The Restoration of Ancient History – Part 10
The Restoration of Ancient History is a paper delivered in November 1994 by Gunnar Heinsohn, Professor Emeritus at the University of Bremen in Germany, at a symposium in Portland, Oregon. This paper questions the conventional chronology of ancient history and offers in its place a radical reconstruction—the so-called Short Chronology, of which Heinsohn is the principal architect. In this series of articles, we are taking a closer look at the evidence cited in this paper in favour of Heinsohn’s new chronology:
Heinsohn recognizes four periods in the history of Mesopotamia before the conquests of Alexander the Great:
| Dates BCE | Assyria | Babylonia |
|---|---|---|
| 1150-750 | Early Assyrians | Early Chaldaeans |
| 750-620 | Assyrian Empire | Assyrian Empire and Scythians |
| 620-540 | Empire of the Medes | Chaldaeans |
| 540-330 | Persian Empire | Persian Empire |
In this article we will continue our survey of Part 3 of Heinsohn’s lecture: Archaeologically-missing history and historically-unexpected archaeology in major areas of antiquity.. In this section, Heinsohn reviews a long list of cases where archaeologists have discovered major discrepancies between the archaeology of the Ancient World and its history as recorded by the Classical historians. These discrepancies fall into two broad categories:
Excavations in which the archaeologists failed to find strata that the recorded history had led them to expect.
Excavations in which the archaeologists uncovered strata that did not correspond to any cultures or civilizations in the recorded history.
Heinsohn noticed that many of these discrepancies came in matching pairs. In the three preceding articles we met three such pairs
In this article we will examine another two of Heinsohn’s matching pairs: the Alarodians & the Urartians, and the Armenians & the Armians:
Archaeological strata groups discovered within the last 125 years which were not expected historically (conventional dates).
Historical periods prior to Hellenism, which mysteriously left no archaeological traces (dates from Greek historiography).
Airarat and Armenia of Seleucid Greeks -330
(1) Urartians and Armians (!) of Assyrian Period (from -1240 to -600; with gaps; then gap to -300)
(1) Urartians—Alarodians and Armenians of Persian Period (XIIIth/XVIIIth satrapy) ca. -550(2) Hurrites/Urartians and Hay of Indo-Aryan Mitanni Period (-1500 to -1350)
(2) Urartians and Armenians=Hay of Indo-Aryan Medish Period ca. -630(3) Hurrites (=Early Urartians) from the period of Naramsin’s Old-Akkadians (-2350 to -2200, then gap)
(3) “Arima” (Iliad II:783) and Alarodian neighbours from the period of Ninos-Assyria ca. -750(4) Early Bronze Age (ca. -3000)
(4) Early Armenia ca. -1150Armenologists are stunned by the archaeological absence of the history of the Alarodians and Armenians from Ninos (-750) to Alexander the Great (-330) which was taken for granted for nearly two and a half millennia. They have to teach their students that the Armenian inlaws of the Persian Great Kings and the satrap of Armenia who became Great King himself (Darius III) appear to have been cave dwellers. Yet, they take pride in the discovery of the Urartians/Hurrites and Armians, which were too ancient for even the finest historians of antiquity to know. (Heinsohn)
According to modern archaeologists, Urartu, or the Kingdom of Van, was an ancient kingdom that ruled over Armenia and its environs between 860 and 570 BCE. It is mentioned frequently in Neo-Assyrian records, but you will not read about it in any of the Classical historians. You will, however, read of the later Alarodians, whose name is believed to be a variant of Urartians, and who comprised part of the 18th Satrapy of the Persian Empire. Heinsohn believes that the Urartians and the Alarodians were one and the same.
Similarly, he equates the ancient states of Armi and Armani with the later Armenia. Armi is mentioned on clay tablets from the ancient Syrian city of Ebla. Armani is mentioned by the Akkadian Emperor Naram-Sin, and also by the anonymous author of a geographical treatise describing Sargon of Akkad’s empire. Armenians are spoken of by the Classical historians, but there is no mention in their works of any earlier Armians or Armanians.
