Arsacid dynasty of Armenia
The Arsacid dynasty or Arshakuni, ruled the Kingdom of Armenia from 54 to 428. The dynasty was a branch of the Arsacid dynasty of Parthia. Arsacid Kings reigned intermittently throughout the chaotic years following the fall of the Artaxiad dynasty until 62 when Tiridates I secured Arsacid dynasty of Parthia rule in Armenia. An independent line of Kings was established by Vologases II in 180. Two of the most notable events under Arsacid rule in Armenian history were the conversion of Armenia to Christianity by Gregory the Illuminator in 301 and the creation of the Armenian alphabet by Mesrop Mashtots in c. 405. The reign of the Arsacids of Armenia marked the predominance of Iranianism in the country; the first appearance of an Arsacid on the Armenian throne came about in 12 when the Parthian King Vonones I was exiled from Parthia due to his pro-Roman policies and Occidental manners. Vonones I acquired the Armenian throne with Roman consent, but Artabanus III demanded his deposition, as Emperor Augustus did not wish to begin a war with the Parthians he deposed Vonones I and sent him to Syria.
Artabanus III did not waste time after the deposition of Vonones I. Emperor Tiberius had no intention of giving up the buffer states of the Eastern frontier and sent his nephew and heir Germanicus to the East. Germanicus concluded a treaty with Artabanus III, in which he was recognized as king and friend of the Romans. Armenia was given in 18 to Zeno the son of Polemon I of Pontus, who assumed the Armenian name Artaxias; the Parthians under Artabanus III were too distracted by internal strife to oppose the Roman-appointed King. Zeno's reign was remarkably peaceful in Armenian history. After Zeno's death in 36, Artabanus III decided to reinstate an Arsacid over the Armenian throne, choosing his eldest son Arsaces I as a suitable candidate, but his succession to the Armenian throne was disputed by his younger brother Orodes, overthrown by Zeno. Tiberius concentrated more forces on the Roman frontier and once again after a decade of peace, Armenia was to become the theater of bitter warfare between the two greatest powers of the known world for the next twenty-five years.
Tiberius, sent. Mithridates subjugated Armenia to the Roman rule and deposed Arsaces inflicting huge devastation to the country. Mithridates was summoned back to Rome where he was kept a prisoner, Armenia was given back to Artabanus III who gave the throne to his younger son Orodes. Another civil war erupted in Parthia upon Artabanus III's death. In the meantime Mithridates was put back on the Armenian throne, with the help of his brother, Pharasmanes I, Roman troops. Civil war continued in Parthia for several years with Gotarzes seizing the throne in 45. In 51 Mithridates' nephew Rhadamistus killed his uncle; the governor of Cappadocia, Julius Pailinus, decided to conquer Armenia but he settled with the crowning of Radamistus who generously rewarded him. The current Parthian King Vologases I, saw an opportunity, invaded Armenia and succeeded in forcing the Iberians to withdraw from Armenia; the harsh winter that followed proved too much for the Parthians who withdrew, thus leaving open doors for Radamistus to regain his throne.
After regaining power, according to Tacitus, the Iberian was so cruel that the Armenians stormed the palace and forced Radamistus out of the country and Vologases I got the opportunity to install his brother Tiridates on the throne. Unhappy with the growing Parthian influence at their doorstep, Roman Emperor Nero sent General Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo with a large army to the east in order to install Roman client kings. After Tiridates I escaped, Roman client king Tigranes VI was installed and in 61 he invaded the Kingdom of Adiabene, one of the Parthian vassal kingdoms. Vologases I considered this as an act of aggression from Rome and restarted a campaign to restore Tiridates I onto the Armenian throne. In the following battle of Rhandeia in 62, command of the Roman troops was again entrusted to Corbulo, who marched into Armenia and set a camp in Rhandeia, where he made a peace agreement with Tiridates upon which he was recognized as a king of Armenia but he agreed to become Roman client king in that he would go to Rome to be crowned by Emperor Nero.
