So, I made it to Van. Amazingly. It’s an amazingly blue-sky day, and I’m climbing up to Van Castle. It looks like I’m the first person to climb up here today because, as you can see, there aren’t many footprints. There are no fresh footprints; I’m causing the only fresh ones around.
This fort was built around... well, people have lived here since 5000 BCE, but it’s of most interest to “Finding Manuland” because we’re in search of stables with an inscription down to and by Menua, who was the son of the founder of the Urartu Empire.
Some of us may remember from the Bible that Mount Ararat is where Noah’s Ark allegedly came to rest—or rather, the Ararat Mountains. This kingdom, Biainili (as they called themselves), which would later become Armenia and the capital of Armenia itself, is the center of what became the Urartu Empire. We’re interested in the truth, the complexity of history, and our ever-evolving mental models.
Our mental model of time really begins around 4100 BCE. The Urartu Empire was at its height 3,200 years after that. As you see, this majestic lake—I once saw it from an airplane, with twinkling lights around it and the blue sky. I first saw this fort last night in a massive snowstorm, actually. I couldn’t work it out because you could just see lights up on what looked like a cliff. I thought it was mountains, but actually, it is a promontory leading out. As you can see on both sides, it’s quite low.
We’re particularly interested in this place from a “Finding Manuland” perspective because the son of the first emperor was called Menua. Here, we’ll find an inscription to Menua, so we’re going to look for that. That “MN” sound in Menua’s name then went into Armenia—into the “MN” in Armenia. I’ve spoken about that before.
In 1856, Russia lost the first Crimean War and ceded what was then Armenia to what was then the Sublime Porte, which became the Ottoman Empire and subsequently the modern state of Turkey. The old city up here was occupied by the Russians in the First World War and destroyed by them. Wherever we go, we find destruction by the Russians. This is why, as a result of the “Second Crimean War” which is currently ongoing, we must do everything we can to ensure that this kind of destructiveness by this state never comes to pass again.
So, we’re going to look at the old city. We’re going to look for Menua’s inscription and the “MN” sound in a non-mythological founder of an Indo-European linguistic and cultural tradition: Menua.
Menua was a historical figure. I’ve seen his inscriptions in Yerevan, and I’ve written about them before in the Menua episode (which I’ll link underneath this). In the Indo-European traditions, we have many mythological founders: Manu in India, of course, and Mannus, the subject of that six-part series I made earlier this year. We also have Manawydan in Wales, a mythological founder, and Manannán, who probably was a historical figure but was the preeminent pre-Christian deity in Ireland—part of the Celtic Indo-European tradition. But Menua was a historical figure, the son of the first emperor of Urartu. It went from being a kingdom to an empire, ruling most of Anatolia.
This area of Anatolia—modern Turkey and Lake Van—is in fact the meeting point of many great empires. It’s part of Northern Mesopotamia, the interaction zone between Babylon, Akkadian, and Ur (which is down in Iraq). But here in Northern Mesopotamia, around where writing first emerged in cuneiform text, we’re going to see some inscriptions in cuneiform.
We also had the Kura-Araxes culture, which was founded in modern Armenia and lasted from about 3500 BCE to around 2000 BCE. At that same time, Assyria is at its height; Babylon is at its height. They’re coming into this area and leaving the remnants of their writing. We also see traces of Kanesh, where the first Indo-European writing was found, which I’ve visited and spoken about before.
Then we have:
* The Hittite Empire: Rules this area from about 1600 BCE to 1200 BCE.
* Urartu: At its height from 800 to 500 BCE.
* The Achaemenid Empire: Darius the Great, who we’ll talk about again—very important in Iran. Today, protests are going on in Iran; we’ll see if the mullahs leave, then I can visit there, God willing.
The Achaemenid Empire dissolves when Darius’s descendants die and Alexander (the so-called Great) takes over. Then comes the great Armenian Empire, which was at its height in terms of land, controlling most of Anatolia all the way to the Levant around 50 BCE. Now, the modern state of Armenia is on 29,000 square kilometers, again having been betrayed by the Russians.
And now we have the Ottoman Empire, and the Kurds are here—Indo-Europeans as well in this area. So what we have here is an amazing interaction zone and Lake Van, an absolutely stunning place.
I’m going to leave it at that for the moment, and we’re going to look for Menua’s stables.
Recall who Menua is:
Who was Menua?
Finding Manuland XVI: M-N- sound in Armenia and Ireland’s first monarchs’ moniker.
Recently I drove by the source of one of the rivers of Babylon: the Euphrates. Menua (790 BCE to 775 BCE) was the third monarch to rule the Biblical era Van / Ararat / Urartu / Bianili kingdom, whose successor state two millennia later is Armenia…
Read on at: https://www.powerofmana.net/p/who-was-menua
Who was Menua?
Recently I drove by the source of one of the rivers of Babylon: the Euphrates. Menua (790 BCE to 775 BCE) was the third monarch to rule the Biblical era Van / Ararat / Urartu / Bianili kingdom, whose successor state two millennia later is Armenia.
Continued from:
Podcast | Finding Manuland - Road to Tushpa / Van
Menua, son of the founder of the Urartian Empire, once lived on the lakeside at Tushpa, whose modern name is Van (Türkiye).
First in series:
Finding Manuland I
In October 2021 I was returning from my final vacation before my forced retirement from my beloved diplomatic posting to Ukraine.