Urartu was the Assyrian name for a geographical region roughly corresponding to modern Armenia. The name is cognate with the Biblical Ararat, upon whose mountains Noah’s Ark is said to have rested (Genesis 8:4). Urartu is thought to have been one of a confederation of small states that ruled this area from around the 13th century BCE (conventional chronology). This confederation was called Nairi. Around 860 BCE, Urartu became the dominant member of Nairi and established the independent Kingdom of Van. This kingdom had uneasy relations with Assyria but survived several invasions by the Assyrians and the Cimmerians. Eventually, the Scythians and Medes, who overthrew Assyria around 612 BCE, turned their attention to Urartu and between 590-570 it was conquered and absorbed into the Median Empire as a satrapy or client kingdom:
| Modern Chronology | Years BCE |
|---|---|
| Bronze Age | 3400-1250 |
| Nairi | 1250-860 |
| Urartu (Kingdom of Van) | 860-570 |
| Armenia (Orontids) | 570-200 |
The Orontids were an Indo-Aryan dynasty who ruled Armenia as satraps (client kings) of the Median and Persian emperors. Urartu became part of the Satrapy of Armenia. After the fall of the Persian Empire, several independent kingdoms were established in the region, including Greater Armenia. The relationship between the Urartians and the Armenians is still a matter of scholarly debate, as is the transition from the Kingdom of Van to the Satrapy of Armenia.
According to the Dutch historian Jona Lendering:
The original name of Urartu was Biainele; its capital was the rock fortress Tušpa (modern Van in eastern Turkey) ... The people of Urartu, famous metalworkers, spoke a language that was related to Hurrian (a language that has no other known connections), and they adapted a simplified Assyrian cuneiform script for their own purposes ... Under Persian rule, the Urartian language, which was related to Hurrian, was replaced by Armenian, which was the tongue of the common people. Probably, this was not caused by ethnic, but by political changes: when the Persians had conquered the country, they favored the latter, Indo-European language, which is related to Greek and—at a distance—Persian. Although the Armenians called themselves Haikh, Herodotus makes in his Histories a distinction between the Armenians and Alarodians (a rendering of “Urartians”). He also mentions the Chaldaioi, Kolchoi, Makrones, Mares, Moschoi, Mossynoikoi, Saspeires, Tibarenoi (Tabali in Persian), tribes that lived in Armenia (or in its neighborhood). Urartu lived on as a satrapy, and later as an independent kingdom called Armenia. (Jona Lendering, Urartu, Armenia)
According to the reconstruction of Heinsohn and his follower Emmet John Sweeney, the Neo-Assyrians and the Cimmerians, who harried Urartu after 781 BCE, were actually the Medes/Persians and the Scythians, who warred against Urartu in the 7th and 6th centuries, before the Persians finally conquered the kingdom and made it a satrapy in their empire.
According to Herodotus, the Persian Emperor Darius the Great divided his empire into twenty tax districts or satrapies. The 18th satrapy comprised three subject nations and was assessed at 200 talents of silver:
Eighteenth: the Matienians, Saspires, and Alarodians—200 talents. (de Sélincourt 244, Histories 3:89-97)
Herodotus’s Alarodioi is generally thought to be a Greek transliteration of Urartians. The Alarodians were the remnants of the Urartians:
The Vannic kingdom was known as Urartu to the Assyrians and Babylonians, Ararat in Hebrew ... On the other hand, the name of Ararat has been preserved in that of the Alarodians of Herodotus, so that, if another title is wanted in place of Vannic, Alarodian would be preferable to Khaldian. (Sayce 169 ... 170)
Emmet Sweeney has gone further than Heinsohn. He has identified Urartu and the Kingdom of Van with the so-called Hittite Empire—or, at least, its eastern façade. Both Urartu and the Hittite Empire were ruled by Hurrian-speaking dynasties.
