Menua ( ariations exist hy, Մենուա), also rendered Meinua or Minua, was the fifth known

king King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen regnant, queen, which title is also given to the queen consort, consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contempora ...

Urartu Urartu (; Assyrian: ',Eberhard Schrader, ''The Cuneiform inscriptions and the Old Testament'' (1885), p. 65. Babylonian: ''Urashtu'', he, אֲרָרָט ''Ararat'') is a geographical region and Iron Age kingdom also known as the Kingdom of V ...

from c. 810 BC to approximately 786 BC. In Armenian, Menua is rendered as ''Menua''. The name Menua may be connected etymologically to the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...

names

Minos In Greek mythology, Minos (; grc-gre, Μίνως, ) was a King of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa. Every nine years, he made King Aegeus pick seven young boys and seven young girls to be sent to Daedalus's creation, the labyrinth, to be eaten ...

and Minyas. A younger son of the preceding Urartian King,

Ishpuini Ishpuini (also Ishpuinis) () was king of Urartu. He succeeded his father, Sarduri I, who moved the capital to Tushpa (Van). Ishpuini conquered the Mannaean city of Musasir, which was then made the religious center of the empire. The main temple ...

, Menua was adopted as co-ruler by his father in the last years of his reign. Menua enlarged the kingdom through numerous wars against the neighbouring countries and left many inscriptions across the region, by far the most of any Urartian ruler. He organized a centralised administrative structure, fortified a number of towns and constructed

fortress A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

es. Amongst these was Menuakhinili located near

Mount Ararat Mount Ararat or , ''Ararat''; or is a snow-capped and dormant compound volcano in the extreme east of Turkey. It consists of two major volcanic cones: Greater Ararat and Little Ararat. Greater Ararat is the highest peak in Turkey and th ...

(its exact location is uncertain, perhaps at Bulakbaşı, east of modern-day Iğdır). Menua developed a

canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface f ...

and

irrigation Irrigation (also referred to as watering) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow crops, landscape plants, and lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,000 years and has been devel ...

system that stretched across the kingdom. The most significant of these was a 45 mile canal from the Hoşap valley to Van, which was named the Menua Canal after the king. It flowed at a rate of 1500 to 3000 litres of water per second, depending on the time of the year. Several of these canals are still in use today. He briefly co-ruled with his son, Inushpua, but was succeeded by another son,

Argishti I 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'', ''Argis ...

. Menua also had a daughter named Tariria, after whom a certain vineyard was named Taririakhinli. It is believed that Menua founded the city of Manazkert (Malazgirt).

References

Urartian kings 9th-century BC rulers 8th-century BC rulers 9th-century BC births Year of death unknown {{ANE-bio-stub

See also

References