Aratta

Aratta

Aratta was a semi-legendary land known from Sumerian epics. It probably existed during the first half of the third millennium BCE.

Its location has long been debated. Gamkrelidze and Ivanov proposed an Indo-European etymology for Aratta based on river terminology. Indeed, a river named Aratta is attested in the Urmia Basin during the Iron Age—about two thousand years after the legendary Aratta.

Despite this semantic parallel, other theories placing Aratta in more eastern regions, such as Afghanistan or eastern Iran, remain popular and are supported by various arguments.

It is noteworthy that Aratta was not only the name of a land in Sumerian sources but also an ordinary word. One meaning is “heavy,” “glorious,” or “important,” while another meaning is “tin.”

The interpretation of Aratta as “tin” may be understood in two ways. Either Aratta was a land rich in tin mines, or it was a place from which the Sumerians obtained tin through trade, or from which they learned about the use of tin.

Tin was an important metal in the Bronze Age. There were two main techniques for producing bronze from copper: alloying copper with arsenic or with tin. Both types of bronze are found in Armenia during the Kura–Araxes period. Moreover, Armenia also possessed tin deposits. However, Central Asia also has tin mines, and tin bronze was widely used in Europe as well.

For a long time, considerable uncertainty existed about the origin of tin used in the Near East. A recent study using isotopic analysis has challenged the theory that most of the tin used in the Levant, Greece, and Anatolia originated in Central Asia. Instead, the authors propose a European source.

However, Aratta itself cannot have been located in Europe. If we follow this line of reasoning, two possibilities emerge. Either Aratta was a trading hub somewhere in the Near East that obtained tin from Europe and redistributed it to the Sumerians, or Aratta was located in Armenia or the nearby northern Zagros region, where the Kura–Araxes culture existed during that period. These two hypotheses are not mutually exclusive. Isotopic studies of tin from historic Armenia may help clarify this question in the future.

Finally, the Armenian word for tin, anag (անագ), is related to the Sumero-Akkadian-Hurrian word for tin or lead (anna, annaki, anagi). This linguistic connection may reflect long-standing trade contacts between Mesopotamia and the Armenian Highlands.