Armenians, as the descendants of Noah (the “second Adam”) are like the Jews, chosen and blessed by God. Greek historians, writing centuries after the appearance of the Armenians in their homeland, have left other exArmenia, 1992 © MARYLAND CARTOGRAPHICS. REPRINTED WITH
planations of the origins of the Armenian people. Two of the most quoted versions are provided by Herodotus, the fifth century B.C.E. historian, and Strabo, the geographer and historian writing at the end of the first century B.C.E. According to Herodotus, the Armenians had originally lived in Thrace, from where they crossed into Phrygia, in Asia Minor. They first settled in Phrygia, and then gradually moved west of the Euphrates River to what became Armenia. Their language resembled that of the Phrygians, while their names and dress was close to the Medes.
According to Strabo, the Armenians came from two directions: one group from the west, or Phry-gia; and the other from the south, or the Zagros region. In other words, according to the ancient Greeks, the Armenians were not the original inARMENIA AND ARMENIANS habitants of the region. They appear to have arrived sometime between the Phrygian migration to Asia Minor that followed the collapse of the Hittite Empire in the thirteenth century B.C.E., and the Cimmerian invasion of the Kingdom of Urartu (existed ca. 900-590 B.C.E.) in the eighth century B.C.E. In 782 B.C.E., the Urartian king, Argishti I, built the fortress-city of Erebuni (present-day Erevan, capital of Armenia). The decline of Urartu enabled the Armenians to establish themselves as the primary occupants of the region. Xenophon, who passed through Armenia in 401 B.C.E., recorded that, by his time, the Armenians had absorbed most of the local inhabitants.
THE LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE
Modem archeological finds in the Caucasus and Anatolia have presented sketchy and incomplete evidence of the possible origins of the Armenians. Until the 1980s, scholars unanimously agreed that the Armenians were an Indo-European group who either came into the area with the proto-Iranians from the Aral Sea region, or arrived from the Balkans with the Phrygians after the fall of the Hit-tites. Some scholars maintain that Hay or Hai (pronounced high), the Armenian word for “Armenian,” is derived from Hai-yos (Hattian). Hence, it is argued, the Armenians adopted the name of that empire as their own during their migration over Hittite lands. Others maintain that the Armeno-Phrygians crossed into Asia Minor, took the name Muskhi, and concentrated in the Arme-Shupria region east of the Euphrates River, where non-Indo-European words became part of their vocabulary. They stayed in the region until the Cimmero-Scythian invasions altered the power structure. The Armenians then managed to consolidate their rule over Urartu and, in time, assimilated most of its original inhabitants to form the Armenian nation. According to this theory, the names designating Armenia and Armenians derive from the Perso-Greek: Arme-Shupria.
More recent scholarship offers yet another possibility-that the Armenians were not later immigrants, but were among the original inhabitants of the region. Although this notion gained some credibility since the mid-1980s, there remain a number of unresolved questions: What was the spoken language of the early Armenians? Are the Armenians members of a non-Indo-European, Caucasian-speaking group who later adopted an Indo-European dialect, or are they, as many believe, one of the native Indo-European speaking groups? A number of linguists maintain that the Armenians, whom they identify with the Hayasa, together with the Hurrians, Kassites, and others, were indigenous Anatolian or Caucasian people who lived in the region until the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. The Armenians adopted some of the vocabulary of these Indo-European arrivals. This theory explains why Armenian is a unique branch of the Indo-European language tree and may well explain the origin of the word Hayastan (“Armenia” in the Armenian language). As evidence, these scholars point to Hurrian suffixes, the absence of gender, and other linguistic data. Archeologists add that the images of Armenians on a number of sixth-century Persian monuments depict physical features similar to those of other people of the Caucasus.
Other scholars, also relying on linguistic evidence, believe that Indo-European languages may have originated in the Caucasus and that the Armenians, as a result of pressure from large empires such as the Hittite and Assyrian, merged with neighboring tribes and adopted some of the Semitic and Kartvelian vocabulary and legends. They eventually formed a federation called Nairi, which became part of the united state of Urartu. The decline and fall of Urartu enabled the Armenian component to achieve predominance and, by the sixth century B.C.E., establish a separate entity, which the Greeks and Persians, the new major powers of the ancient world, called Armenia.