In an earlier work on the chronology of the Ancient World, Die Sumerer gab es nicht (The Sumerians Never Existed), Heinsohn first suggested that faulty dating had led to the triplication of ancient history, with kingdoms and individuals appearing in three different timelines. Emmet Sweeney refers to this idea in Volume 3 of his series Ages in Alignment, while discussing a character in Egyptian history, a functionary called Wenamon, who seems to exist in three different timelines:
This character triplication calls to mind Gunnar Heinsohn’s arguments about the triplication of history, as explained for example in his Die Sumerer gab es nicht (Frankfurt, 1988). The triplication, he contends, occurred because the ancient history of the Near East was constructed upon three quite distinct and contradictory dating blueprints; the first millennium being (by and large) dated according to classical sources; the second millennium being dated according to Egyptian Sothic sources, whilst the third millennium dates were supplied by biblically dated Mesopotamian sources. (Sweeney 2006:22 fn 51)
Sweeney returned to this concept in Volume 4 of the Ages in Alignment series, while investigating the curious gaps, or hiatuses, that plague the conventional chronology:
The Persians, we know, ruled the whole of Mesopotamia for over two centuries, two hundred years of prosperity and high civilization. Yet scholars now have to assert that the Persians left virtually no evidence of their stay in the region at all. This is an incredible state of affairs, a fact which has now had the inevitable result of prompting some historians to begin asking some fundamental questions about the nature of the Persian Empire. The solution, Heinsohn suggested, was simply to remove the hiatuses. Thus the so-called “Neo-Assyrians,” who occupy the first pre-Hellenic strata—exactly where we should expect the Persians—are in fact the Persians in the guise of rulers of Assyria. The Mitanni, who lie immediately underneath the Neo-Assyrians (with a five-century gap intervening) are of course the Medes, the immediate predecessors of the Persians. And last but not least the Akkadians, who lie immediately underneath the Mitanni (with a seven-century gap intervening) are the Assyrians, the immediate predecessors of the Medes. Heinsohn came to the conclusion that the three hiatuses are the result of applying three entirely separate dating systems. Not only was world history duplicated in the second millennium, as Velikovsky believed, but also triplicated in the third millennium. Yet this veritable comedy of errors had a rationale and followed its own internal logic. It was, as Heinsohn has demonstrated, constructed upon three quite separate dating blueprints. Thus the history of the first millennium, which is in fact the true history of the region, is known solely through the classical and Hellenistic sources and is dated according to these sources. A “history” of the second millennium, however, is supplied by cross-referencing with Egyptian material, and this chronology is based solely on these sources, which are dated via Eusebius/Manetho and the so-called Sothic Calendar. The final part of the triplication, the ghost-kingdoms of the third millennium, is supplied by cross-referencing with Mesopotamian cuneiform documents, and this chronology is based solely on these sources, which are ultimately dated on the basis of biblical history. (Sweeney 2008:75-76)
Sweeney has modified Heinsohn’s simple model by identifying the earliest Neo-Assyrians with the Emperors of the Medes, while still equating the Medes and the Mitannians (Sweeney 2008:159). He has even identified the so-called Middle Assyrians as alter egos of the Medes (Sweeney 2006:121-125). This greatly simplifies the situation by reducing the number of actual rulers, but a lot of research is required before I would be prepared to accept such a model.
In an earlier article in this series, we looked at the hypothesis that the Medes of the 1st millennium and the Mitannians of the 2nd millennium are one and the same people. Heinsohn’s concept of triplicated history now leads us to ask whether these kingdoms have their own ghost-kingdom in the 3rd millennium. Could Armi or Armani be that ghost-kingdom? And if it is, what does this tell us about the true identity of Urartu?
As we have seen, Armi is only known from clay tablets—the Ebla Tablets—from the ancient Syrian city of Ebla. It is described as a vassal kingdom of Ebla’s. Its capital city has been identified with Aleppo in northwestern Syria. Ebla—Tell Mardikh, about 50 km south-southwest of Aleppo—was destroyed around 2290 BCE (conventional chronology). The kingdom of Armi is not mentioned after that.
