Muṣaṣir in Urartian

Urartian language

Urartian, Vannic, and Chaldean are conventional names for the language spoken by the inhabitants of the ancient kingdom of Urartu that was located in the region of Lake Van, with its capital near the site of the modern town of Van, in the Armenian Highland, modern-day Eastern Anatolia region of...

 Ardini (likely from Armenian

Armenian language

The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...

 Artin) was an ancient city of Urartu

Urartu

Urartu , corresponding to Ararat or Kingdom of Van was an Iron Age kingdom centered around Lake Van in the Armenian Highland....

, attested in Assyrian sources of the 9th and 8th centuries BC.

It was acquired by the Urartian King Ishpuini

Ishpuinis of Urartu

Ishpuini was king of Urartu. He succeeded his father, Sarduri I, who moved the capital to Tushpa . Ishpuini conquered the Mannaean city of Musasir, which was then made the religious center of the empire. The main temple for the war god Haldi was in Musasir...

 ca. 800 BC (see the Kelashin Stele

Kelashin Stele

The Kelashin Stele found in Kelashin, Iraq, bears an important Urartian-Assyrian bilingual text dating to ca. 800 BC, first described by Friedrich Eduard Schulz in 1827...

). The city's tutelary deity was ^dḪaldi

Khaldi (god)

Ḫaldi was one of the three chief deities of Ararat . His shrine was at Ardini.The other two chief deities were Theispas of Kumenu, and Shivini of Tushpa....

.
The name Musasir in Akkadian means exit of the serpent.

The city's location is not known with certainty, although there are a number of hypotheses, all in the general area of 36°N 46°E, in the Zagros south of Lake Urmia

Lake Urmia

Lake Urmia , ancient name: Lake Matiene) is a salt lake in northwestern Iran, near Iran's border with Turkey. The lake is between the Iranian provinces of East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan, west of the southern portion of the similarly shaped Caspian Sea...

. François Thureau-Dangin tentatively located it at Mudjesir, 10 km west of Topzawa. Reza Heidari, an archaeologist of the "Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization" of Iran's West Azarbaijan Province

West Azarbaijan Province

West Azerbaijan Province or West Azarbaijan Province , is one of the 31 provinces of Iran. It is located in the North West of the country, bordering Turkey, Iraq and Nakhchivan, and the provinces of East Azerbaijan, Zanjan and Kurdistan....

 claims Rabat Tepe near Sardasht

Sardasht

Sardasht is a city in and the capital of Sardasht County, West Azerbaijan Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 37,115, in 8,224 families....

, Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

 as the location of Muṣaṣir.
Lynch claimed that it was close to the modern town of Rowanduz

Rowanduz

The town Rawandiz is a city of Iraq, which located in the sub-district of Soran, in the Arbil Governorate of Iraqi Kurdistan, close to the Iranian border.The population in 2003 was 95,089...

 in Iraqi Kurdistan

Iraqi Kurdistan

Iraqi Kurdistan or Kurdistan Region is an autonomous region of Iraq. It borders Iran to the east, Turkey to the north, Syria to the west and the rest of Iraq to the south. The regional capital is Arbil, known in Kurdish as Hewlêr...