Argishti I (), was the sixth known
king of
Urartu, reigning from 786 BC to 764 BC. He founded the citadel of
Erebuni in 782 BC, which is the present capital of
Armenia,
Yerevan.
Alternate transliterations of the name include ''Argishtis'', ''Argisti'', ''Argišti'', and ''Argishtish''. Although the name is usually rendered as ''Argišti'' (read: ''Argishti''), some scholars argue that ''Argisti'' is the most likely pronunciation. This is due to the belief that the Urartians used the cuneiform symbol ''š'' to voice an ''s''-sound, as opposed to representing the digraph ''sh''.
A son and the successor of
Menua, he continued the series of conquests initiated by his predecessors, apparently campaigning every year of his reign.
He was involved in a number of inconclusive conflicts with the
Assyrian king
Shalmaneser IV. He conquered the northern part of
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
and made Urartu the most powerful state in post-
Hittite Asia Minor. He also expanded his kingdom north to
Lake Sevan, conquering much of
Diauehi and the
Ararat Valley. After an uprising by the inhabitants of the newly conquered regions, Argishti deported them and repopulated the area with subjects from other parts of his empire.
[Adam T. Smith. ''The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities.'' University of California Press. 2003]
/ref> In those territories, Argishti built Erebuni Fortress in 782 BC, settling it with 6,600 prisoners of war from Hatti and Supani.[Petrosyan, Armen - The Indo-european and ancient Near Eastern sources of the Armenian epic, 2002, Institute for the study of Man] Compare Armenian արեգ (translit. ''areg'') – “sun deity”, “sun” ΑΡΕJΑΣΤΙΝ (translit. ''Areyastin'') - “epithet of the great mother” and Ancient Greek αργεστής (translit. ''argestes'') - “shining”, “brilliant”, “white”, “bright”. ''Ti'' (''Di'') meant "god" in proto-Armenian (compare with Classical Armenian
Classical Armenian (, in Eastern Armenian pronunciation: Grabar, Western Armenian: Krapar; meaning "literary anguage; also Old Armenian or Liturgical Armenian) is the oldest attested form of the Armenian language. It was first written down at ...
''Dik).
See also
* List of kings of Urartu
References
Further reading
*N. Adontz, ''Histoire d'Arménie. Les origines'', Paris, 1946
External links
Erebouni at Armenica.org
Urartian kings
8th-century BC rulers
City founders
Yerevan
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