HALDI

the national god of the ancient kingdom of Urartu, which ruled the plateau around Lake Van, now eastern Turkey, from about 900 to about 600 BC. Haldi was represented as a man, with or without wings, standing on a lion; in the absence of religious texts his attributes are otherwise unknown. A Urartian temple at ancient Musasir dedicated to Haldi and to the goddess Bagbartu, or Bagmashtu, was captured and plundered by Sargon II of Assyria in 714 BC; it is shown on a relief from his palace as a gabled building with a colonnadeone of the oldest known buildings to make use of that architectural form.