Editing Urartian language (section)

==Decipherment==
The German scholar [[Friedrich Eduard Schulz]], who discovered the Urartian inscriptions of the Lake Van region in 1826, made copies of several [[cuneiform]] inscriptions at [[Tushpa]], but made no attempt at decipherment.<ref name=noonan/> Schulz's drawings, published posthumously in 1840 in the ''Journal Asiatique'',<ref>Schulz, Fr. Ed., "Mémoire sur le lac du Van et ses environs, ''Journal Asiatique'' ser. 3 vol. 9 (1840): 257-323 + 8 plates.</ref> were crucial in forwarding the decipherment of Mesopotamian cuneiform by Edward Hincks.<ref>Hincks, Edward. "On the Inscriptions at Van." ''Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society'' 9 (1847): 387-449.</ref>

After the decipherment of [[Assyrian cuneiform]] in the 1850s, Schulz's drawings became the basis of the decipherment of the Urartian language. It soon became clear that it was unrelated to any known language, and attempts at decipherment based on known languages of the region failed.<ref name="goetze" /> The script was deciphered in 1882 by [[A. H. Sayce]]. The oldest of these inscriptions is from the time of [[Sarduri I]] of Urartu.<ref name="noonan">John Noonan, ''[http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/197302/van.htm Van!]'' at saudiaramcoworld.com</ref>{{Better source needed|reason=The current source is insufficiently reliable ([[WP:NOTRS]]).|date=May 2022}}

Decipherment only made progress after [[World War I]], with the discovery of Urartian-Assyrian bilingual inscriptions at [[Kelashin Stele|Kelišin]] and Topzawä.<ref name=goetze>A. Götze 1930, 1935</ref><ref>J. Friedrich 1933</ref>

In 1963, a grammar of Urartian was published by [[Giorgi Melikishvili|G. A. Melikishvili]] in [[Russian language|Russian]], appearing in [[German language|German]] translation in 1971. In the 1970s, the genetic relation with Hurrian was established by  [[I. M. Diakonoff]].