User:Yerevantsi/sandbox/Ararat


 * Mount Ararat

Name
Ayrarat? Այրարատ անվան ստուգաբանությամբ զբաղվել են մի շարք բանասերներ և պատմաբաններ։ Ամենից հավանականը համարվում է այն կարծիքը, որը Այրարատ անունը կապում է Արարատ անվան հետ[1]։ / Հակոբյան, Հայաստանի պատմական աշխարհագրություն, Երևան, «Միտք», 1968, էջ 121-128

'Urartu' comes from urashtu, the Assyrian word for the kingdom, and signifies “high place” https://www.worldhistory.org/Urartu_Civilization/

Maps
Category:Historic maps of the world

Richard Unger https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230282162 Now and again but by no means universally Noah’s Ark did turn up, perched often on Mount Ararat where it had come to rest after the Flood

https://books.google.am/books?id=yEG1DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA36&dq=Fra+Mauro+ararat+noah%27s+ark
 * read

Hereford Mappa Mundi (c. 1300),

https://books.google.am/books?id=SN-PEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA76&dq=Fra+Mauro+ararat+noah%27s+ark
 * Fra Mauro map 1450

https://www.proquest.com/openview/310a4e4ca4da45f6015ce592b9523a42/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y Fra Mauro places Noah’s Ark atop Mount Ararat within Armenia with a cubic illustration at the mountain's peak

https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/306/article/730525/summary The mnemonic utility of the mapped world is reflected in a number of wellknown medieval works on the arts of memory. De arca Noe mystica by Hugh of Saint-Victor (ca. 1096–1141) is a textual exemplar of pictura or memory palace that subdivides and arranges Noah’s Ark into a hyperorganized receptacle for recalling the history of the world, remembering the virtues and vices, and retaining all manner of information. The ark, in this schema, is itself resting atop a mappamundi, as Noah’s Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat.101

File:Cotton world map.jpg https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/anglo-saxon-england/article/abs/northern-world-of-the-anglosaxon-mappa-mundi/2FC3A373031A172817CA2752C8AF9719 The Anglo-Saxon mappa mundi, sometimes known as the Cotton map or Cottoniana, is found on folio 56v of London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. v, which dates from the first half of the eleventh century. The tribes of Israel are allocated areas and the locations of God’s covenants with man on Sinai and Ararat are marked, the latter with a small drawing of the Ark.

Alexander re-mapped: geography and identity in the Alexander Romance in Armenia A MacFarlane - 2020 - ora.ox.ac.uk … mappae mundi of the Christian and Islamic traditions, their edges fringed with the fantastic, … Armenia such as Mount Ararat and Noah’s Ark, frequently depicted in European TO maps for …

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Pashinyan remarks Alen https://www.azatutyun.am/a/32798442.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg6tvCogjIw «Արարատի և Արագածի արանքում»

When in October 2023 French foreign minister Catherine Colonna visited Armenia, she posted a photo of the mountain on Twitter, to which Turkey's envoy for normalization with Armenia Serdar Kılıç responded that it is "located within Turkish borders and thus inseparable part of Türkiye. Therefore, I am afraid you are either gravely confused about the intended destination of your visit or pitifully need education on at least basic level of geography."

Football Federation of Armenia logo

In the early 2000s, it was closed for climbers without permission, due to the high risk of terrorism. The PKK terrorist group, which carried out terrorist attacks in southeastern and eastern Türkiye for decades, also used the mountain as a hideout. Operations in recent years have largely wiped out the PKK presence in the region. Professor Ersan Başar, president of the Turkish Mountaineering Federation, says Ağrı, which is mostly located in the eponymous eastern province, has hosted more than 20,000 climbers this year and most of them were foreigners. Başar told Anadolu Agency (AA) on Wednesday that their federation was also organizing various events to draw climbers to Ağrı, including an International Mount Ağrı Climb where mountaineers reached the peak on Aug. 30, Türkiye’s Victory Day.

