ABSTRACT

Discussions of Armenian origins have been bedeviled by what historians, following the Akkadian usage, call the kingdom of Urartu. From Tushpa, the capital on the eastern shore of Lake Van, the "Urartian" kings dominated much of southern Caucasia from the middle of the ninth to the beginning of the sixth centuries BC. The archaeological evidence tying Mycenaean Greece to southern Caucasia comes conspicuously from metalwork: rapiers, spearheads and vessels. The Wellenband decoration and the Scheibenknebel brought to the Carpathian basin suggest that the expedition that took over the best parts of the basin originated in the steppe, probably between the Don and the Volga. The new rulers in Greece seem initially to have exchanged goods and styles with the new rulers in the Carpathian basin, the authors must suppose that at that time at least a few people knew both of the Indo-European languages in question.