URARTIAN LANGUAGE

also called Chaldean, or Vannic, ancient language spoken in northeastern Anatolia and used as the official language of Urartu in the 9th6th century BC. Non-Indo-European in origin, it is thought to be descended from the same parent language as the older, Hurrian language. Surviving texts of the language are written in a variant of the cuneiform script called Neo-Assyrian. Two bilingual inscriptions in Assyrian and Urartian led to the deciphering of Urartian. In 1933 the German Orientalist Johannes Friedrich published the first reliable description of the language in his Urartian grammar.