The Case for Ağrı Dağı/Masis as Biblical Mt. Ararat / Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 2021 https://web.archive.org/web/20240111133239/https://www.atsjats.org/the-case-for-a%C4%9Fr%C4%B1-da%C4%9F%C4%B1/masis-as-biblical-mt.-ararat.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20240425133727/https://president.az/en/articles/view/65580 President Ilham Aliyev: Yes, Armenia and Türkiye are currently working on the process of normalization of relations, and we support that. We have publicly stated that our support for Turkish-Armenian normalization, and you may be aware that Armenia has territorial claims not only against Azerbaijan but also against Türkiye. This issue definitely needs to be addressed. You know, that national symbol of Armenia is Aghridag Mountain, which they call Ararat, and it is situated in Türkiye, which I think is absolutely unacceptable. And my personal opinion, it is absolutely wrong to send such a message to their society.

I remember that the previous President of Armenia, Serzhik Sargsyan, was once asked at a meeting with, I think, some young members of his party or something like that, “Now we’ve liberated the Artsakh (so-called). What about Western Armenia?” That's how they called and some of them still call Türkiye. “What about our lands? When will they be liberated?” And he said: “We did our job and this is up to you to do it.” So, this is not something I invented; you can find it on the internet. That’s what he said, and that’s what they thought. This, I think, is the biggest tragedy of Armenian society; that they really thought they could separate that part of Türkiye from Türkiye and adjust it to Armenia. So, they overestimated themselves, and this is their biggest problem. Now they want to normalize, and we support it, but they need to get rid of all these attributes.

Robert Ker Porter (1817–20)

https://archive.org/details/travelsingeorgia02port/page/636/mode/2up?view=theater Noah's ark in the valley between the peaks

aesthetic
Leonid Volynsky, 1963 p. 126 / Потому что Арарат-Масис—это как бы душа Армении, его не отделишь от ее песен и сказок, не оторвешь от ее пейзажа, ее истории. p. 139 / Арарат в озникает без предисловий, он. открыто стоит на ковре р авнины, и в этом его особое, негрозное величие. p. 149 / Арарата. Его вершины, затянутые мглой, рисовались силуэтом, чем-то напоминая нагую грудь м атери-земли.

John Buchan Telfer called it a "magnificent mountain, peerless among the mighty works of the Creator". He wrote that he looked at the mountain with a "childish feeling of delight" and "earnest admiration, for it is in truth a noble and graceful mountain."

August von Haxthausen: ...I think that anyone who has seen Ararat, "the holy mountain," the most imposing which it is possible for the imagination to conceive, must have shared the feeling which forced itself upon my own mind on beholding it, that this alone could have been the summit upon which the Ark, the cradle of the new race of man, grounded and remained.

Colin Thubron: 'Look! Ararat!' I followed his gaze. Luminous with snow, the mountain had appeared as if from nowhere. It hung like a spectre over the plain. It was solitary, complete, severed in the sky. Only a dirty string of lesser hills drifted away from it to the west. I had failed to notice it because haze cut it off from the alluvial valley beneath, leaving its summit to swim in solitude. Unearthly, treeless, it belonged to another time and substance from the plains. Its andesitic slopes presented themselves not for mining but for worship--the patriarchal mountain of Noah, and landfall of the Ark.

Russell, Zoroastrianism, 1987, awe

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https://www.jstor.org/stable/3152410 Armenian Traditions about Mt. Ararat

https://twitter.com/StJohnLazar/status/1725305514693742632 Azerbaijani "intellectual" Adnan Hajizada who is complaining that Mount Ararat on the coat of arms of Armenia represents territorial claim against Turkey is probably not aware that the Azerbaijani city of Nahçıvan also has Ararat on its coat of arms. https://e-news.pro/mnenie-i-analitika/206362-nahichevan-mesto-pervoy-vysadki.html

American Biblical Repository: Devoted to Biblical and General ... 1836 ... the very same which is now preserved as the most valuable relic in the cathedral of Echmiadzin. The belief in the impossibility of ascending Mount Ararat has in consequence of this tradition, which is sanctioned by the church...

