The Urartian belts

The Urartian belts that take place an important place among the Urartian metal work dispersed in various museums in Turkey and all araund the world catch our attention with their decorations and quantity. It can be concluded that the Urartians must have adopted and willingly used the metal belts either as a jewel or as a basic part of their clothes. In the Urartian era, these belts show an artistic development from naturalistic to simple one and are amply used by men and women. These belts are worn in two ways; the one is bound around the waist and the other one is bound from left shoulder to right buttocks or vice versa. Considering the width of these belts, they are put in three different groups. The decorations on these belts are different and portray various topics that were embroidered using various techniques. The one wide and second medium-wide group belts were used by the Urartian men and the three narrow ones by the Urartian women. The wide and medium-wide belts show a two-staged development. Of three types of belts, the wide ones were used from the early years of Urartian state along the 8th century B. C. Medium- width belts were used as from the 7th century till the fall of the Urartian state. And the narrow ones, like the wide and the medium belts, were used from the 8th century until the decline of the Urartian belts. The belts manufactured at central workshops in line with plaque technique were produced by using decoration technique. The rich decorated belts must have been used mostly by the people lived in the palace or by the administrator people who are close to the palace; simply-decorated ones must have been used by the ordinary people. Since the belts were found in graves of different social classes and some of them have the figures of cult, it can be claimed that these belts also have religious motives on them. We assume that the belts that have cult figures on them ate believed to have protected the people who use them from badness. Besides this, it may be claimed that the belts used by the Urartian warriors protect the waist of the warriors like an armour. In addition, the decorations on the belts may be showing the bravery, heroism, courageous and the status of those people in the society.