Tiridates ruled Armenia until his death or deposition around 110 when Parthian king Osroes I invaded Armenia and throned his nephew Axidares, son of the previous Parthian king Pacorus II, as King of Armenia. This encroachment on the traditional sphere of influence of the Roman Empire ended the peace since Emperor Nero's times some half century earlier and started a new war with the new Roman Emperor Trajan. Trajan marched towards Armenia in October 113 to restore a Roman client king in Armenia. Envoys from Osroes I met Trajan at Athens, informing him that Axidares had been deposed and asking that Axidares' elder brother, Parthamasiris, be granted the throne. Trajan declined their proposal and in August 114 captured Arsamosata where Parthamasiris asked to be crowned, but instead of crowning him he annexed his kingdom as a new province to the Roman Empire. Parthamasiris was died mysteriously soon afterwards; as a Roman province Armenia was administered along with Cappadocia by Lucius Catilius Severus.
The Roman Senate issued coins which had celebrated this occasion and had borne the following inscription: ARMENIA ET MESOPOTAMIA IN POTESTATEM P. R. REDACTÆ. After a rebellion led by a pretender to the Parthian throne (Sanatruces II, son of Mithri
History of Armenia
Armenia lies in the highlands surrounding the Biblical mountains of Ararat. The original Armenian name for the country was Hayk Hayastan, translated as the land of Haik, consisting of the name of the ancient Mesopotamian god Haya and the Persian suffix'-stan'; the historical enemy of Hayk, was Bel, or in other words Baal. The name Armenia was given to the country by the surrounding states, it is traditionally derived from Armenak or Aram. In the Bronze Age, several states flourished in the area of Greater Armenia, including the Hittite Empire and Hayasa-Azzi. Soon after the Hayasa-Azzi were the Nairi and the Kingdom of Urartu, who successively established their sovereignty over the Armenian Highland; each of the aforementioned nations and tribes participated in the ethnogenesis of the Armenian people. Yerevan, the modern capital of Armenia, dates back to the 8th century BC, with the founding of the fortress of Erebuni in 782 BC by King Argishti I at the western extreme of the Ararat plain. Erebuni has been described as "designed as a great administrative and religious centre, a royal capital."The Iron Age kingdom of Urartu was replaced by the Orontid dynasty.
Following Persian and subsequent Macedonian rule, the Artaxiad dynasty from 190 BC gave rise to the Kingdom of Armenia which rose to the peak of its influence under Tigranes II before falling under Roman rule. In 301, Arsacid Armenia was the first sovereign nation to accept Christianity as a state religion; the Armenians fell under Byzantine, Sassanid Persian, Islamic hegemony, but reinstated their independence with the Bagratid Dynasty kingdom of Armenia. After the fall of the kingdom in 1045, the subsequent Seljuk conquest of Armenia in 1064, the Armenians established a kingdom in Cilicia, where they prolonged their sovereignty to 1375. Starting in the early 16th century, Greater Armenia came under Safavid Persian rule, however over the centuries Eastern Armenia remained under Persian rule while Western Armenia fell under Ottoman rule. By the 19th century, Eastern Armenia was conquered by Russia and Greater Armenia was divided between the Ottoman and Russian Empires. In the early 20th century Armenians suffered in the genocide inflicted on them by the Ottoman government of Turkey, in which 1.5 million Armenians were killed and many more dispersed throughout the world via Syria and Lebanon.
Armenia, from on corresponding to much of Eastern Armenia, regained independence in 1918, with the establishment of the First Republic of Armenia, in 1991, the Republic of Armenia. Stone tools from 325,000 years ago have been found in Armenia which indicate the presence of early humans at this time. In the 1960s excavations in the Yerevan 1 Cave uncovered evidence of ancient human habitation, including the remains of a 48,000-year-old heart, a human cranial fragment and tooth of a similar age; the Armenian Highland shows traces of settlement from the Neolithic era. Archaeological surveys in 2010 and 2011 have resulted in the discovery of the world's earliest known leather shoe, straw skirt, wine-making facility at the Areni-1 cave complex; the Shulaveri-Shomu culture of the central Transcaucasus region is one of the earliest known prehistoric cultures in the area, carbon-dated to 6000–4000 BC. An early Bronze-Age culture in the area is the Kura-Araxes culture, assigned to the period between c. 4000 and 2200 BC.