https://armenpress.am/eng/news/1101199.html Turkey builds military base on border with Armenia, on Mount Ararat

https://archive.org/details/beginningagainat001962mbp/page/n281/mode/2up?view=theater At the foot of Mount Ararat, "Mother of the World," all Armenia becomes comprehensible. Mount Ararat has seen from the beginning the life of Armenia, coming out of the mists in which his- tory's memory begins, crossing all remembered cen- turies, and going on indomitably into the future. The vastness and silence of the mountain reduces all human things to their proportions in the universe, and the short tale of mankind's life on earth becomes a chapter in the story of Mount Ararat.
 * Khruschev

https://www.nytimes.com/1934/10/25/archives/armenia-blooming-under-soviet-rule-irrigation-and-electricity-are.html Tchitcherin Replied. It is said that the Turkish Ambassad or once remarked jokingly to the then Soviet Foreign Commissar, Georges Tchitcherin: "How strange that your Armenian Republic takes its crest from a mountain outside Armenian territoryгу.' To that M. Tchitcherin replied. "I have yet to learn that the Tur- kish symbol, crescent moon, has been conquered or colonized by you,

Russell 1987

 * 

Azat, 2, See also Ararat. Masik, 2, 26, 29, 339, 401, 406
 * Ararat, Mt., 2, 4, 25, 39, 77, 190, 250, 400, 406, 412

https://archive.org/details/JamesRussellZoroastrianismInArmenia/page/n6/mode/1up?view=theater&q=ararat Most of the centres of early Armenian civilization are clustered in the valleys of the great rivers, particularly the Araxes in the east and the Euphrates and its tributary the Aracani (Tk. Murat Su) in the west, and in the plains of Alaskert, Manazkert and Mus in the west and Ararat in the east, or on the shores of the great lakes, particularly Van. Where these valleys were particularly fertile or were traversed "by major East-West routes, they became population centres with administrative offices in the Achaemenian period. The distribution of temples of the pre-Christian divinities follows the same pattern, so major centres of cult are found at Van and on the plains of Alaskert and Ararat, and along the courses of the Western and Eastern Euphrates, especially around Er2incan and Mus. The highest mountain on the plateau is Greater Ararat (Arm. Azat Masik ), 5l65m.

mountains were considered sacred. besides, the grandeur and majesty of the brilliant white snow cap of Ararat, seeming to float in Heaven, must have inspired religious awe in the ancient Armenians as it continues to do to this day.

https://archive.org/details/JamesRussellZoroastrianismInArmenia/page/n14/mode/1up?view=theater&q=ararat The legendary homeland... Armenia seems to have two loci of legendary origin in tradition: the regions of Van and Ararat. In the former is Hayoc Jor, the Valley of the Armenians. For the latter, one might suggest a translation of Haykakan Par as 'the Armenian Place', the word par being here not 'row, line' but a MIr. loan-word, cf. Olr. pada-, Zor. Phi. padhak / payag 'place'

https://archive.org/details/JamesRussellZoroastrianismInArmenia/page/n17/mode/1up?view=theater&q=ararat The Assyrian Urartu, Babylonian Urastu (on which cf . infra ) and Heb. Ararat (Dead Sea scrolls ' wrrt, *Urarat) have been connected with Arm. Ayrarat and the Alarodioi of Herodotus 3.9h and T.T9- It is worth noting that the 'mountains of Ararat' upon which Noah's ark rested were probably thought to be in Gordyene, to the south of the present-day Mt. Ararat (Tk. Agri dag; Arm. c c Azat Masik, Masis), for the fifth-century Armenian historian P awstos Buzand writes that the Syrian St. Jacob of Nisibis climbed Mt. Sararad in Gordyene to search for pieces of wood from the Ark. The tradition connecting the Biblical Mt. Ararat with Gordyene is attributed by Alexander Polyhistor (first cent. B.C.) to Berosus (third cent. B.C.), and it is likely that it was forgotten in Armenia only gradually, as the Christian See of Valarsapat (Ejmiacin) eclipsed in importance and authority the first See of the Armenian Church, at Astisat. Mt. Ararat (i.e., Azat Masik ) was believed by the Armenians to be the abode of the C Y C legendary k ajk and the prison of King Artawazd, much as the Iranians regarded Mt. Demavand as the place where Thraetaona had bound Azi Dahaka; it is also the highest mountain in Armenia, and must have been 9 regarded as sacred. When Valarsapat in the province of Ayrarat came to be the Mother See of the Church, the Biblical legend must have attached to the noble peak in whose shadow the great Cathedral of Ejmiacin stands, the mountain having been re-named after the province (the ace. pi. of the original name survives as Arm. Masis).

