doi: 10.2143/ANES.52.0.3082868 ANES 52 (2015) 127-205 * Altan Çilingiroğlu, who is the director of Ayanis excavations and also my doctoral supervisor, enabled me to study Ayanis materials which are recorded in the Van Museum inventory. I am extremely grateful to him for his support and encouragement during my 16 years at the Ayanis excavations. I would like to express my gratitude Antonio Sagona for his encouragement and valuable discussion of this article. Oscar White Muscarella deserves special thanks for providing very useful feedback and improvements. This paper benefited from comments by Ursula Seidl on Urartian bronzes, Mirjo Salvini on Urartian inscriptions, Nicolas Wyatt on divinity, Mahmut B. Baştürk on Ayanis, Can Avcı on Upper Anzaf, Yervand Grekyan, Miqayel Badalyan and Roberta Dan on Karmir-blur, Stephan Kroll and Paul Zimansky on Bastam, and Mehmet Karaosmanoğlu on Altıntepe. Y. Grekyan and M. Badalyan also provided numerous sources in Russian and in Armenian; this paper would not have been as successful without their contribution. I am indebted to Serkan Acar, who assisted me by translating Russian sources. Special thanks go to Yeşim Batmaz, my wife, for her care- ful reading of the initial draft of this paper, and her endless support in every section of the present work. I am grateful to Serap Kuşu for 3D reconstruction of storerooms in the temple area at Ayanis. I am in debt to Simon Young and Jarrad Paul for their hard work to improve the English in the paper. Ece Sezgin who is a member of Ayanis Excavation deserves special thanks for her assistance during this study. Finally, I would like to thank my friends, students and other excavation members whom I cannot acknowledge individually, who laboured over various sections of the Ayanis excava- tions. All failings in this paper are, of course, my own. Votive Objects and their Storage Areas in Urartian Fortresses Atilla BATMAZ Abstract The Urartian Kingdom is renowned for its exceptional mastery in metal production amongst Near Eastern cultures during the first millennium BC. The production of metal artefacts played such a pivotal and leading role that the Urartians became a strong rival of the Assyrian empire in both warfare and artwork. As a state tradition, a considerable quantity of metal artefacts was dedicated to the gods by the kings. These artefacts were kept in various Urartian fortresses. Little information is available, however, regarding where and in what manner they were kept within these fortresses. This paper aims to decipher the designated areas for the votive objects regarding their location, architecture and archaeological find contexts.* Introduction Significant historical events in ancient Near Eastern cultures at the beginning of the ninth century BC were closely linked to developing iron technologies. The pre-Urartian population, which had been obliged to pay tribute to the powerful Assyrian Empire up until the first quarter of the ninth century BC, had become a large and powerful political organisation. The Assyrians experienced trouble in their dealings with them owing to the iron, bronze or bimetallic weapons that they produced, along with their organised military power. Weaponry and militarism, so fundamental to Urartian success, became embedded in Urartian religious beliefs, both in the