The earliest evidence for this culture is found on the Ararat plain. Early 20th-century scholars suggested that the name Armenian may have been recorded for the first time on an inscription which mentions Armanî together with Ibla, from territories conquered by Naram-Sin identified with an Akkadian colony in the current region of Diyarbekir. Today, the Modern Assyrians refer to the Armenians by the name Armani; the word is speculated to be related to the Mannaeans, which may be identical to the biblical Minni. The earliest forms of the word Hayastan, an ethonym the Armenians use to designate their country, might come from Hittite sources of the Late Bronze Age, such as the kingdom of Hayasa-Azzi. Another record mentioned by pharaoh Thutmose III of Egypt in the 33rd year of his reign as the people of Ermenen, says in their land "heaven rests upon its four pillars". However, what all these attestations refer to cannot be determined with certainty, the earliest certain attestation of the name Armenia comes from the Behistun Inscription.
Between 1500 and 1200 BC, the Hayasa-Azzi existed in the western half of the Armenian Highland clashing with the Hittite Empire. Between 1200 and 800 BC, much of Armenia was united under a confederation of kingdoms, which Assyrian sources called Nairi; the Kingdom of Urartu flourished between 585 BC in the Armenian Highland. The founder of the Urartian Kingdom, Aramé, united all the principalities of the Armenian Highland and gave himself the title "King of Kings", the traditional title of Urartian Kings; the Urartians established their sovereignty over all of Vaspurakan. The main rival of Urartu was the Neo-As
Battle of Avarayr
The Battle of Avarayr was fought on 2 June 451 on the Avarayr Plain in Vaspurakan between the Armenian Army under Vardan Mamikonian and Sassanid Persia. It is considered one of the first battles in defense of the Christian faith in history. Although the Persians were victorious on the battlefield, the battle proved to be a major strategic victory for Armenians, as Avarayr paved the way to the Nvarsak Treaty of 484 AD, which affirmed Armenia's right to practise Christianity freely; the battle is seen as one of the most significant events in Armenian history. The commander of the Armenian forces, Vardan Mamikonian, is considered a national hero and has been canonized by the Armenian Apostolic Church; the Kingdom of Armenia under the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia was the first nation to convert to Christianity, in 301 AD under Tiridates III. In 428, Armenian nobles petitioned Bahram V to depose Artaxias IV; as a result, the country became a Sassanid dependency with a Sassanid governor. The Armenian nobles welcomed Persian rule, provided they were allowed to practise Christianity.
He summoned the leading Armenian nobles to Ctesiphon, pressured them into cutting their ties with the Orthodox Church as he had intended. Yazdegerd II himself was a Zoroastrian rather than a Christian, his concern was not religious but securing political loyalty. According to Armenian tradition, attempts at demolishing churches and building fire-temples were made and a number of Zoroastrian magi were sent, with Persian military backing, to replace Armenian clergy and suppress Christianity, but Yazdegerd's policy provoked, rather than forestalled, a Christian rebellion in Armenia. When news about the compulsion of the nobles reached Armenia, a mass revolt broke out. Yazdegerd II, hearing the news, gathered a massive army to attack Armenia. Vardan Mamikonian sent to Constantinople for aid, as he had good personal relations with Theodosius II, who had made him a general, he was after all fighting to remain in the Orthodox Church; the 66,000-strong Armenian army took Holy Communion before the battle.
The army was a popular uprising, rather than a professional force, but the Armenian nobility who led it and their respective retinues were accomplished soldiers, many of them veterans of the Sassanid dynasty's wars with Rome and the nomads of Central Asia. The Armenians were allowed to maintain a core of their national army led by a supreme commander, traditionally of the Mamikonian noble family; the Armenian cavalry was, at the time an elite force appreciated as a tactical ally by both Persia and Byzantium. In this particular case, both officers and men were additionally motivated by a desire to save their religion and their way of life; the Persian army, said to be three times larger, included war elephants and the famous Savārān, or New Immortal, cavalry. Several Armenian noblemen with weaker Christian sympathies, led by Vasak Siuni, went over to the Persians before the battle, fought on their side. Following the victory, Yazdegerd jailed some Armenian priests and nobles and appointed a new governor for Armenia.
