On the southern slope of the group of mountains which they possessed south-east of the Lake of Van, on the upper course of the Great Zab, lay the district of Arphaxad, with which we have already become acquainted from Semitic sources; south of the lake lay the Carduchi, whom the later Greeks call the Gordyæans and Gordyenes; but among the Armenians they were known as Kordu, among the Syrians as Kardu.[689] These are the ancestors of the modern Kurds, a nation also of the Aryan stock, whose language is even nearer to those of Iran than the Armenian. Westward of the Carduchi, at the confluence of the two streams of the Euphrates, we again meet with a Semitic race.[690] The north-western slope of the Armenian mountains, as far as the Phasis and the Black Sea, was the home of the Muskai of the Assyrian inscriptions, the Mesech of the Hebrews, the Moschi of the Greeks. Beside them, further to the west, on the coast, were the Tabal of the Assyrians, the Tubal of the Hebrews, the Tibarenes of the Greeks; westward from these, as far as the mouth of the Iris, were the Chalti of the Armenians, the Chalybians (Chaldæans) of the Greeks. Of the origin and language of the Moschi and Tibarenes we know nothing further; the genealogies of the Hebrews placed Mesech and Tubal among the sons of Japhet.
The territory of the Armenians round Lake Van lies 5,000 feet high. The only extensive plain among the mountains which are the home of the Armenians is the valley on the middle course of the Araxes, which is separated from the district of the Van by the range of the Masis (Ararat). The highest peak of this range, a mighty cone of dark rock, veiled by wide glaciers, rises to a height of 16,000 feet. Only the valley of the Araxes allowed agriculture on any extensive scale; it only brought forth abundant produce. Other more protected and warmer depressions, though small in extent, on the southern slopes, permitted the culture of the vine. The inhabitants of the heights followed a pastoral life, and the mountain pastures supported splendid horses and mules.
Moses of Chorni (Khorene), who wrote the history of Armenia in the years 460-480 of our era,[691] 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 the snowclad heights of this mountain region, and entered the mud huts of the mountaineers, and was hospitably entertained by them with barley-wine, i. e. with beer, heard the name and deeds of Tigranes.[699]
The kings of Assyria at an early period turned their arms to the North. On the Zibene-su, the eastern source of the Western Tigris, the likeness of Tiglath Pilesar I. (1130-1110 B.C.) has been found engraved on the rocks at Karkar. The inscription tells us that he had overcome the land of Nairi, i. e. in all probability the land of the rivers (Euphrates and Tigris), and that he had defeated the Muskai ([p. 512]), who had not paid their tribute for fifty years, and had invaded Kumukh (Commagene). More than 200 years later, Tiglath Adar II. (889 to 883 B.C.) caused his image to be hewn in the rocks here beside that of the first Tiglath Pilesar. Tiglath Adar's successor, Assurnasirpal (883-859 B.C.), made repeated campaigns against the Nairi, destroyed 250 of their towns, slew many of their princes, and set up his image beside those of Tiglath Adar and Tiglath Pilesar. In his tenth campaign he took Amida (Diabekr) on the Tigris. Below this city, at Kurkh, there is a second image of this king. His successor also, Shalmanesar II. (859-823 B.C.), fought against the Nairi, set up his image at the source of the Tigris, and in the year 843 defeated the king of Urarti. In the year 831 his troops again defeated a king of Urarti, of another name than the first; in the year 828 B.C. they laid waste the land of king Udaki of Van, and in the following campaign fifty places in Urarti were burnt. Bin Nirar III., king of Asshur (810-781 B.C.), marched twice against the district of Lake Van, and seven times against the Nairi; he boasts that he has taken possession of the land of the Nairi throughout its whole extent.