The Kelashin Stele ( ku, کێلەشین) (also Kelishin or Keli-Shin; from

Kurdish Language Kurdish (, ) is a language or a group of languages spoken by Kurds in the geo-cultural region of Kurdistan and the Kurdish diaspora. Kurdish constitutes a dialect continuum, belonging to Western Iranian languages in the Indo-European languag ...

: Blue Stone) found in Kelashin,

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...

, bears an important Urartian- Assyrian bilingual text dating to c. 800 BC, first described by

Friedrich Eduard Schulz Friedrich Eduard Schulz (1799–1829, also known as Friedrich Edward Schulz) was a German philosopher and Oriental studies, orientalist, who was one of the first to uncover evidence of the Kingdom of Urartu. Research on Urartu In 1827, th ...

in 1827. Part of Schulz's notes were lost when he was killed by Kurdish "bandits", and later expeditions were either prevented by weather conditions or Kurdish brigands, so that a copy (

latex Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...

squeeze) of the inscription could only be made in 1951 by G. Cameron, and again in 1976 by an Italian party under heavy military protection. The inscription describes the acquisition of the city of

Musasir Muṣaṣir (Assyrian cuneiform: and variants, including Mutsatsir, Akkadian for ''Exit of the Serpent/Snake''), in Urartian Ardini was an ancient city of Urartu, attested in Assyrian sources of the 9th and 8th centuries BC. It was acquired by ...

(Ardini) by the Urartian king Ishpuini.

References

Warren C. Benedict, ''The Urartian-Assyrian Inscription of Kelishin'', Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 81, No. 4 (1961), pp. 359–385. 9th-century BC steles 1827 archaeological discoveries Hurro-Urartian languages Akkadian literature Ancient Near East steles {{Semitic-lang-stub