From
time to time there have been found and copied other similar texts, which
are cut on the mountainsides or on the massive stones which formed part
of the construction of their buildings and fortifications. A complete
collection of these texts, together with translations, will shortly be
published by Prof. Lehmann. Meanwhile, this scholar has discussed and
summarized the results to be obtained from much of his material, and
we are thus already enabled to sketch the principal achievements of the
rulers of this mountain race, who were constantly at war with the later
kings of Assyria, and for two centuries at least disputed her claim to
supremacy in this portion of Western Asia.
The country occupied by this ancient people of Van was the great
table-land which now forms Armenia. The people themselves cannot
be connected with the Armenians, for their language presents no
characteristics of those of the Indo-European family, and it is equally
certain that they are not to be traced to a Semitic origin. It is true
that they employed the Assyrian method of writing their inscriptions,
and their art differs only in minor points from that of the Assyrians,
but in both instances this similarity of culture was directly borrowed
at a time when the less civilized race, having its centre at Van, came
into direct contact with the Assyrians.
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