The Armenian Church was unable to send a delegation to the Council of Chalcedon, as it was involved in the war. In the 6th century, the Armenian Church would decide not to accept the Council of Chalcedon, instead adhering to Miaphysitism. Armenian resistance continued in the decades following the battle, led by Vardan's successor and nephew, Vahan Mamikonian. In 484 AD, Sahag Bedros I signed the Nvarsak Treaty, which guaranteed religious freedom to the Christian Armenians and granted a general amnesty with permission to construct new churches. Thus, the Armenians see the Battle of Avarayr as a moral victory. Persian Armenia War elephant Zoroastrianism in Armenia Elishe: History of Vardan and the Armenian War, transl. R. W. Thomson, Mass. 1982 Visions Of Ararat: Writings On Armenia By Christopher J. Walker. ISBN 964-6961-11-8 Modern Armenia: People, State By Gerard J. Libaridian Vahan Kurkjian - Period of the Marzbans — Battle of Avarair Battle map Summary of the battle from A History of Armenia by Vahan M. Kurkjian St Vartan's life on www.armenianchurch.net The Vartanank War The interregnum
Kara Koyunlu
The Kara Koyunlu or Qara Qoyunlu called the Black Sheep Turkomans, were a Muslim Oghuz Turkic monarchy that ruled over the territory comprising present-day Azerbaijan, Armenia, northwestern Iran, eastern Turkey, northeastern Iraq from about 1374 to 1468. The Kara Koyunlu Turkomans at one point established their capital in Herat in modern-day Afghanistan, they were vassals of the Jalairid Sultanate in Baghdad and Tabriz from about 1375, when the leader of their leading tribe ruled over Mosul. However, they rebelled against the Jalairids, secured their independence from the dynasty with the conquest of Tabriz by Qara Yusuf. In 1400, Timur defeated the Kara Koyunlu, Qara Yusuf fled to Egypt, seeking refuge with the Mamluk Sultanate, he by 1406 had taken back Tabriz. In 1410, the Kara Koyunlu captured Baghdad; the installation of a subsidiary Kara Koyunlu line there hastened the downfall of the Jalairids they had once served. Despite internal fighting among Qara Yusuf's descendants after his death in 1420, the increasing threat of the Armenian separatists and Ajam, Kara Koyunlu broke up due to series of different Armenian revolts.
According to R. Quiring-Zoche in the, Encyclopædia Iranica: The argument that there was a clear-cut contrast between the Sunnism of the Āq Qoyunlū and the Shiʿism of the Qara Qoyunlū and the Ṣafawīya rests on Safavid sources and must be considered doubtful. C. E. Bosworth in, The New Islamic Dynasties, states: As to the religious affiliations of the Qara Qoyunlu, although some of the member of the family had Shi'i-type names and there were occasional Shi'i coin legends, there seems no strong evidence for definite Shi'i sympathies among many Turkmen elements of the time. Jahan Shah made peace with the Timurid Shahrukh Mirza; when Shahrukh Mirza died in 1447, the Kara Koyunlu Turkomans annexed portions of Iraq and the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula as well as Timurid-controlled western Iran. Though much territory was gained during his rule, Jahān Shāh's reign was troubled by his rebellious sons and the autonomous rulers of Baghdad, whom he expelled in 1464. In 1466, Jahan Shah attempted to take Diyarbakır from the Aq Qoyunlu, this was a catastrophic failure resulting in Jahān Shāh's death and the collapse of the Kara Koyunlu Turkomans' control in the Middle East.
By 1468, at their height under Uzun Hasan, Aq Qoyunlu defeated the Qara Qoyunlu and conquered Iraq and western Iran. Armenia fell under the control of the Kara Koyunlu in 1410; the principal Armenian sources available in this period come from the historian Tovma Metsopetsi and several colophons to contemporary manuscripts. According to Tovma, although the Kara Koyunlu levied heavy taxes against the Armenians, the early years of their rule were peaceful and some reconstruction of towns took place; this peaceful period was, shattered with the rise of Qara Iskander, who made Armenia a "desert" and subjected it to "devastation and plunder, to slaughter, captivity". Iskander's wars with and eventual defeat by the Timurids invited further destruction in Armenia, as many Armenians were taken captive and sold into slavery and the land was subjected to outright pillaging, forcing many of them to leave the region. Iskander did attempt to reconcile with the Armenians by appointing an Armenian from a noble family, Rustum, as one of his advisers.