According to The Sargon Geography, a Late Babylonian or Neo-Assyrian treatise on the geography of the Empire of Sargon of Akkad, the Land of Armani extended from Ibla to Bit-Nanib. Ibla is thought by some scholars to be Ebla, though this is disputed. This makes it likely that Armani and Armi were the same. I have no idea where Bit-Nanib was. Others, however, believe that Sargon’s Armani was located much further to the east, in the neighbourhood of the Zagros Mountains:
Armani (SG 13) stretches from Ebla to Bit-Nanib. The land of Armani, also written Alman and Ḫalman, was located in western Iran during the Middle Assyrian and Kassite periods ... However, Old Akkadian and Ur III Arman has been identified with Aleppo in Syria ... and Ebla is Tell Mardikh in Syria. thus, a placement of Armani east of the Tigris is problematic. Two solutions to the problem may be proposed. (1) Ebla in SG 13 may not be the famous Syrian Ebla, but a city Ebla/Abla/Ubla east of the Tigris ... This eastern Ebla would be an appropriate border for the later Middle Assyrian and Kassite land of Armani in Iran. (2) One may note close associations between Syrian Ebla and Arman in Naram-Sin materials where Arman (= Aleppo) and Ebla often appear together. For example, Naram-Sin conquers both Arman and Ebla in the Naram-Sin inscription UET 1 275/276 + duplicates ... and Arman itself is listed as one of the lands that revolted against Naram-Sin during the general insurrection ... It is possible that the editor of The Sargon Geography forgot the western locations of Old Akkadian Arman and Ebla in Syria but knew of the connection between the two sites. If so, the later eastern Arman in Iran may have been equated with the western Arman of Old Akkadian times, and the Syrian Ebla then moved into the Zagros to join the eastern Arman. (Horowitz 82)
Sargon’s grandson Naram-Sin has left us a lengthy description of his siege and capture of the city of Armanum during a campaign in which he also conquered Ebla ... the Amanus, the Cedar Mountain, and the Upper Sea. He names the King of Armanum as Rida-Adad:
Although it is clear that Naram-Sin’s campaign passed through Ebla (Tall Mardikh) on its way to the Mediterranean coast and the Cedar Mountain, the exact geographical position of Armanum remains uncertain. It is now generally accepted that Armanum should be identified with Armi/Armium of the Ebla texts and not, as had previously been suggested, with Halab (modern Aleppo). But Armi is unlocalized, even though it is the most frequently mentioned place name in the Ebla texts after Mari and Emar. (Otto 1)
In this paper, Otto identifies Armanum with Tell Banat, another site in northern Syria, about 80 km east-northeast of Aleppo.
Some mainstream historians have suggested that Armani does refer to Armenia:
We know that Narâm-Sin was called the conqueror of the lands of Armânum and Ibla ... Ibla, it is now generally accepted, lay somewhere in Syria ... On the location of Armânum opinion has been varied. Sidney Smith ... identified it with Assyrian Ḫalman or Ḫalpi (Aleppo), whereas Albright ... was inclined to equate it with the later Armenia. This latter opinion I think is correct now that the exact place of origin of the famous Diarbekr Stele of Narâm-Sin is known ... This Diarbekr stele was erected at Pir Hüseyin, a few miles N.E. of Diarbekr, on the Ambar Chai ... it would seem that the region around Pir Hüseyin might be ... Armânum ... Stranger still that for this same region, roughly speaking, the Behistûn Inscriptions of Darius I should equate Uraštu (= Urartu) with a form Armina (Arminiya), from which, through Herodotus, the modern Armenia directly originates. Is this form Armenia another example of an ancient land-name, long out of use, brought to life again? If the correlations above are not accidental and if my suggestion that Armânum seems to have been in the Pir Hüseyin region is correct ... then a possible origin of the term Armenia, for which no satisfactory etymology has been offered ... may herein be found. (Rigg 416-418)
In the Short Chronology, Darius’s Behistun Inscription and Naram-Sin’s conquests are only separated by a few centuries, not the 1700 years of conventional chronology.
Heinsohn, therefore, is not breaking any new ground when he equates the Armians and Armanians with the ancient inhabitants of Armenia. He is breaking new ground, however, when he claims that they were contemporaries who flourished in the middle of the 1st millennium BCE.
Recently, more than one independent researcher has identified Mitanni and Urartu, dragging the former into the 1st millennium where it truly belongs. This hypothesis opens up the tantalizing possibility that Urartu was the true heartland of the Medes, the centre from which they emerged to conquer their mighty empire.
In the next article in this series, we will examine this interesting new theory.
And that’s a good place to stop.
