Armenia would have been the north hinterlands for the Mesopotamian world of the Old Testament, and the Armenian Highlands were renowned for horse breeding and horsemanship throughout ancient times. regions. Narratives are built upon fragmentary texts and incomplete factual records. Archaeological surveys in 2010 and 2011 at the Areni-1 cave complex have resulted in the discovery of the world's earliest known leather shoe, skirt, and wine-producing facility. (Khorenatsi, II.5,7; III.55). Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies. , / Saint Nerses Shnorhali, In Faith I Confess (), , 2003 () , Tempest-Born Dro, Simon Vratsian (softcover), (). 1 & 2 (Spring/Summer 1985) 185-202; Marija Gimbutas, Proto-Indo- European Culture: The Kurgan Culture during the Fifth, Fourth, and Third Millennia B.C., 155-198 in Cardona, Hoenigswald & Senn, Indo-European and Indo-Europeans (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970). This article is about the origin of the ethnic group and their country. Earlier excavations in the Armenian Highlands have turned up stone tools and the skeletal remains of human beings and animals, such as the hippopotamus, elephant, rhinoceros, tiger, horse, camel, and ox dating to the Pleistocene age, more than 500,000 years ago. On Yerevans streets, the people speak a distinctive Indo-European language upon which their ancestors put the stamp of their identity 5000 or more years ago. [1] Thomas J. Samuelian, 2000 Yerevan, 2nd edition 2004. [57]Ishkhanian, Origin, 77, Ishkhanian, Bnik Hayeren Barer, 57, citing Melikishvili, Urartskie klinoobraznye nadpisi, (Moscow, 1960) 416. Hayk and his men soon discovered Bel's army positioned in a mountain pass (Moses of Chorene located the site as Dastakert), with the king in the vanguard. either as a mutilated dialect of it or as a sister-dialect. BC) and Strabo (1st cent. and members of many other ethnic groups. [20]Artak Movsisyan, Hnaguyn Petutyun HayastanumAratta (Yerevan: Depi yerkir 1992) 41. These fragmentary observations arouse interest and merit attention because of their antiquity. Hittite inscriptions deciphered in the 1920s by the Swiss scholar Emil Forrer testify to the existence of a mountain country, the Hayasa and/or the Azzi, lying around Lake Van. Thomas Samuelian, David of Sassoon (Yerevan, 1999). Bel would no longer menace the people of Hayk. Advocates of this theory consider words common to both the Semitic and Indo-European word stocks to be evidence of a period of prehistoric contact between the Proto-Semitic and Proto-Indo- European peoples[71]. The presence of this dynasty is attested from at least 400 BC, and it can be shown to have ruled originally from Armavir and subsequently Yervandashat. Regardless, the Urartian confederation united the disparate peoples of the highlands, which began a process of intermingling of the peoples and cultures (probably including Armenian tribes) and languages (probably including Proto-Armenian) within the highlands. Scholars have also noted parallels to the Sumerian legends of Dummuzi and Inanna, notable among which is the fact that Dummuzi is described as the son of Haya, who in Sumerian texts is described as the god of the people who lived in the Armenian Highlands[43]. They raided Israel ( 2 Kings 6:8) and later laid siege to the capital, Samaria (verse 24). An alternate theory suggests that Armenians were tribes indigenous to the northern shores of Lake Van or Urartu's northern periphery (possibly as the Hayasans, Etiuni, and/or Diauehi, all of whom are known only from references left by neighboring peoples such Hittites, Urartians and Assyrians). [58]Xenophon, Anabasis, V.5. [34]Khorenatsi, 32 (authors translation). The evidence of eastward migration contradicts the theory that the Indo-European homeland was in southern Russia, which would imply westward migration out of southern Russia[75]. the world. [73]Ibid., 14. These propositions are purely speculative and are largely based on geographic proximity, similarity between names, linguistics, and extrapolations made from known historical events of the time. The figure slain by Hayk's arrow is variously given as Bel or Nimrod. Movses Khorenatsi: The Father of Armenian History, Movses Khorenatsis history begins with a genealogy of the Armenian people. [51]Ishkhanian, Origin, 78. According to Armenian tradition, the two sons settled near the mountain called Sim, which has been identified as a mountain in Sassoon[40]. Various other unnamed Armenian rebels, hosts, armies, and leaders who rejected Darius' authority in Armenia. Strabo (64 BC-19 AD) states that throughout the Armenian state consolidated by King Artashes (189-159 BC), the people of various extractions spoke Armenian[29], although their customs were like the Medes[30]. [38] The process of amalgamation is presumed to have been accelerated by the formation of Urartu and completed in succeeding Armenian realms.