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Mehmet Kuşman
Mehmet Kuşman (born 1940) is a Turkish linguist and a retired guard at Çavuştepe, an ancient Urartu, Urartian fortified site in eastern Turkey. He is one of only twelve people in the world who can read and write the Urartian language. Early life Mehmet Kuşman was born in Van as the child of a farmer family. After finishing primary school, He worked as a farmer with his father until he went to the army. He is married and has eleven children. Career After completing his military service, Kuşman started to work as a guard in the Çavuştepe Castle built by the Urartians between 764 and 735 BC, located along a road near Van leading to Hakkâri (city), Hakkari. Despite being a primary school graduate, he started to learn the Urartian script from the people who came to the region for excavation work and the books they gave. He travelled to many cities of Iran, Armenia, Syria and Turkey to learn Urartian and learned the Urartian script in three years. He has been invited to sy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Van, Turkey
Van (; ; ) is a city in eastern Turkey's Van Province, on the eastern shore of Lake Van. It is the capital and largest city of Van Province. Van has a long history as a major urban area. It has been a large city since the first millennium BCE, initially as Tushpa, the capital of the kingdom of Urartu from the 9th century BCE to the 6th century BCE, and later as the center of the Armenian kingdom of Vaspurakan. Turkic presence in Van and in the rest of Anatolia started as a result of Seljuk victory at the Battle of Malazgirt (1071) against the Byzantine Empire. Van was densely populated by Armenians until the Armenian genocide in the 1910s. Today, it is mostly inhabited by Kurds. History Archaeological excavations and surveys carried out in Van Province indicate that the history of human settlement in this region goes back at least as far as 5000 BCE. The Tilkitepe Mound, which is on the shores of Lake Van and a few kilometres to the south of Van Castle, is the onl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
