Nakhikheban, founded by Noah on the slope of Ararat. The oldest town in the world
There are various ways of spelling the name of the town, which is the case with nearly all the towns in that part of the world. The Russians have it Nakhitchevan, but the map makers generally accept the Armenian version, for it is an Armenian word, and it means “he descended here”—referring, of course, to the landing from the ark. It is worth the trip from Erivan, and even from Tiflis, if only to say that you have been there. It is a distinction to have visited the oldest community on the entire globe, and Noah would feel very much set up if he could know that people came all the way from America to accord his town such an honour. Unfortunately, there are no records back of the pretensions of the sleepy little place; there is no history of those eventful days; the oldest inhabitants are dead; and the only foundation for the tradition is a few vague words in the Bible.
Noah is buried near Damascus, where his grave is forty-five feet long, and the people there will tell you that he was a very tall man. His wife is buried at the village of Marand, at the base of Ararat, where she died a few years after the landing. The poor woman was not allowed to live to see the glory of her descendants. The local traditions also place the Garden of Eden in that vicinity, in the valley of the Araxes, at the base of Ararat, through which runs the great highway from Erivan into Persia, which has been travelled for six thousand years in peace and in war, and has been the channel of commerce since human beings began to trade with one another. It has also been the scene of untold slaughter and misery, and forty battles have been fought to control it. This road has been trodden by the mighty hosts of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and Alexander the Great, and Hannibal led his legions along this way to conquer the Caucasus. The Russians control that highway now and they bought it by the sacrifice of many lives.
All that remains of a memorable epoch in the world’s history, in which Noah was the leading actor, is Mt. Ararat itself, and many wise men are of the opinion that there has been a universal misapprehension concerning that. The Right Honourable James Bryce, British Ambassador to Washington, who wrote a book about that country thirty-five years ago, may be accepted as the most reliable authority, and with his permission I may quote him on this subject. He says:
“The only topographical reference in the Scripture narrative of the flood is to be found in the words, Genesis viii, 4—‘In the seventh month, on the 17th day of the month, the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat,’ which may be taken as equivalent to ‘on a mountain of (or in) Ararat.’
“The word Ararat is used in three, or rather in two, other places in the Scriptures. One is in II Kings xix, 38, where it is said of the sons of Sennacherib, who had just murdered their father, that they escaped into the land of Ararat, rendered in our version, and in the Septuagint, ‘Armenia.’ The other is in Jeremiah li., 27 ‘Call together: against her (i. e., Babylon) the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Aschenaz.’ The question then is what does this Ararat denote? Clearly, the Alexandrian translators took it for Armenia; so does the Vulgate when it renders in Genesis viii, 4, the words which we translate On the mountains of Ararat’ by ‘super montes Armeniæ.’ This narrows it a little, and St. Jerome himself helps us to narrow it still further when, in his commentary on Isaiah xxxvii, 38, he says that ‘Ararat means the plain of the middle Araxes, which lies at the foot of the great mountain Taurus.’
“The identification, therefore, is natural enough; what is of more consequence is to determine how early it took place; for as there is little or no trace of an independent local tradition of the flood, we may assume the identification to rest entirely on the use of the name Ararat in the Hebrew narrative. Josephus (Ant. Jud., bk i, ch. iii) says that the Armenians called the place where Noah descended the ‘disembarking place, for the ark being saved in that place, its remains are shown there by the inhabitants to this day’ and also quotes Nicolas of Damascus, who writes that: ‘In Armenia, above Minyas, there is a great mountain called Baras, upon which it is said that many who escaped at the time of the flood were saved, and that one who was carried in an ark came ashore on top of it, and that the remains of the wood were preserved for a long while. This might be the man about whom Moses, the law-giver of the Jews, wrote.’
“Marco Polo, whose route does not seem to have led him near it, says only, in speaking of Armenia: ‘Here is an exceeding great mountain, on which, it is said, the ark of Noah rested, and for this cause it is called the Mountain of the Ark of Noah. The circuit of its base cannot be traversed in less than two days; and the ascent is rendered impossible by the snow on its summit, which never dissolves, but is increased by each successive fall. On the lower declivities the melted snows cause an abundant vegetation, and afford rich pastures for the cattle which in summer resort thither from all the surrounding countries.’”
For centuries it was conceded that the top of Ararat could not be reached, and even to-day the highest Armenian ecclesiastics insist that God has made it impossible for human feet to climb it. They insist that no one has ever reached the top and that no one ever will, but the ascent has been made by at least fourteen or fifteen experienced mountaineers. Mr. Bryce himself not only made the quickest ascent on record in 1877, but went up entirely alone. The Russian governor-general at Erivan furnished him with a body-guard of Cossacks and several Kurd porters, who, when they reached a height of twelve thousand feet, refused to go any farther, and, at one o’clock in the morning, Mr. Bryce started on alone, reaching the summit, about two the following afternoon, and returning to camp the same night.
It had been his ambition from childhood to ascend Ararat, which was due to Scriptural associations and to reading when a boy a thrilling account of an ascent by Doctor Parrot, the first human being, so far as known, to reach the summit.