The History of Antiquity (Vol. 1-6). Duncker Max

tells us as follows:—Japhet, the third son of Noah, had a son Gomer; Gomer's son was Thiras; Thiras had a son Thorgom; Thorgom's son Haik, together with his son Armenak and all his family, emigrated from Babylon to the plain of Airarat, in order to escape the tyranny of Belus, the king of Babel. This plain Haik then left to Cadmus, his grandson, the son of Armenak, and himself, with Armenak, passed on to the west, and founded Haikashen. But when the army of the Babylonians marched out to attack Airarat, Haik came to the assistance of his grandson, and defeated Belus on the shore of Lake Van. Then Armenak marched eastwards from Haikashen into the plain at the foot of the Aragazd, where at a later time Armajis, the son of Armenak, built the city of Armavir. The son of Armajis was Amasiaj, and of Amasiaj, Arast. The grandson of Arast was Aram, who undertook distant campaigns, and subjugated Syria and Cappadocia to his rule. With him Ninus, king of Assyria, out of respect to his power and bravery, made a league. Aram's son and successor was Araj, whose beauty inflamed Shamiram (Semiramis), the queen of Assyria. When Araj resisted her inclinations, Shamiram, at the head of her army, invaded Armenia, but, before the battle, she bade her soldiers spare Araj. The Armenians were defeated, and in spite of the command of Shamiram, Araj was slain in the mêlée, and she attempted in vain to resuscitate the corpse by magic arts. Then Shamiram caused builders to come from Assyria to Armenia, and with the help of these she erected a splendid city, Shamiramakert (city of Semiramis), on the shore of the lake of Van, in order to dwell in the cool air of the mountains during the heat of the summer months; and the throne of Armenia she gave to Cardus, the son of Araj. But he rebelled against her, fought without success, and, like his father, fell in battle. At last the Medes rebelled against Shamiram, and after defeat she fled to Armenia. On the shores of Lake Van she was overtaken by her pursuers, and when she had thrown her necklace and her ornaments into the water, she was slain. Then her son Zames (Ninyas) ascended the throne of Assyria, and for twenty-six generations the descendants of Cardus were vassals of the kings of Assyria.[692] After these twenty-six kings, whose names are given by Moses, when Nineveh had fallen, Barbakis (Arbaces) the Mede, crowned Baroir king of Armenia, and his descendants ruled as independent princes. The ninth successor of Baroir was Tigran (Tigranes). He conquered Azdahag (Astyages), the king of the Medes, and pierced him through with his lance in the battle. Owing to Tigran's bravery and victory, the prince of the Persians became the lord of the Medes.[693]

We can trace the elements out of which this account has arisen. The names Japhet, Gomer, and Thiras are borrowed from the Hebrew scriptures, from the genealogy of the Japhetic nations in Genesis; but the order of succession is altered. To the same book belongs Thorgom, the son of Thiras, and father of Haik; in the Hebrew his name is Torgarmah. Torgarmah was the name of Armenia among the Syrians;[694] the Hebrews appear to have used the word to denote the district of Van. The native name of the Armenians was Haikh, and of the land, Haiastan. From these names is derived Haik, the son of Thorgom, the progenitor of the race. The emigration from Babylon is no doubt an invention arising out of some early contact, out of the trade of Armenia with Babylonia, and intended to give the Armenians a share in the splendour of that ancient centre of the civilisation of Hither Asia, from which, as a fact, they derived such important elements of culture as their system of writing. Eastward of Lake Van Haik defeats the Babylonians, for here lay Haik's fortress; in Armenian Haikabjerd, i.e. fortress of the Armenians, and Hajots-dsor, i.e. valley of the Armenians. Northeast of this lake lies the canton of Harkth, i.e. the fathers, the canton of the fathers;[695] and in this, on the Eastern Euphrates, is Haikashen, i.e. Haik's building, which Haik is said to have founded, and where his grave was reported to be. As the name of Haik, i.e. the name of the nation, clings especially to the neighbourhood of Lake Van, so are the names of his supposed successors, his son Armenak, and grandsons Cadmos and Amajis, attached to the district of Airarat, to Mount Aragadz, and the city of Armavir. The land of Airarat, i.e. the fruitful plain, on the middle course of the Araxes, was, as we have heard, the first object of the immigrants, who must have come, not from the south, as the story represents, but from the east, from Media, and must have reached the valley of the Araxes from the shore of the Caspian Sea. As Haikh is the name by which the Armenians called themselves, so Armenak is obviously formed from the name Armina, which the Medes and Persians gave to the Armenians. Cadmus, the son of Armenak, is inserted in the story; and has been borrowed, as the form of the name shows, from Grecian sources, perhaps to represent the Semitic population in the South of Armenia. That in this learned construction of the Armenian myth the eastern, and not the southern, district of Armenia is given to Cadmus, is due, no doubt, to the fact that the Semitic word kedem could hardly have any other meaning than that of "the East." Armenak's grandson and great-grandson, Amasiaj and Arast, represent respectively the mountain chain of Masis and the river Araxes; in old Armenian the name of the latter was Eras'ch.[696]

