and the later Armenian ones, described by Xenophon. The repoussé figures on the bronze strips are armed with spears and bows, with arrows in a quiver. Their dress and equipment resembled those of other peoples in Anatolia. ‘The Vannic dress was that of a cold climate. The people wore buskins which reached half-way up their legs, tunics and possibly drawers, and the soldiers protected their heads with helmets, many of which had crests like the helmets of the Greeks or the Hittites of Carchemish.’ Thus, the Urartian fashion differed markedly from that of the Assyrian warriors, as indeed it must, for apart from the greater proximity to Urartu of its western neighbours, the climate of low-lying Assyrian Mesopotamia is very different from that of the cold country of Armenia.