https://archive.org/details/JamesRussellZoroastrianismInArmenia/page/n22/mode/1up?view=theater&q=ararat J. R. Russell, 'Urartu-Ararat-Masis, ' The Armenian Church, New York, 23, 1, Winter 1980, l6.

https://archive.org/details/JamesRussellZoroastrianismInArmenia/page/n42/mode/1up?view=theater&q=ararat In Arm. , the word for "brave is k aj, which may "be of Iranian origin, and is also the name of a race of supernatural creatures who are said to dwell within Mt. Ararat. In the Arm. epic fragments preserved "by Movses Xorenac i, Artaxias curses his son Artawazd, who is taken captive by the k aj-k . P awstos Buzand refers to p c ark G t agaworac n ew baxtk n ew k a^ut iwn 'the glory of kings and their fortune and bravery' (IV. 2k). It is likely that the k ajk of Mt. Ararat represented in fact the royal ancestral spirits, who received reverence from Artaxias, as we shall see, as the fravasis of Zoroastrianism. https://archive.org/details/JamesRussellZoroastrianismInArmenia/page/n46/mode/1up?view=theater&q=ararat A copper coin of Artaxias I (189-63 B.C.) shows an eagle on the reverse turned left and perched on the summit of a mountain. A similar coin struck late in the first century B.C. has been found from Cappa- 59 docia; the mountain on the latter is undoubtedly Argaeus, near Mazaca, which was worshipped as sacred. The eagle recalls the figurines from Artasat and elsewhere, which show an eagle atop a cone or stepped pyramid. In this case, the mountain shown is probably Ararat, which towers magnificently over Artaxata. Bedoukian identified 6~2 the mountain peaks as those of Argaeus, but it is more likely that they are Great and little Ararat. The fragmentary legend may contain the Armenian word sar 'head, mountain', probably a Mir. loan-word, often suffixed to the name of a mountain. https://archive.org/details/JamesRussellZoroastrianismInArmenia/page/n87/mode/1up?view=theater&q=ararat In Armenia, coins depicting mountains were struck in the Artaxiad period, portraying either a single peak with an eagle at its summit, or 65 two peaks (probably Ararat); the eagle, also represented in figurines as perched upon a stepped pyramid probably representing a mountain, was used symbolically by the Armenians to represent x v arenah- 'glory'. In Cappadocia, also, coins were minted on which Mt Argaeus is shown on the reverse with an eagle or other figure on it. A complex web of legendry deeply permeated by Zoroastrian conceptions surrounds the awe- fiA some massif of Ararat, and a day of the month is named after it; eight 69 other mountains also are venerated thus. https://archive.org/details/JamesRussellZoroastrianismInArmenia/page/n95/mode/1up?view=theater&q=ararat The 18th day is Masis, ace. pi. but in Mod. Arm. nom. sg. of Masik c, i.e., Ararat; the 20th is Aragac, site of the hypogeum of Aic c and therefore probably a sacred place (see Chs. 9, 10). https://archive.org/details/JamesRussellZoroastrianismInArmenia/page/n108/mode/1up?view=theater&q=ararat Every two years,. v c it is said, the visapk of Ararat fight those of Aragac; this tale is perhaps inspired by the traditional rivalry thought to exist be- 7ft tween the two volcanic peaks themselves. https://archive.org/details/JamesRussellZoroastrianismInArmenia/page/n174/mode/1up?view=theater&q=ararat Mountains such as Azat Masik (modern Ararat, Tk. Agri dag), which faces Aragac over the plain of Ararat, were sacred to the Armenians, and one remembers also the assertion of Herodotus that the Persians of Achaemenian times wor- shipped Zeus (i.e., Ahura Mazda) on the tops of mountains. 