[February 12, 2025] Persistence paid off for a retired guard at Çavuştepe, an ancient Urartian Fortified site in eastern Turkey. Yes, he was a guard at the site to prevent tourists from stealing bits and pieces of priceless artifacts from this archaeological site. Yet, using logic and persistence, he was able to decipher a 3,000-year-old dead language.
Mehmet has only a grade school education, but he became curious one day while guarding an Urartian site covered in this dead language. At the time, no one could read the language; historians or archeologists couldn’t break the code.
“I worked as an official guard from 1962 to 2005. Since 2005, I’ve been a volunteer since.” — Mehmet Kuşman
The writings were every where, on walls, on tablets, on the ground, and scattered around on bits and pieces of broken clay. Bynhos own definition, Mehmet was a stubborn young man. One day he asked a professor at the site of he could help decipher the language. But the professor just brushed him off and told him to back to guarding the place.
Mehmet went to Iran, Syria, and Armenia to see if he could find someone who knew this ancient language. He admits today that he didn’t even have a passport and would have been in trouble if caught. In his travels, he learned about a related language called Hurrian and which had been partly decoded. This would be his first real lead.
Using basic logic, like common names for places that haven’t changed, he was able to sort out some of the alphabet of Urartian. Mehmet was obsessed with interpreting the language and even begins to dream about it. He began to see patterns in the writing that even the academics had missed and that would lead to a huge hidden secret. This was that Urartian was a syllabic language, meaning that each symbol had a certain sound and this was how words were built.
It took Mehmet 22 years but in that time, he worked out 650 Urartian words and this was enough for him to figure out how to speak the language. In these writings, we learn about the life of their kings, the battles they fought, their farming techniques, and even massive engineering projects like canals.
What’s interesting is that when everything began to make sense, no one believed that Mehmet could read the language. The experts asked him where he got the information. Mehmet said that he didn’t get it from anywhere, he just was able to now read it. Eventually, he was believed and then everything changed.
Professors began going to Mehmet for advice and interpretations of Urartian. Then the media discovers him and things got a little crazy. Even a Japanese tourist offered Mehmet $4,000 a month to teach Urartian to his children. Universities had him come speak on the language and he did so, but that wore him down. The United States offered him a 14-year permit if he’d only teach for one year. He rejected the offer.
His decision was to stay in Turkey and be near his family and to be near the inscriptions he loves. He is now teaching the language to his granddaughter.
Persistence does pay off.
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Note: Much of this article was taken from a YouTube video by Olly Richards which can be found here.
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A crusty old fellow from Turkey. Looks lean and ready. And wants to be with his family. This is what a real man is like and the fact that he would not surrender to the “experts” and “scientists” who looked down upon him. He used this as a form of motivation to steel his courage and desire to finish the task of learning a dead language. Who knew there were such men? I can only admire such men like him and to Mehmet Kusman, I salute you as a man who we all can aspire to be.
Well said, Army Captain. Men like Mehmet are rare but valuable to their core.
A good man, Mehmet Kuşman.
A family man, Mehmet Kuşman.
We need more men like Mehmet Kuşman.
One doesn’t often get to witness a great accomplishment from pure persistence. But, there is more, of course. There is being focuses and using logic. That also played a great part in Mehmet’s success. I have no desire to travel to a Turkey, so I will never see the castle but I would like to know what the writing on the walls says. That would be good if there is any philosophical ideas there.
“ End of the watch for last true ‘Urartian’ of Turkey ” – October 20, 2020
https://www.dailysabah.com/turkey/end-of-the-watch-for-last-true-urartian-of-turkey/news
After 58 years of watching over Çavuştepe Castle, the 80-year-old man retired this week, leaving behind a life of devotion to ancient people inhabiting his hometown in the province of Van.
AMAZIN’
Absolutely amazing. And now he is retired. Great respect for this family man.
Eye Cat, right! And there are not enough real men like him, and even in retirement, he volunteers his time to be there on the spot where he alone can translate the dead language of Utrarian. Kudos to Mehmet.