When the Timurids launched their final incursion into the region, they convinced Jihanshah, Iskander's brother, to turn on his brother. Jihanshah pursued a policy of persecution against the Armenians in Syunik and colophons to Armenian manuscripts record the sacking of the Tatev monastery by his forces, but he, sought a rapprochement with the Armenians, allotting land to feudal lords, rebuilding churches, approving the relocation of the seat of the Armenian Apostolic Church's Catholicos to Etchmiadzin Cathedral in 1441. For all this, Jihanshah continued to attack Armenian towns and take Armenian captives as the country saw further devastation in the final years of Jihanshah's failed struggles with the Aq Qoyunlu. One of the most prominent monuments built by the Kara Koyunlu dynasty remains today in the vicinity of the Armenian capital, the Mausoleum of Kara Koyunlu emirs. Turkmenistan and Armenia both contribute to the restoration and preservation of this medieval piece of architecture. List of rulers of Kara Koyunlu Turkmen incursions into Georgia Bosworth, Clifford E..
The New Islamic Dynasties. Columbia University Press. Kouymjian, Dickran. "Armenia from the fall of the Cilician Kingdom to the forced emigration under Shah Abbas". In Hovannisian, Richard G; the Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times, Volume I: The Dynastic Periods: From Antiquity to the Fourteenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-6421-2. Minorsky, V.. "Jihān-Shāh Qara-Qoyunlu and His Poetry". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 16: 271–97. Doi:10.1017/s0041977x00105981. JSTOR 609169. Quiring-Zoche, R.. AQ QOYUNLŪ. Encyclopedia Iranica. Bosworth, Clifford; the New Islamic Dynasties, 1996. Khachikyan, Levon. ԺԵ դարի հայերեն ձեռագրերի հիշատակարաններ, մաս 1. Yerevan, 1955. Morby, John; the Oxford Dynasties of the World, 2002. Sanjian, Avedis K. Colophons of Armenian manuscripts, 1301-1480: A Source for Middle Eastern History, Selected and Annotated by Avedis K. Sanjian. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969
Stone Age
The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was used to make implements with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted 3.4 million years and ended between 8700 BCE and 2000 BCE with the advent of metalworking. Stone Age artifacts include tools used by modern humans and by their predecessor species in the genus Homo, by the earlier contemporaneous genera Australopithecus and Paranthropus. Bone tools were used during this period as well but are preserved in the archaeological record; the Stone Age is further subdivided by the types of stone tools in use. The Stone Age is the first period in the three-age system of archaeology, which divides human technological prehistory into three periods: The Stone Age The Bronze Age The Iron Age The Stone Age is contemporaneous with the evolution of the genus Homo, the only exception being the early Stone Age, when species prior to Homo may have manufactured tools. According to the age and location of the current evidence, the cradle of the genus is the East African Rift System toward the north in Ethiopia, where it is bordered by grasslands.
The closest relative among the other living primates, the genus Pan, represents a branch that continued on in the deep forest, where the primates evolved. The rift served as a conduit for movement into southern Africa and north down the Nile into North Africa and through the continuation of the rift in the Levant to the vast grasslands of Asia. Starting from about 4 million years ago a single biome established itself from South Africa through the rift, North Africa, across Asia to modern China, called "transcontinental'savannahstan'" recently. Starting in the grasslands of the rift, Homo erectus, the predecessor of modern humans, found an ecological niche as a tool-maker and developed a dependence on it, becoming a "tool equipped savanna dweller"; the oldest indirect evidence found of stone tool use is fossilised animal bones with tool marks. Archaeological discoveries in Kenya in 2015, identifying the oldest known evidence of hominin use of tools to date, have indicated that Kenyanthropus platyops may have been the earliest tool-users known.
