Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - X. Chapters in the history of Armenia
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ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
2 3 2
important part in antiquity on account of their skill in working
iron, and from whom the Greeks derived their nåme for steel.
Judging from the distribution of the Khaldian kings’
mscriptions in different parts of the country, their realm must
have stretched from the lands around Lake Van north-eastwards
to Lake Gokcha, north-westwards to Erzerum, westwards
across the Mush plain and the Taron Valley to the Euphrates
near Malatia, south-westwards and southwards into Syria,
and south-eastwards to the country south of Lake Urmia!
These are the same regions that subsequently made up the
kingdom of Armenia.
At the end of the eighth century b.c. Urartu was fiercely
attacked by the Indo-European Cimmerians, who advanced
through the Caucasus from the north and threatened Assyria
as well. About the year 670 b.c. the Cimmerians were pushed
westwards into Asia Minor by their eastern Indo-European
(Iranian) neighbours, the Ashkuza people (i.e. the Scythians),
who had come southwards east of the Caucasus along the
Caspian Sea. Then Urartu was attacked by Ashkuza and other
peoples, until at length the Khaldian kingdom in Van was
crushed by the Indo-European Medes under Cyaxares ; the
royal castle on the cliff called Toprak-Kaleh, near Van, was
destroyed and burnt to the ground, probably before 585 b.c,
and Rusas 111, the last of the Khaldian kings, may have lost
his life on the same occasion.’ About the year 61 2 the Medes,
Scythians, and Babylonians had destroyed Nineveh.
The first time wc hear of Armenia (Armina) as the namc of
the country is in the Persian King Darius Hystaspes’s inscrip
tion on the cliff at Behistun (or Bisutun), dating from circa 521.
It is written in three languages (Old Persian, Elamitic-Anzanic,
and New Babylonian), and tells, inter alia, of the suppression
of insurrections in Urartu ; but this Assyrian nåme is replaced
by Armaniya, Armina, and Harminiuara. The fact that this
nåme suddenly appears, and is henceforth the only one used
both for the country and the people, seems to show that in
the period that had elapsed since the last mention of Urartu
and Khaldia (Biaina) in the Assyrian and Khaldian inscrip
tions, another people—the Armenians—had entered and
Lchmann-I laupt, Armenicn Einst und ]et~t, vol. ii, pp. 462 f., 685 f.
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