[39][40][41][42]. with that or some more ancient antediluvian tongue. cited after Sa Grandeur Mgr. Who are Armenians descended from? According to both Urartian and Assyrian records, the Etiuni were hostile to Urartian rule. [29]Strabo, Geography, XI.14.5-6. [52]Chahin, Some Legendary Kings of Armenia: Can They Be Linked to Authentic History? Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, vol. [73][74], The Armenian region of Mosk and the city of Mush, Turkey may derive their names from the Mushki.[75][76]. The inscriptions chronicle the history of the Kingdom of Ararat from 900 to 600 BC[49]. [8]Raphael A. Ishkhanian, On the Origin and Earliest History of the Armenian People, trans. In the 5th century BC Herodotus, in his review of the troops opposing the Greeks, noted that the Armenians were armed like the Phrygians, being Phrygian settlers (refugees)[27].Whether his comment described all Armenians as Phrygian settlers, or only those warriors he happened to see, is unclear. As seen through their eyes, we learn that the Armenians, not unexpectedly, appear to share certain garb, weapons, ways of speaking, and customs with their neighbors. Piotrovskii, The Art of Urartu (London: Evelyn Adams and Macay, 1967). everything, I include in this book all that comes from oral Hayk came from Ararat mountain. Who are Armenians descended from? [66]Cavalli-Sforza, History and Geography, 300. Turkey's reckoning with the past is long overdue: the government still refuses to recognise the events of 1915, in which up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed, as a genocide. No significant mixing with other peoples after that date can The Story of Ara the Handsome and Semiramis(Khorenatsi Bk. Aras story too has echoes not only in other Armenian authors, but also in ancient Greek and Sumerian works. According to Armenian tradition, the city of Mazaca was founded by and named after Mishak (Misak, Moshok), a cousin and general of the legendary patriarch Aram. Similarly, linguists theorize that some 5000-9000 years ago, before recorded history, the Proto-Indo-European language splintered into dialects, one of which was Armenian. Hayk is connected to hay () and hayer (, the nominative plural in Modern Armenian), the self-designation of the Armenians. . Lehmann, ed. The name of the patriarch, Hayk is the Armenian name for "Armenia". In an Old Persian inscription, an ethnic epithet reads, the Armenian, son of Haldi[57].Haldi was the regional god revered in the Highlands whose name is invoked throughout the Vannic inscriptions as the patron deity of Urartu. High on the cliffs above Lake Van, archeologists found the cunieform inscriptions of which Khorenatsi had written. From 2200 BC to 1600 BC, the Trialeti-Vanadzor culture flourished in Armenia, southern Georgia, and northeastern Turkey. According to Khorenatsi, Paruyrs son Hrachya (fiery eyes) freed the Hebrew leader Smbat from Nebuchadnezzar. with the University of Southern California. But to avoid arousing suspicion, he acted as if he respected Arams hereditary rule. Aram was a hardworking, patriotic man, who, like his ancestor Hayk, was the ruler of Armenia and thought it better to die for his homeland than to see the sons of strangers trampling his countrys borders and foreigners ruling over his kin[35].(Khorenatsi, Bk. [6]Lang, Armenia, 67. In fact, certain research indicates that the rulers of Van spoke Armenian, while their scribes wrote in Vannic cunieform[46]. Armenian Kurds were permitted their own state-sponsored newspaper, radio broadcasts and cultural events. Ara succeeded his father Aram as ruler of the land of his forefathers. However,Ararat (Urartu, Aratta)are the most common in historical fragments. Gray and Atkinson, using lexicostatics and computerized genetic tree classification methodologies, date the branching of Armenian and Greek from the Indo-European tree quite a bit earlier to 7,300 BC and the split between Armenian and Greek to approximately 6,500 BC[70]. 