the national god of the ancient kingdom of Urartu, which ruled the plateau around Lake Van, now eastern Turkey, from about 900 to about 600 BC. Haldi was represented as a man, with or without wings, standing on a lion; in the absence of religious texts his attributes are otherwise unknown. A Urartian temple at ancient Muṣaṣir dedicated to Haldi and to the goddess Bagbartu, or Bagmashtu, was captured and plundered by Sargon II of Assyria in 714 BC; it is shown on a relief from his palace as a gabled building with a colonnade—one of the oldest known buildings to make use of that architectural form.