ORIENTAL STUDIES IN ARMENIA VOLUME 3 Արևելագիտությունը Հայաստանում, հատոր 3 | Page 68

POPULATION LOSSES OF THE ARMENIAN HIGHLAND IN THE
PERIOD OF URARTIAN CAMPAIGNS
Grekyan Yervand
(Institute of Oriental Studies, NAS RA)
Enumeration of population groups captured as prisoners of war is often
mentioned in Urartian royal inscriptions. According to these sources, during
the campaigns of Urartian kings to the various regions of the Armenian
Highland and beyond, around 630,000 people were captured as prisoners of
war. In addition, Urartian sources approximately forty times inform about
captivity of “men (and) women” without mentioning of specific numerical data.
It could estimate additional 200,000 prisoners. With this calculation, the total
number of captives could reach up to 830,000 people.
Strangely enough, the Urartian texts always announce about “killing of
the some” and “taking others alive”. But when we compare the number of
captive ‘men’ with the numbers of other population groups of different ages
and sexes (such as ‘youths/(male) children (of immature age)’, ‘warriors’,
‘women’ or ‘infants’), it becomes clear that the number of captured ‘men’ is
negligible. It comprises only about 4.18 percent of the total, while the majority
of the prisoners consist of ‘youths/(male) children’ and ‘women’, 41.59 and
47.82 percent respectively. This fact suggests that the statement of the
Urartian texts about “killing of the some” was real and could mainly refer to
adult male population of the local communities. It is not accidental that the
texts also specifically mention the fact that the enumerated ‘men’ were taken
alive, while in case of ‘youths/(male) children’ or ‘women’ this statement never
figures in the texts.
If we accept that the evidence of the Urartian sources refer to 830,000
captured people and take off the numbers of ‘men’ and ‘warriors’ left alive,
then it could be assumed that during the Urartian campaigns the total number
of the massacred adult male population constitutes around 67-75 percent of
men or 13.27-18.73 percent of the total number of prisoners of war, around
130-190,000 persons.
The Urartian Empire was a palace/temple state, and its economy required
extensive manpower that was satisfied mainly through large-scale captures. It
was another matter that the invaders faced with the problem of control over the
captured people numbering in the hundreds of thousands, a problem, which
they tried to solve by mass annihilation of adult men and by blinding and/or
castrating the male prisoners, who had a chance to be left alive.
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