Hurro-Urartian language
Early Armenian history | |||
| Early History | |||
| Hurrians | |||
| Urartu | |||
| Hayasa | |||
| Nairi | |||
| Hurro-Urartian | |||
Both the Hurrian and Urartian languages left a slight residue in Armenian. This collection of vocabulary, known of for more than half a century but most recently discussed in a Western language by Igor M. Diakonoff (1985), implies that the proto-Armenians must have been influenced by the Early Trans-Caucasian culture in its later stages. This vocabulary is reviewed here, and its correspondences with the languages of the northeast Caucasus, spoken in the area from which the Hurrians descended in the third millennium, are provided. This affords us firmer evidence for the Hurrian relation to the Early Trans-Caucasian culture, and the Armenian rapport with Hurro-Urartian. Additional notes to this paper have been extracted from an extensive commentary on it by I. M. Diakonoff dated October 4, 1989. I thank Prof. Diakonoff for allowing me to incorporate some of his comments.