The division of the two centres of the Armenian land and Armenian life—the land in the East and the land in the West, the land of Ararat on the Araxes, and the district of Van—is strongly marked in this tradition, and not less so in the Assyrian inscriptions and the scriptures of the Hebrews. The first text of the Pentateuch represents Noah's ship as landing on Mount Ararat, and this text or the second mentions Togarmah beside Gomer. The prophet Ezekiel speaks of the horses and mules which came from Togarmah, the land of mountain pastures, to Tyre.[697] The Assyrian inscriptions mention the land of Van (mat vannai) beside the land of Urarti, i.e. Ararat; each is ruled by its own prince.

      King Aram represents the land of Aram, the Aramæans, whose neighbours the Armenians were, and with whom they came into frequent contact. The oldest historical recollections of the Armenians might perhaps go back to the times when the kings of Assyria made an inroad into their mountains and reduced their princes to tribute and obedience. But when Moses of Chorni tells us of the meetings of Aram, Araj, and Cardus with Ninus, Semiramis, and Ninyas, of the twenty-six kings who governed under Assyrian dominion, and of the liberation of the land by Arbaces, these supposed names of the Assyrian riders are enough to prove that the narratives were framed upon the accounts of the Greeks, especially the Greek chronographers.

      On the other hand, the story of the city of Semiramis on Lake Van is grounded upon the Assyrian images and ruins, which are still found in various parts of Armenia, especially at Van, Bitlis, Karkar, Egil, and Achlat, as also upon monuments of the Persian kings, and Xerxes in particular; but no doubt it is due in the greatest extent to the monuments of the native princes, of whom inscriptions are in existence belonging to the end of the seventh and the sixth century B.C. Later historians knew nothing of these princes, and were unable to read the inscriptions. The long list of Armenian kings in Moses of Chorni does not contain a single name of the Armenian princes mentioned in the inscriptions of the Assyrian kings, or in the native inscriptions of these princes.

The narrative of king Tigran appears to be of an earlier date than the rest of the material from which Moses of Chorni compiled his history of Armenia in the older period. Tigran is said to have ruled over Armenia at the time of Cyrus, with whom he entered into a league; he overcame Astyages (Azdahag) of Media in battle, and slew him in single combat. The first wife of Astyages and a number of his children, together with other captives, Tigran then conducted to Armenia, and there he settled them in the neighbourhood of Koghten. In the songs of the people of Koghten the descendants of Astyages are "allegorically" spoken of as the descendants of the dragon, "for Azdahag," Moses adds, "signifies a dragon in our language."[698] Hence it is clear that the Armenians claimed the glory of having conquered the Medes and overthrown their supremacy. And if they called the descendants of Astyages the descendants of the dragon, they obviously contracted the old cloud-demon of the Avesta, Azhi-dahaka, into Azdahag, and confounded him with Astyages. Xenophon in his romance of Cyrus calls Tigranes the son of the king of Armenia, and represents him as paying the most considerable services to Cyrus. It may have been the case that Xenophon in his march through Armenia, when he crossed