The oldest stone tools were excavated from the site of Lomekwi 3 in West Turkana, northwestern Kenya, date to 3.3 million years old. Prior to the discovery of these "Lomekwian" tools, the oldest known stone tools had been found at several sites at Gona, Ethiopia, on the sediments of the paleo-Awash River, which serve to date them. All the tools come from the Busidama Formation, which lies above a disconformity, or missing layer, which would have been from 2.9 to 2.7 mya. The oldest sites containing tools are dated to 2.6–2.55 mya. One of the most striking circumstances about these sites is that they are from the Late Pliocene, where previous to their discovery tools were thought to have evolved only in the Pleistocene. Excavators at the locality point out that: "...the earliest stone tool makers were skilled flintknappers.... The possible reasons behind this seeming abrupt transition from the absence of stone tools to the presence thereof include... gaps in the geological record."The species who made the Pliocene tools remains unknown.
Fragments of Australopithecus garhi, Australopithecus aethiopicus and Homo Homo habilis, have been found in sites near the age of the Gona tools. In July 2018, scientists reported the discovery in China of the oldest stone tools outside Africa, estimated at 2.12 million years old. Innovation of the technique of smelting ore began the Bronze Age; the first most significant metal manufactured was bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, each of, smelted separately. The transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age was a period during which modern people could smelt copper, but did not yet manufacture bronze, a time known as the Copper Age, or more technically the Chalcolithic, "copper-stone" age; the Chalcolithic by convention is the initial period of the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age; the transition out of the Stone Age occurred between 6000 BCE and 2500 BCE for much of humanity living in North Africa and Eurasia. The first evidence of human metallurgy dates to between the 5th and 6th millennium BCE in the archaeological sites of Majdanpek and Pločnik in modern-day Serbia, though not conventionally considered part of the Chalcolithic or "Copper Age", this provides the earliest known example of copper metallurgy.
Note the Rudna Glava mine in Serbia. Ötzi the Iceman, a mummy from about 3300 BCE carried with him a flint knife. In regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, the Stone Age was followed directly by the Iron Age; the Middle East and southeastern Asian regions progressed past Stone Age technology around 6000 BCE. Europe, the rest of Asia became post-Stone Age societies by about 4000 BCE; the proto-Inca cultures of South America continued at a Stone Age level until around 2000 BCE, when gold and silver made their entrance. The Americas notably did not develop a widespread behavior of smelting Bronze or Iron after the Stone Age period, although the technology existed. Stone tool manufacture continued after the Stone Age ended in a given area. In Europe and North America, millstones were in use until well into the 20th century, still are in many parts of the world; the terms "Stone Age", "Bronze Age", "Iron Age" were never meant to suggest that advancement and time periods in prehistory are only measured by the type of tool material, rather than, for
Urartu
Urartu, which corresponds to the biblical mountains of Ararat, is the name of a geographical region used as the exonym for the Iron Age kingdom known by the modern rendition of its endonym, the Kingdom of Van, centered around Lake Van in the historic Armenian Highlands. The written language that the kingdom's political elite used is referred to as Urartian, which appears in cuneiform inscriptions in Armenia and eastern Turkey, it is unknown what language was spoken by the peoples of Urartu at the time of the existence of the kingdom, but there is linguistic evidence of contact between the proto-Armenian language and the Urartian language at an early date, occurring prior to the formation of Urartu as a kingdom. The kingdom rose to power in the mid-9th century BC, but went into gradual decline and was conquered by the Iranian Medes in the early 6th century BC; the geopolitical region would re-emerge as Armenia shortly after. Being heirs to the Urartian realm, the earliest identifiable ancestors of the Armenians are the peoples of Urartu.