[700] Shalmanesar III. (781-771 B.C.) led his army six times against Urarti. Then Tiglath Pilesar II. (745-727 B.C.), in the year 742, defeated king Sarda, or Sarduri, of Urarti, with his confederates; in the year 728 B.C. removed Vassarmi from Tubal, and placed Chulli on the throne in his stead. In the time of Sargon of Assyria (722-705 B.C.), Aza, the prince of the land of Van, who, like his predecessor Iranzu, was a tributary to Assyria, was murdered. His brother Ullusun, whom Sargon put in his place, combined with Urza, prince of Ararat, and the prince of Mount Mildis against Assyria. Sargon was victorious; Ullusun submitted (716 B.C.); but Urza maintained himself in Ararat, and although Sargon boasts to have burnt fifty of his townships, he combined with Urzana of Musasir, i. e. probably of Arsissa on Lake Van, with Mita, prince of the Moschi, with Ambris, prince of Tubal, the son of Chulli, whom Sargon had allowed to succeed his father on the throne of the Tibarenes, and to whom at the same time he had entrusted the sovereignty over Cilicia, and had given his daughter in marriage.[701] The confederates were defeated; Ambris was carried prisoner to Assyria, a part of his nation were transplanted to Assyria, and Assyrians settled at Tubal in his place. Mita submitted. Arsissa was captured; 20,000 prisoners, their treasures, the gods Haldia (?) and Bagamazda (?), with the holy vessels, were carried away. When Urza perceived this, he took away his own life (714 B.C.).[702] In the seventh century Esarhaddon of Assyria had to fight against the Cilicians, the Tibarenes, and the Mannai; the last name seems to denote the Armenian district of Minyas, on the upper course of the Eastern Euphrates, of which the chief city was Manavazakert; Manavaz, the son of Haik, is said to have built this city.[703] Against the Mannai, or the Minni of Ezekiel, Esarhaddon's successor, Assurbanipal (668-626 B.C.), also directed his weapons. In the course of this war Asheri, the prince of the Minni, was slain by his own dependents, and his son Ualli submitted; the previous tribute of the Minni was raised by thirty horses; and Mugalla, king of Tubal, and Sandasarmi of Cilicia voluntarily submitted to Assurbanipal.[704]
The mountains of Armenia, as these narratives prove, were divided into several principalities. The Assyrians first attacked the land to the south of the high mountain-range, i. e., in the first instance the land of Ararat, the most powerful of these Armenian principalities. On either side of the mountain, in the basin of Lake Van, and in the valley of the Araxes, the Armenians made a vigorous resistance, so that the obedience of the Armenian chieftains never seemed to be secured for any length of time. In spite of this resistance, the civilisation of the Assyrians exercised great influence on the Armenians. This is not merely shown in the adoption of the system of cuneiform writing on the part of the Armenians; Sargon caused the capture of Arsissa to be represented in his palace at Khorsabad. If these reliefs are true representations, the style of architecture and the plan of the Armenian temples were not essentially different from the Assyrian. The altars also, the ornaments, and the weapons appear to be similar.[705] On the other hand it would admit of no doubt that the Armenians, in spite of this influence, retained the worship of their Iranian gods without any foreign admixture, if the name of that Armenian deity Bagamazda, i. e. the great god, were read correctly. That deity would at the same time afford a new proof that the deities of Iran were worshipped in Armenia also. Strabo, as already ([p. 512]) remarked, gives an account of the worship of Anaitis, the water-giving goddess, the Anahita of the Iranians, among the Armenians; and the name of this goddess is found, in the form "Anaid," in the cuneiform inscriptions of the Armenian princes. Unfortunately these inscriptions, which mainly belong to the land of Van, have not as yet been sufficiently deciphered. The names of the kings, from which they come, are read as Bagridur, Isbuinis, Minuas, Argistis II. and Bagridur II.[706] These kings reigned successively; each calls himself the son of his predecessor. An older Argistis of Ararat is mentioned after the time of Urza in an inscription of Sargon, king of Assyria, belonging apparently to the year 708 B.C. The inscriptions of the kings of Armenia from the first to the second Bagridur are filled with the wars which they carried on, the numbers of the slain, of the captives, the cattle in the spoil, the towns and temples destroyed. As Asshur is mentioned in the inscriptions of Argistis II., and in those of his successor Bagridur II. a war against Babylon is narrated,[707] these two kings must have been contemporaries of the last ruler of Assyria, Assuridilili (626-606 B.C.), and Nebuchadnezzar II. of Babylon (604-568 B.C.), and their three predecessors contemporaries of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Assurbanipal.