Urartian and Post-Urartian Wall Paintings from Erebuni. Discovery, Style and Attribution

The article is devoted to the history of the discovery of archaeological wall paintings at the Urartian fortress of Erebuni in the 8th-4th centuries BC. Numerous fragments of murals were found at Arin-Berd hill during the joint archaeological expedition of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and the Office for the Protection of Monuments of the Gosstroy of the Armenian SSR in 1952–1978. To understand the history of research and correct attribution of the found murals, the chronology of the finds is extremely important, since Erebuni is the complex multi-layered monument with Urartian (8th-7th centuries BC) and post-Urartian cultural layers (6th-4th centuries BC). Based on the consideration of the chronology of discoveries, a general description of the found material is given, and a variant of attribution of the wall paintings according to their style and stratigraphy of the sites is proposed. An analysis of the historiography of Erebuni murals revealed general trends in the study and reconstruction of the Urartian wall paintings of Arin-Berd in the 1960s-1980s and their change with the continuation of excavations at Erebuni already at the end of the 20th century. The article also deals with the actual problem of attribution of an atypical group of the so-called “secular” paintings from the large hall of the palace (the so-called “room No. 15”) at Erebuni, which still cause discussion among experts about their dating. Based on the materials of the Arin-Berd archaeological archive of The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the author gives his point of view on the attribution of “secular mural” by the Late Urartian group of wall painting of the second half of the 7th century BC, based on the stratigraphy of cultural layers from field diaries and the latest data from the excavations at Erebuni.