Further linguistic and archeological studies may one day explain the exact origins of the Indo-Europeans and that of the Armenian people. As of the early twenty-first century, Western historians maintain that Armenians arrived from Thrace and Phrygia, while academics from Armenia argue in favor of the more nationalistic explanation; that is, Armenians are the native inhabitants of historic Armenia.
CENTURIES OF CONQUERORS
Located between East and West, Armenians from the very beginning were frequently subject to invasions and conquest. The Armenians adopted features of other civilizations, but managed to maintain their own unique culture. Following the demise of Urartu, Armenia was controlled by the Medes, and soon after became part of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia. The word Armenia is first mentioned as Armina on the Behistun Rock, in the Zagros Mountains of Iran, which was inscribed by Darius I in about 520 B.C.E. Armenia formed one of the PerARMENIA AND ARMENIANS sian satrapies governed by the Ervandids (Oron-tids). Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia enabled the Ervandids to become autonomous and to resist the Seleucids. The Roman defeat of the Se-leucids in 190 B.C.E. encouraged Artahses, a general of the Ervandids, to take over the land and establish the first Armenian dynasty, the Artash-esid (Artaxiad). in 189 B.C.E.
The Artashesids faced Rome to the west and Parthia to the east. During the first century B.C.E., when both powers were otherwise engaged, Armenia, with the help of Pontus, managed to extend its territory and for a short time, under Tigranes the Great, had an empire stretching from the Caspian to the Mediterranean. By the first century of the common era, however, the first Armenian dynasty came to an end, and Armenia fell under successive Roman and Parthian rule. The struggle between Rome and Parthia to install their own government in Armenia was finally settled by the peace of Rhandeia, in 64 C.E. The brother of the Persian king became king of Armenia, but had to travel to Rome and receive his crown from Nero. Originally Parthian, the Ar-shakids (Arsacids) became a distinctly Armenian dynasty. During their four-century rule, Armenia became the first state to adopt Christianity and developed its own, unique alphabet.
The accession of the Sasanids in Persia posed new problems for Armenia. The Sasanids sought a revival of the first Persian Empire. They eradicated Hellenism and established Zoroastrianism as a state religion. The Sasanids not only attacked Armenia, but also fought Rome. By 387, the two powers partitioned Armenia. Four decades later, the second Armenian dynasty came to an end. Another partition occurred between Persia and the eastern Roman Byzantine empire (Byzantium) in 591. Armenia was ruled by local magnates who answered to Persian or Byzantine governors. Despite all this, Armenians not only maintained their national character, but also produced major historical and religious works and translations. Their church separated itself from Rome and Constantinople and assumed a national character under its supreme patriarch, the catholicos.
The advent of Islam and the arrival of the Arabs had a major impact on Armenia. The Arabs soon accepted a new Armenian dynasty, the Bagratids, who ruled parts of Armenia from 885 to 1045. Cities, trade, and architecture revived, and a branch of the Bagratids established the Georgian Bagratid house, which ruled parts of Georgia until the nineteenth century. The Bagratids, the last Armenian kingdom in historic Armenia, finally succumbed to the Byzantines, who under the Macedonian dynasty had experienced a revival and incorporated Armenia into their empire. By destroying the Armenian buffer zone, however, the Byzantines had to face the Seljuk Turks. In 1071, the Turks defeated the Byzantines in the battle of Manzikert and entered Armenia.
The Turkish invasion differed in one significant respect from all other previous invasions of Armenia: The Turkish nomads remained in Armenia and settled on the land. During the next four centuries, the Seljuk and the Ottoman Turks started the Turk-ification of Anatolia. The Armenians and Greeks slowly lost their dominance and became a minority. Emigration, war, and forced conversions depleted the Anatolian and Transcaucasian Christian population. Mountainous Karabagh, Siunik (Zangezur), Zeitun, and Sasun peoples, and a few other pockets of settlement were the only regions where an Armenian nobility and military leaders kept a semblance of autonomy. The rest of the Armenian population, mostly peasants, lived under Turkish or Kurdish rule. A number of Armenian military leaders who had left for Byzantium settled in Cilicia. The arrival of the Crusaders enabled these Armenians to establish a kingdom in 1199. This kingdom became a center of east-west trade and, thanks to the Mongol
