ウラルトゥの長剣について

その系譜，分布と政治的背景

抄録

A characteristic type of sword is often found from sites such as cities or tombs of the Urartian kingdom, which flourished in the first half of the 1^st millennium B.C. in the Anatolian, Iranian, and Transcaucasian highlands as a powerful rival of the Assyrian empire. This type of long sword always has fitting in bronze/copper or silver on a tong-shaped wide hilt, and the tip of the scabbard is square-cut. Its bimetallic construction is in common with earlier swords from northwestern Iran, while its hilt resembles earlier swords from the Mediterranean world, in particular the Naue II type swords (Griffzungenschweter).
 These swords have been found not only in sites of the Urartian kingdom, but also in Transcaucasia, central Anatolia, and Luristan in Iran (the Iron Age Graveyard ar War Kabud). This distribution suggests that the urartian kingdom used these swords in its diplomatic activity, giving them to be used as regalia in these areas. The Urartian king may have bestowed this type of sword upon a powerful family (or person).
 Some swords in pictorial representations on Urartian bronzes resemble this type of sword, but the best and most detailed representation can be found on some reliefs from Carchemish, namely the reliefs of king Yariri with his prince and court officials on the “royal buttress”, which is of a type of Neo-Hittite/Luwian art dated to the middle of 8^th century B.C. The existence of these swords in the court of Carchemish also suggests that we should reconsider the political and diplomatic situation in north Syria at that time.