Abstract:
Fire held a special place and enjoyed respect and holiness among ancient people. We can trace the holiness of fire among
various ancient nations, but this is less-studied in the case of Urartians. Usually there was a deity with the function of “Fire Deity”
among ancient people, but this is not the case for Urartians. This is strange, as Urartians lived in a cold environment and therefore one
can safely assume that fire must have had significant importance for them.There is no explicit reference regarding the importance of
fire or a specific Fire Deity in Urartian royal inscriptions, but it is possible to trace the function of the Fire Deity in Urartian texts with
respect to the most important Urartian god Ḫaldi.This paper is an attempt to study some pieces of evidence, such as a depiction of Ḫaldi
on a shield from the archaeological site of Anzaf and fireplaces at the site of Ayanis to show that a fire was lit for Ḫaldi and this could
be called the “Triumph Fire”. Also Ḫaldi, himself, may have been the Fire Deity and had the characteristics of the Triumph Fire such
as ever-burning, relation with Triumph God, burning in temples and maybe even in demanding sacrifice and offerings.
Machine summary:
This paper is an attempt to study some pieces of evidence, such as a depiction of Ḫaldi on a shield from the archaeological site of Anzaf and fireplaces at the site of Ayanis to show that a fire was lit for Ḫaldi and this could be called the "Triumph Fire".
It is the purpose of this paper to assess various lines of evidence, including the Anzaf shield and the Ayanis fireplaces, to include the special fire for Ḫaldi which can be considered "Triumph Fire".
The number of these sacrifices increase with Ḫaldi's other aspects, as worshipers had to provide sacrifices to some other factors related to Ḫaldi including his weapon(s), divinity, greatness, youthfulness, troops, chariot, gates, energy, power in the battle and even the gods of his susi temple3 (Belli 2003-2004: 110, Grekyan 2006: 184, Salvini 2008, A 3-1: 125-129).
According to Zimansky (1985: 72), Urartian kings were obliged to build temples The cult center of Ḫaldi was in southern part of Urartu (Grekyan 2006: 172-173), and as Urartians were expanding their kingdom they conquered Upper Zab Valley and Urmia lake basin.
Bronze Shield with the figures of Urartian gods found in the temple of Ḫaldi from Upper Anzaf (after Belli 1999) (Batmaz 2012: 3).
Although the shield from Anzaf and the fireplaces at Ayanis temple are the only pieces of evidence found regarding Ḫaldi's relation with fire and there is no inscription explicitly naming Ḫaldi as the Urartian Fire God, the author guesses that Ḫaldi was worshiped as such.