109 https://archive.org/details/JamesRussellZoroastrianismInArmenia/page/n205/mode/1up?view=theater&q=ararat Movses Xorenac i in his History writes that at the death of Artases (Artaxias I) 'much slaughter took place according to the custom of the heathens ' ( bazum kotorack linein est awrini het anosac ). Movses adds that Artawazd was displeased and, according to the singers of Goit n, said to his father (presumably before the death of the latter), ■*c c ^ c c — Mine du gnac er, ew zerkirs amenayn end k ez tarar, es awerakac s orpes t agaworem 'Since you have departed and taken all the country with you, how shall I be king of these ruins?' whereupon his father cursed him C— c c c c Y c and said Et e du yors hecc is yazat i ver i Masis, zk ez kale in k ajk, c c c c tare in yazat i ver i Masis, and kac c es, ew zloys mi tesc es 'If you C C Y c ride to the hunt on Azat Masik [i.e., Greater Ararat!] the k ajk will take you and carry you up on Azat Masik : may you remain there and not see the light,' (MX II. 6l). The k ajk, lit. 'brave ones', were regarded in mediaeval times as supernatural creatures who lived in the mountains ; it has also been suggested that they were the spirits of the Artaxiad royal ancestors. https://archive.org/details/JamesRussellZoroastrianismInArmenia/page/n208/mode/1up?view=theater&q=ararat If Artawazd was believed to have been a dew, the legend of his imprisonment in lofty, snow-capped Ararat may be regarded as parallel to Iranian legends about the imprisonment of Azi Dahaka in Damavand. For many centuries, Armenians have regarded Ararat with awe. This attitude is illustrated by the reaction of the Armenian clergy to the first recorded ascent of the mountain, in which the pioneer modern Armenian novelist took part. Xac atur Abovean, a native of K anak er (a village on the outskirts of Erevan) and one of the first graduates of the Nersisean School at Tiflis — the earliest Armenian European-style gymnasium — intended upon his graduation in 1826 to attend classes at the Armenian Catholic monastery of the Mxit arists on the island of San Lazzaro, Venice. Detained by the Russo-Persian War, Abovean took employment as a clerk at Ejmiacin monastery, the Mother See of the Armenian Church. After the Russian victory and the annexation of Erevan and its environs to the Russian Empire in 1828, Professor Friedrich Parrot of Dorpat University (now Tartu, in the Estonian SSR) led an expedition to Mount Ararat. Abovean, as the only Russian-speaking cleric at Ejmiacin, was given the reluctant permission of the Catholicos to accompany the Western scholar and his party. On 28 September 1829 Parrot and his associates, including Abovean, reached the summit of Greater Ararat. Abovean was regarded with deep hostility from then on by the Armenian clergy, who considered him guilty of desecration of the sacred moun- kl tain. When St James of Nisibis had attempted to scale Mt Sararad in Gordyene in the fourth century, an angel of the Lord had prevented him from reaching the top, but gave him a relic of the ark of Noah. This tradition, preserved by P awstos Busand for the Armenians, had been transferred with the legend of the ark itself to Azat Masik as the Armenians sought to adorn the mountain — already sanctified in pre-Christian belief — with added Biblical prestige, to strengthen the legitimacy and holiness of Valarsapat-Ejmiacin, which stands in the shadow of the massive peak. Abovean 's ascent was a rejection of Armenian religious tradition which marked his decisive break with the clerical leadership; hounded and persecuted thereafter, he disappeared from his home in c c. K anak er nineteen years later and was never heard from again. For the later Soviet Armenian poet Elise u arenc, Abovean' s journey, no less than his pioneering novel in the vernacular language Verk Hayastani 'The Wounds of Armenia' (18U8), marked the beginning of Armenian modernism. He called his poem to Abovean Depi lyarn Masis 'Towards Mount Ararat' (1933), yet even C c arenc c seems to have retained some of the c. c traditional regard for the mountain, for he calls Masis anhas p ark i camp : a 'a road to unattainable glory* in a ta± ('song', a medieval