The name Urartu comes from Assyrian sources. Shalmaneser I recorded a campaign in which he subdued the entire territory of "Uruatri"; the Shalmaneser text uses the name Urartu to refer to a geographical region, not a kingdom, names eight "lands" contained within Urartu. "Urartu" is cognate with the Biblical "Ararat", Akkadian "Urashtu", Armenian "Ayrarat". In addition to referring to the famous Biblical highlands, Ararat appears as the name of a kingdom in Jeremiah 51:27, mentioned together with Minni and Ashkenaz. Mount Ararat is located 120 kilometres north of its former capital; the name Kingdom of Van, is derived from the Urartian toponym Biainili, adopted in Old Armenian as Van, because of betacism, hence the names "Kingdom of Van" or "Vannic Kingdom". Other Urartian toponyms and words went through the same sound change as the Armenian language spread throughout the region and absorbed them. In the 6th century BC, with the emergence of Armenia in the region, the name of the region was referred to as variations of Armenia and Urartu.
In the trilingual Behistun Inscription, carved in 521 or 520 BC by the order of Darius I, the country referred to as Urartu in Akkadian is called Arminiya in Old Persian and Harminuia in the Elamite language. The mentions of Urartu in the Books of Kings and Isaiah of the Bible were translated as "Armenia" in the Septuagint; some English language translations, including the King James Version follow the Septuagint translation of Urartu as Armenia. The identification of the biblical "mountains of Ararat" with the Mt. Ararat is a modern identification based on postbiblical tradition; the name Ayrarat, used to describe lands located in the central region of the Kingdom of Armenia seems to have been of local usage as no known classical works use this word to refer to Armenia. The Ararat Province of modern Armenia is named after Mount Ararat, which itself receives its name from the biblical Mountains of Ararat. Scholars such as Carl Ferdinand Friedrich Lehmann-Haupt believed that the people of Urartu called themselves Khaldini after the god Ḫaldi.
Boris Piotrovsky wrote that the Urartians first appear in history in the 13th century BC as a league of tribes or countries which did not yet constitute a unitary state. In the Assyrian annals the term Uruatri as a name for this league was superseded during a considerable period of years by the term "land of Nairi". Shupria, believed to have been a Hurrian or Mitanni state, subsequently annexed into the Urartian confederation. Shupria is mentioned in conjunction with a district in the area called Arme which some scholars have linked to the name of Armenia. Linguists John Greppin and Igor Diakonoff argued that the Urartians referred to themselves as Shurele, a name mentioned within the royal titles of the kings of Urartu; the word Šuri has been variously theorized as referring to chariots, the region of Shupria, or the entire world. Assyrian inscriptions of Shalmaneser I first mention Uruartri as one of the states of Nairi, a loose confederation of small kingdoms and tribal states in the Armenian Highland in the 13th to 11th centuries BC which he conquered.
Uruartri itself was in the region around Lake Van. The Nairi states were subjected to further attacks and invasions by the Assyrians under Tukulti-Ninurta I, Tiglath-Pileser I, Ashur-bel-kala, Adad-nirari II, Tukulti-Ninurta II, Ashurnasirpal II. Urartu re-emerged in Assyrian inscriptions in the 9th century BC as a powerful northern rival of Assyria, which lay to the south in northern Mesopotamia and northeast Syria; the Nairi states and tribes became a unified kingdom under king Aramu, whose capital at Arzashkun was captured by the Assyrians under Shalmaneser III. Contemporaries of the Uruartri, living just to the west along the southern shore of the Black Sea, were the Kaskas known from Hittite sources; the Middle Assyrian Empire fell into a period
Roman Armenia
Roman Armenia refers to the rule of parts of Greater Armenia by the Roman Empire, from the 1st century AD to the end of Late Antiquity. While Armenia Minor had become a client state and incorporated into the Roman Empire proper during the 1st century AD, Greater Armenia remained an independent kingdom under the Arsacid dynasty. Throughout this period, Armenia remained a bone of contention between Rome and the Parthian Empire, as well as the Sasanian Empire that succeeded the latter, the casus belli for several of the Roman–Persian Wars. Only in 114 -- 118 was Emperor Trajan able to incorporate it as a short-lived province. In the late 4th century, Armenia was divided between Rome and the Sasanians, who took control of the larger part of the Armenian Kingdom and in the mid-5th century abolished the Armenian monarchy. In the 6th and 7th centuries, Armenia once again became a battleground between the East Romans and the Sasanians, until both powers were defeated and replaced by the Muslim Caliphate in the mid-7th century.
