“The original capital of the land was named Arzashkun, and was situated in the valley of Araxes. The first kings mentioned in the inscription are Lutipris and Sarduris I, who were contemporary with Ashur-Naser-Pal (885-860 B.C.). In the account of the sweeping operations from end to end of the northern regions, which marked the beginning and end of that great warrior’s reign, no mention is made of Sarduris, but it is more than probable that he felt the weight of Ashur-Naser-Pal’s arm. Shalmaneser II is the first Assyrian king who states that he came into actual hostile contact with Urartu, whose king was Arame. In 860, 857, and 845 Shalmaneser ravaged Arame’s country and finally destroyed Arzashkun. Later, when Sarduris II had succeeded Arame, the Assyrian turtan (general) Ashurdayan attacked (in 833 and 829 B.C.). Ten years later again the turtan of Shamshi-Adod led an expedition against Ishpuinis, the successor of Sarduris II. These successive attacks seem to have strengthened rather than weakened the hardy mountain state, while the Assyrians gained no real advantage from them. In alliance, apparently, with Urartu, stood the Mannai, an Iranian folk of Median stock, and Protomedes, to whom the name Madai properly belonged (it now first appears in history), in the country east of Lake Urmia.... Meanwhile Menuas, the son of Sarduris II, had extended the dominion of Urartu to the western shores of Lake Urmia. Argistis I, his son, conquered the whole of Kurdistan and Armenia as far west as Meled or Meleten (Malatia). The proximity of the territory of Urartu to the center of the Assyrian power now became directly dangerous to the empire.”[18]
It is more than probable that our esteemed reader’s patience has been taxed beyond measure by reading a history furnished by the Assyrian and Armenian inscriptions, but then hardy states, the kingdoms of Ararat have rendered a noble service to mankind by checking the Assyrian kings from doing more mischief in other parts of western Asia. Not infrequently these kings had to quit in the midst of their campaign in Syria, Palestine or in Asia Minor and run back to stop the avalanche coming down from the “Mountains of Aruma” to sweep the Assyrians down. With all their boasting, the Assyrian kings never conquered the kingdoms of Ararat.
“The great undertaking of the 4th year of the King’s reign was a campaign into the lands of Nairi. By this, the annals of Tiglathpileser I clearly mean the lands about the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates, lying north, west and south of Lake Van.... One only of these twenty-three kings—Pierri, the king of Dayami (near Maleshgert)—refused to surrender as the others did but resisted to the last. He was therefore carried in chains to Assyria.... This episode in the king’s conquests is concluded with the claim that the whole of the lands of Nairi were subdued, but later history shows clearly that further conquest was necessary.”[19]
Tiglathpileser IV, the king of Assyria, made several attempts (in 739, 736, 735 B.C.) to reduce the kingdoms of Ararat, but he completely failed to conquer them. The authority above quoted concludes the history of their campaigns in these words: “After some ineffectual fighting about the Capital (Van) Tiglathpileser raised the siege and departed. He had not succeeded in adding the kingdom of Urartu to Assyria.”[20]
According to Dr. Belek, the last work of the last king, Sarduris IV, of Ararat is written in the records of Ashurbanipal of Assyria (668-626 B.C.). Sarduris sent messengers, with presents and words of friendliness to the Assyrian king. Assyria had abandoned its attempts to wreck the kingdom of Ararat and the two powers now were friends. Some of the modern kings would have saved untold misery and millions of lives had they done likewise.
It is very probable that Aram of the Armenian historians, Aruma of Tiglath-Pileser I (1090 B.C.) and Arame of Shalmaneser II (860 B.C.) are the same name. Tiglath-Pileser may have used it as a certain district, for his expression would justify this supposition: “On the mountains of Aruma I fought.” And again: “At the mountain of Aruma, a difficult district....”[21] No name of a king is mentioned at this date. But in the time of Shalmaneser’s invasion into Armenia (860 B.C.), we are distinctly told: “The inscription of Kurkh (twenty miles from Diarhekir) informs us that Shalmaneser had already, in the year of his accession, come in conflict with Arrame (or Arame, as the name is there written). After leaving the city of Khupuscia, in the land of Nahri, he had attacked Sugunia, a stronghold of Arame, ‘King of Urardlians,’ and there marched to the Sea of the land of Nahri; or Lake Van, where a figure of himself and a cuneiform inscription were engraved on the rack.”[22]
A probable hypothesis is that Aram of the Armenian historians, by his conquests and wise administration, had formed a dynasty, that the early Assyrians knew his country and some of his successors by his name, that Arame of the time of Shalmaneser may have been the last of that dynasty and on account of his reverses with the Assyrian King, his reign came to an end. The following quotation from Professor Sayce seems to confirm this view: “A more serious difficulty exists in the fact that Sarduris I calls himself the son of Lutipris, whereas the king of Uradhu, against whom Shalmaneser had to contend in 857 and 845 B.C., was Arame, and already, in 833 B.C., only twelve years later, his antagonist was Sarduris. It is, however, quite possible that the reign of Lutipris had been a short one of less than twelve years. But I am more inclined to conjecture that Sarduris I was the leader of a new dynasty, the ill successes of Arame in his wars with Assyrians forming the occasion for his overthrow.” This conjecture also explains why the kings of this dynasty do not call themselves the kings of Ararat, and have no reference to Arame, while much Assyrianism exists in their culture.
In regard to the origin of Ararat, or Arardhi, it is certainly not a Semitic word, neither is it an Accadian, were it so, we would have been told. Moses of Khorene thought it was called Ara-ard, in reference to a defeat of Ara, the king of Armenia, in a bloody conflict with the Babylonians about eighteen centuries before our era. Another Armenian historian makes Arardhi to derive its name from King Ara, in honor of the king, it being composed of Ara and Ardh, “field” or “plain,” on account of his wise administration and the improvements which he made in the land.[23]
Brockhous’ definition and derivation of Arardhi is the most satisfactory of all, namely, Ar, in Sanskrit the root of “Aryan” or “nobles,” and ardh, in ancient Armenian the “plains” or “field,” thus Arardhi or Ararat meaning “the plains of nobles” or “Aryans.”[24]
The antiquity of the name of Ararat is not disputed. It first comes to our notice in the book of Genesis, as we have seen in connection with the resting of the ark “upon the mountains of Ararat.” The book of Genesis is considered by the best critics to be the oldest book, or at least, having the oldest documents that compose the book in the Scriptures, and its authorship is assigned to Moses, who lived in the fifteenth century before the Christian era. Ararat was known as the name of Armenia even several centuries before the time of Moses. “An ancient bilingual tablet (W. A. I., II 48, 13) makes Urdhu the equivalent of tilla, the latter, as Sir H. Rawlinson long ago pointed out, being probably a semitic loan-word, and meaning “the highlands.” Tilla, the equivalent of Urdhu, usually signifies that land of Accad or northern Babylonia, but since it is not glossed in this passage, and stands, moreover, between Akharu or Palestine, and Kutu Kurdistan, it would seem that it is here employed to denote Armenia. Urardhu, therefore, contracted into Urdhu, would have been the designation of the highlands of Armenia among the Babylonians as early as the sixteenth and seventeenth century B.C.”[25]