Johannes Friedrich und die Urartäische Sprachforschung

Abstract The “Introduction to Urartian”, from 1933, is a cornerstone of Urartian research. J. Friedrich’s studies of the verb, and more generally of Urartian grammar, are fundamental to all subsequent research, and almost every analysis and meaning suggested in his essays and in the introduction is rightly still correct today. Friedrich clarifies the almost complete identity of the Urartian cuneiform with the Assyrian, but also some epigraphic differences. He mentions his analyzes that differ from Götze and Tseretheli and makes it clear that “the study of Urartian must not use anything other than the purely combinatorial method” and that any etymological attempt with other languages such as Armenian or Hittite or Subaraic should be rejected. Friedrich benefited from the well-edited Urartian inscriptions by Lehmann-Haupt in the 1 st fascicle of the Corpus Inscriptionum Chaldicarum (1928), without sharing many of the old Meister’s interpretations. Since then, contrary to the opinion of Lehmann-Haupt (CICh) and Meščaninov (Chaldovedenie), the language has been called Urartian and not Chaldic. Ninety years later (2023), one must generally state that Johannes Friedrich’s linguistic and philological achievements can be described as unsurpassable, even after the considerable increase in Urartian texts.