Following the fall of the Artaxiad dynasty after Pompey's campaign in Armenia in 66 BC, the Kingdom of Armenia was contested between the Roman Empire and the Parthian Empire during the Roman–Parthian Wars. Throughout most of its history during this period, under the reign of the Arsacid Dynasty, the Armenian nobility was divided among Roman-loyalists, Parthian-loyalists or neutrals. Armenia served as a client state or vassal at the frontier of the two large empires and their successors, the Byzantine and Sassanid empires. During the Byzantine–Sasanian wars, Armenia was partitioned into Byzantine Armenia and Persian Armenia. With the eastwards expansion of the Roman Republic during the Mithridatic Wars, the Kingdom of Armenia, under the Artaxiad dynasty, was made a Roman protectorate by Pompey in 66/65 BC. For the next 100 years, Armenia remained under Roman influence. Towards the middle of the 1st century AD, the rising Parthian influence disputed Roman supremacy, re-established by the campaigns of Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo.
This conflict ended after the Battle of Rhandeia, in an effective stalemate and a formal compromise: a Parthian prince of the Arsacid line would henceforth sit on the Armenian throne, but his nomination had to be approved by the Roman emperor. In 114, Emperor Trajan incorporated Armenia into the Empire, making it a full Roman province.“From Antioch the emperor marched to the Euphrates and farther northward as far as the most northerly legion-camp Satala in Lesser Armenia, whence he advanced into Armenia and took the direction of Artaxata... Trajan was resolved to make this vassal-state a province, a shift to eastern frontier of the empire generally... Armenia yielded to its fate and became a Roman governorship... Trajan thereupon advanced and occupied Mesopotamia...and, like Armenia, Mesopotamia became a Roman province.” In 113, Trajan invaded the Parthian Empire. In 114, Trajan from Antiochia in Syria conquered the capital Artaxata. Trajan deposed the Armenian king Parthamasiris and ordered the annexation of Armenia to the Roman Empire as a new province.
The new province reached the shores of the Caspian Sea and bordered to the north with the Caucasian Iberia and Albania, two vassal states of Rome. As a Roman province Armenia was administered along with Cappadocia by Catilius Severus of the gens Claudia; the Roman Senate issued coins on this occasion bearing the following inscription: ARMENIA ET MESOPOTAMIA IN POTESTATEM P. R. REDACTAE, thus solidifying Armenia's position as the newest Roman province. A rebellion by the Parthian pretender Sanatruces was put down, though sporadic resistance continued and Vologases III of Parthia managed to secure an area of south-eastern Armenia just before Trajan's death in August 117. After Trajan's death, his successor Hadrian decided not to maintain the province of Armenia. In 118, Hadrian gave Armenia up, installed Parthamaspates as its king. Parthamaspates was soon defeated by the Parthians, again fled to the Romans, who granted him the co-rule of Osroene in western Greater Armenia as a consolation. Sohaemus was named king of Armenia by Roman emperor Antoninus Pius in 140.
Just a few years in 161, Armenia was lost again to Vologases IV of Parthia. In 163, a Roman counter-attack under Statius Priscus defeated the Parthians in Armenia and reinstalled Sohaemus as the Romans' favored candidate on the Armenian throne. Armenia was in frequent dispute between the two empires and their candidates for the Armenian throne, a situation which lasted until the emergence of a new power, the Sasanians. Rome's power and influence increased over the years since, but Armenia retained its independence if only as a vassal state, although it a Roman ally against the Sasanian Empire; when Roman emperor Septimius Severus sacked the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon, many Armenian soldiers were in his army. In the 4th century, they consisted of two Roman legions, the Legio I Armeniaca and the Legio II Armeniaca. In the second half of the 3rd century, the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon and areas of southern Armenia were sacked by the Romans under Emperor Carus, all Armenia, after half a century of Persian rule, was ceded to Diocletian in 299 as a vassal territory.
In 363, a treaty was signed between the East Roman and Sassanid Persian empires, which divided Armenia between the two. The Persians retained the larger part of Armenia while the Romans received a small part of Western Armenia. Another treaty followed between 384 and 390, the Peace of Acilisene, which established a definite line of division, running from a point just east of Karin (soon to be renamed The