verse form) written in 1920. Other Armenians held resolutely to their ancient beliefs. A British traveller in World War I expressed to Armenian friends at Igdir, at the foot of the northern slopes of Ararat, his desire to climb the mountain. Their reaction was to urge him to abandon his foolhardy plan. They cried, '"The mountain is sacred. It is inhabited by evil spirits, so no one has ever reached the summit — we shall never see you again. This writer was assured by villagers of Ararat, Armenian SSR in August 1973 that Artawazd waits within Mount Ararat and will rise again to liberate western Armenia from the Turks. The legend of Artawazd was kept alive in popular memory, it seems, through dramatic presentations h6 in mediaeval times which depicted his imprisonment; except for the c — c epic fragments from Golt n preserved by Movses Xorenac i and references in other literary sources, these have not survived. The villagers of Ararat, though, probably learnt the legend of Artawazd at school in their Armenian history classes. It is possible that Artawazd was regarded by Zoroastrian Armenians as a hero of Frasegird, and that Christians transformed him into a demon. Or, Artawazd may have been equated already with Azdahak in pre-Christian legend for various reasons: his disrespect towards his dying father could have cast him as a sinner in the popular imagination; perhaps he became demented at an early age and, like the later king Pap, came to be regarded as a demon. Certainly no recorded notice of the historical deeds of Artawazd I suggests that he was either a great national hero or a particularly vile tyrant, but one recalls the tendency of Armenian epic to telescope several historical figures with the same name into a single epic hero, as appears to .have been the case in the legend of the struggle of Tigran with Azdahak, in which an Orontid Tigran fights the king of the Medes and is credited with the conquests of the much later https://archive.org/details/JamesRussellZoroastrianismInArmenia/page/n209/mode/1up?view=theater&q=ararat A filthy wind-demon pushed him from there and he fell into the river and was lost. His horsemen spread the rumour that the nongods of Sidar had seized him and put him in the black mountain, which is Greater Ararat, and he stands there chained. Two dogs, one white and one black, daily lick the chains of Sidar, and at the fullness of a year these are thick as a hair; if they break, he will come out and cause the world to pass away. https://archive.org/details/JamesRussellZoroastrianismInArmenia/page/n210/mode/1up?view=theater&q=ararat The myth then was explained by making Sidar the 'son* of Artawazd, while Artawazd {like Artaxias) was presented as displeased with his son, who is depicted as insane and accursed (he is thrust from the bridge, perhaps believed to stretch between the two peaks of Ararat — this is probably a symbol of damnation, as we have seen above). Sidar merely takes the place of Artawazd in the legend of Artawazd recorded by Movses Xorenac i; while Artawazd in the Sidar myth takes on the role of Artases. It has been seen that Mihr (Arm. Mher), confined to his cave at Van, represented for Armenians the hope of redemption at the end of the world. A similar belief must have attached to Mount Ararat with its majestic beauty, yet it was also the prison of a demented king of the k c a5 'brave* dynasty of the Artaxiads, who was equated by the weavers of epic song with Azdahak. The myth of redemption and the vision of the release of the dragon and the destruction of much of the world preceding its renovation were fused together in a single legend. https://archive.org/details/JamesRussellZoroastrianismInArmenia/page/n211/mode/1up?view=theater&q=ararat Yet one of the striking features of Mount Ararat is its terrible chasm, the Ahora Gorge (Arm. Akori ), on the northeast face of the mountain.