27:14) in the extreme north (Ez. 51:27). 1 & 2 (Spring/Summer 1985) 92-174. [40]Khorenatsi (trans. 13, no. Hayk is the nominative plural in Classical Armenian of (hay), the Armenian term for "Armenian." According to Juansher Hayk "..was prince of the seven brothers and stood in service to the giant Nimrod (Nebrovt') who first ruled the entire world as king.". The Armenian language dates to the early period of Indo-European differentiation and dispersion some 5000 years ago, or perhaps as early as 7,800 years ago according to some recent research[14],that eventually spread Indo-European speakers throughout Eurasia from Iceland to India. Still later, there is reference to a land calledArme-Shubria, which some scholars have linked to the nameArmenia[23]. Anushavan struggled against Semiramiss son to maintain control over Armenia. It is the story of a people whose ancestors were indigenous to the Highlands, who created a distinct Indo-European language, who called themselvesHayand were calledArmeniansor people ofArarat(Urartu,Aratta) by others. With the region reunified again under Armenia, the disparate peoples of the region mixed and became more homogenous and a unified sense of identity developed, and the Armenian language became the predominant language. Later, however, many linguists adopted the premise that the Indo-European homeland was in Eastern Europe or Southern Russia[64]. BC), Xenophon (5th cent. 5,300-year-old mummy emerged in 1991 from a melting Alpine glacier. On September 27, a century-old conflict reignited when Armenia's Muslim-majority neighbor, Azerbaijan, launched an unprovoked military incursion into the ethnic, indigenous-Armenian populated enclave of Artsakh better known by its Russian-Persian name of Nagorno-Karabakh. Khorenatsi also links Armenian history to the story of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, (605-562 BC), who sacked Jerusalem in 568 BC and took the Israelites captive to Babylon. Other But Ara was already married to his devoted wife Nvard. BC),Armeniawas the established name used by non-Armenians to refer to this country[25]. [65]The Gimbutas hypothesis . Ararat at its heart, were revered as sacred lands by the peoples of the Near East[10]. He can be reached at tsamuelian@arlex.am. This would indicate two scenarioseither Media subsequently conquered Urartu, bringing about its subsequent demise, or Urartu maintained its independence and power, going through a mere dynastic change, as a local Armenian dynasty or dynasties (the Haykazunis and/or the Orontids) overthrew the ruling family with the help of the Median army. Recent research suggests that the original homeland of the Indo-Europeans was near the Armenian Highlands (which is supported by the spread of agriculture from Mesopotamia westward to the Balkans) and that a later dispersion of the Indo-Europeans took place from southern Russia in connection with the development of horse and ox-driven transportation[19]. [14]Nicholas Wade, Biological dig for the roots of language, International Herald Tribune, (March 18, 2004) 10; Gray & Atkinson, Anatolian Theory of Indo-European origin, 437. In the early nineteenth century, Johannes Schmidt and others placed the Indo-European homeland in Asia Minor, in proximity to the ancient Mesopotamian civilizations[63]. According to Khorenatsi, Torgom begat Hayk, who, according to oral tradition, was the eponymous hero of the Armenian people. Prior to this, during the latter part of the Parthian period, Armenia was a predominantly Zoroastrian country.[109]. This linkage is further corroborated by the nameAramu(King of Urartu, c. 1200 BC), a personal name still widespread among Armenians, and by place names like Yerevan (UrarteanErebuni) and Van (UrarteanBianili). By non-Armenians to refer to this, during the latter part of the Near East [ 10.. This book all that comes from oral Hayk came from Ararat mountain the peoples the. Paruyrs son Hrachya ( fiery eyes ) freed the Hebrew leader Smbat from Nebuchadnezzar of! Chronicle the History of the Kingdom of Ararat from 900 to 600 BC 49... 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