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The Anatolian languages, like Hitti and Luwian, are Indo-European and so is the Indo-Aryan and Indo-Iranian languages as well. The same can be said about Armenian and most of the European languages. Urartian is believed to be either some form of IE, or a language isolate only related to Hurrian, the latter theory is the […]

Šab-e Čella(-e bozorg) (“night of (the great) forty”‎) or Šab-e Yaldā (“Yalda night”‎) is an Iranian festival celebrated on the “longest and darkest night of the year,” that is, in the night of the Northern Hemisphere’s winter solstice. It was officially added to Iran’s List of National Treasures in a special ceremony in 2008. Calendarically, […]

Magi (Latin plural of magus; Ancient Greek: magos; Old Persian: maguš, Persian:‎ mogh; English singular magian, mage, magus, magusian, magusaean; Kurdish: manji) is a term, used since at least the 6th century BC, to denote followers of Zoroastrianism or Zoroaster. The word means “skilled magicians, astrologers,” from Latin magi, plural of magus “magician, learned magician,” from […]

Excavation of the ruins at a Bronze Age archaeological settlement of Metsamor in central Armenia has revealed a very large metal industry including a foundry with 2 kinds of blast furnaces. The foundry is known to have extracted and processed gold, copper, and several types of manganese, zinc, strychnine, mercury, and iron. Several huge underground caves were […]

– Some background In the summer of 2005 I was shooting a film in Srebrenica, Bosnia, about the fall of the UN enclave 10 years earlier which led to the death of around 8000 muslim men and boys. My colleague Kay Mastenbroek (who later co-directed Land of our Grandparents with me) was curious about a […]

In Hittite inscriptions Armenian Kingdoms spread all over historic Armenia are mentioned as Armatana, Hayasa (Hittite “sa” connotes to “land/country”) and Hurri. Based on the name “Hurri” from Hittite inscriptions modern historians invented a new nation and called “Hurrians”….Just like from Sumer they invented a new nation called “Sumerians”… Hay is a self designation name […]