https://archive.org/details/JamesRussellZoroastrianismInArmenia/page/n220/mode/1up?view=theater&q=ararat MX 1.15; this is a folk etymology, as the toponyms Ayrarat and Ararat are to be connected rather with the name Urartu (see Ch. 1). https://archive.org/details/JamesRussellZoroastrianismInArmenia/page/n221/mode/1up?view=theater&q=ararat Kaj'brave ' was both the epithet of kings and the name of supernatural creatures who were believed to dwell on Ararat https://archive.org/details/JamesRussellZoroastrianismInArmenia/page/n230/mode/1up?view=theater&q=ararat The Arm. word k C aj means 'brave' and is used only in this sense in the Bible. It was apparently also an epithet applied to the Artaxiad kings of Armenia. The k c aj~k c were also considered in ancient epic a race of supernatural creatures who captured and imprisoned the Artaxiad king Artawazd in Mount Ararat, the place of their dwelling. The legend may have arisen from another belief: that the king at death c T joined his deified, k aj ancestors of the royal clan.

Armenian
https://web.archive.org/web/20221211125315/https://arar.sci.am/dlibra/publication/286417/edition/263002/content
 * Մասիս/Արարատը՝ հայոց Օլիմպոս և նրա առասպելները

Jebel Aqra Baal Mount Süphan

Petrosyan
According to Khorenatsi (I. 30), it was on the eastern slope of this “great mountain” that the legendary king Tigran settled Anoyš, the wife of the Median king Aždahak, defeated and murdered by him, and her descendants, together with numerous captives. Aždahak originates from the Iranian Aži Dahāka, the name of the mythical Snake, the rival of the hero Θraētaona. Aždahak’s descendants are called višapazuns ‘descendants of Višaps’, i.e., ‘Dragonids’. Višap-dragons are opposed to the spirits-k‘aĵs, yet are in many ways equivalent to them (for the višaps and k‘aĵs see A. Petrosyan 2010a). According to the legends, the k‘aĵs keep King Artawazd (Tigran’s descendant) enchained in a cave on the Mt. Masis. Two dogs gnaw his chains, and he strives to free himself to put an end to the world. Artawazd himself is considered a modification of the Višap dragon. The closest parallels to the story of Artawazd are the Armenian and Caucasian myths about chained or captive heroes: Armenian Mher the Younger, Georgian Amirani, Abkhazian Abrskil, et al.
 * In ancient Armenian tradition this is the main myth related to Masis.

Two-headed Masis could very likely be conceived as “the twin mountain” and, hence, juxtaposed with Māšu. In Armenian folklore, Masis is referred to as “the Black mountain” and “the Dark land” (Abeghian 1966: 136), which could obviously be put in parallel with Gilgameš’s journey in darkness after reaching Mt. Māšu and “the mountain / land of the dark” in other ancient Semitic sources.

In Armenian pre-Christian religion, k‘aĵ is the epithet of the god Vahagn, who also had the traits of the sun god. Vahagn was evidently the first of the k‘aĵs as well as their chief. Accordingly, Masis, as the dwelling place of the k‘aĵs, again links up with the sun, just as Māšu does. To a certain degree, the characters of the scorpion-men of mountain Māšu and the višaps and k‘aĵs of Masis are comparable too. So, both Māšu and Masis are typical “world mountains” reaching the sky above and the underworld below (H. Petrosyan 2002: 36-37).

According to Khorenatsi, the name Masis goes back to Amasia, Hayk’s grandson, while Anonym mentions Marseak (Abraham’s domestic slave, who ran away from Isaac and settled down in Armenia) as the eponym of the mountain. Both of the views are typical examples of “popular etymology” and are linguistically unacceptable. Masis / Masik‘ (Maseac‘ in the genitive case) are plural forms; the nominative single is Masi < *Masiā, with the suffix *-i(y)ā. Before the drop of the last vowel (i.e., before the first centuries AD) the name should have been in the form of Masía. Evidently, this name is inseparable from the Akkadian Māšu. In the Assyrian version of the Akkadian language, Māšu sounded Māsu. Māšu, as  previously  mentioned,  is  identified  with  the  mountains  Masios  /  Masius (Ṭur-Abdin),  which  are  almost  identical  to  Armenian  Masis. These are  likely  to  be the  Greek-Latin  versions  of  early  Arm. Masio /  Masia. The second  peak  in  the Armenian Highland Sip‘an/ Cipan (Süphan in Turkish; situated to the north of Lake Van)  is  also  called  Masik‘. Characteristically, Sip‘an is  also  of  apparently  ancient Semitic  origin  (cf. Ṣapanu,  the  mountain  of  the  god  Ba‘al  in  Syria). Syrian and Mesopotamian   names,   thus,   throughout   time moved   to   the   north,   becoming identified with major mountains in the Armenian Highland.

St. Hieronymus (Jerome) in his Bible commentaries (Comm. in Isaïam, 37, 38), written in about 400 AD, tells that the mountain of Noah’ Ark is the highest in the Taurus mountain range of Armenia, in the fertile province of Ararat, where the river Araxes flows. It is, doubtlessly, Masis, in the province of Ayrarat, close to the river Araxes (Mushegyan 2003: 30 ff, with bibliography).

In an excerpt by Vardan Areveltsi, an author of the 12th century, which, according to Levon Khachikyan, traces back to the author of the 5th century, Eghishe, the biblical Ararat is argued to be Masis rather than the mountain of Corduena (L. Khachikyan 1992: 245). Other arguments are also existent, but they are all controversial (Movsisyan 2000: 48-52).

It is only at the dawn of the 2nd millennium AD that the identification of Ararat with Masis became popular. Among the reasons that led to an unequivocal identification were the fading of the ancient (pagan) traditions, which accelerated after the loss of statehood in the 11th century, and the considerable immigration of the population of the region neighboring Mt. Masis following it.