This oldest of Armenian legends, quaint and simple as it is in accounting for the beginnings of a people, savours of the Old Testament and is suggestive of the Assyrian invasion which took place about the ninth century before Christ. It is significant that the Armenians refused the protection of Bel, and that in the very beginning of their legendary history, they insisted on standing firm and maintaining their independence, for no single quality is more characteristic of this people than a proud, haughty, even at times disdainful independence. It is also suggestive that their patriarchal hero was no saint, but a mighty giant, beautiful as he was strong, whose greatest pride was in the throwing of a spear, for his descendants have not been a peaceful people. To be sure, they were the first nation to be converted to Christianity, which would say little for their firmness and independence, were it not that the priest with the cross was followed by a powerful king with a sword at the head of an army that had learned to fight as the Romans fought.4 The songs that were sung in memory and honor of Haic are seldom sung to-day unless it be in some remote village where the civilization of the Turk has not yet pressed, and there are few such villages if any. For many of them breathe of a national spirit not beseeming a subject nation, and have been suppressed for many years.
Section 2. The Legend of Ara and Semiramis
Dating back to the Assyrian invasion which took place during the seventh and eighth centuries before Christ, one of the oldest of Armenian legends, that of Semiramis, queen of Assyria, and Ara, king of Armenia, is told.5 Ara was very beautiful, and Semiramis having heard speech of his beauty for many years, wished to possess him. But she dared do nothing for fear of Ninus, protector over Armenia. After the death of Ninus, however, the queen sent messengers to Ara, with gifts and offerings, with prayers and promises of riches, begging him to come to her at Nineveh and either wed her and reign over all that Ninus had possessed, or fulfill her desire and return in peace to Armenia with many gifts. But when the messengers had been turned away repeatedly, Semiramis became angry, and taking her army she hastened to Armenia. The battle was fought on the plain of Ara, called after him Ararat; and although the queen had given careful orders to her generals to devise some means of saving the life of Ara, the Armenian king was slain. She found the dead body among the others that had fallen, and ordered her servants to place it in an upper chamber in her castle. And when the Armenian army again arose to drive away the foe and avenge the death of Ara, the queen said, “I have commanded the gods to lick his wounds and he shall live again.” She tried to bring Ara back to life by witchcraft and charms, but the body began to decay and she commanded her servants to cast the corpse into a deep pit and to cover it. And having dressed up one of her men in secret, she caused the following proclamation to be spread among the people: “The gods have licked Ara and have brought him back to life again, thus fulfilling our prayers and our pleasures. Therefore from this time forth shall they be the more glorified and worshipped by us, for they are the givers of joy and the fulfillers of desire.” And she erected a statue to the gods, making it seem as though they had brought Ara back to life again. This news was spread over all the country of Armenia, and having satisfied the people, she put an end to the fighting. The twelve-year-old son of the king was taken by the Assyrian queen and appointed ruler over Armenia. She called him Ara, in memory of her love for Ara the Beautiful.
To Semiramis is attributed the building of the ancient city of Van on the shores of the beautiful lake of Van, where she made her summer residence until the time of her departure.6 She might well have lingered there, for the Armenians have a proverb, “Van in this world, paradise in the next.” Nevertheless, Semiramis and Ara are mythical characters, although the latter is spoken of in the history of St. Martin as having lived along about 1769 B.C.7 As regards the popular belief in the legend, however, there is not the slightest doubt. This is proved by the fact that even to-day the city is called “Sham-iram-agerd” by the Armenians, meaning the city of Semiramis. Lynch says that Ara and Semiramis are Tannuz and Istar, the Adonis and the Aphrodite of the Hellenic myth, and that the quest of the Assyrian queen may be connected with the introduction into Armenia of the worship of Istar whose name is mentioned in one of the cuneiform inscriptions at Van.8 However, the results of modern scholarship are by no means conclusive on this point, as we shall see.
Section 3. Historical Background of the Legend of Ara and Semiramis
Moses’ history was read by St. Martin who became exceedingly interested in Van, and in the cuneiform inscriptions spoken of. It was due to him that the French government dispatched a mission to Armenia in 1827, under the direction of a young German Professor, Friedrich Edward Schulz. Schulz was murdered by the Kurds, a thing which rarely happens in Armenia, and his work was left incomplete. He had succeeded, however, in making copies of forty-two inscriptions, which were published in 1840, and proved to be remarkably accurate. Shortly afterward, orientalists made great discoveries in the Mesopotamian valley, but the inscriptions at Van did not tally with any syllabaries discovered up to that time, nor could they be translated in any known language. A number of them were found to be Assyrian, but the great majority were peculiar to Van, and entirely baffled the students. Not until 1880 were they finally unravelled. M. S. Guyard discovered at that time that the concluding phrase of many Vannic texts represented an imprecatory formula found in exactly the same place in Assyrian counterparts. This discovery enabled Professor Sayce, of Oxford, to decipher the inscriptions at a rapid rate.
Among the important facts discovered were that the nation was a rival nation of Assyria, and that its people were called Khaldeans, or children of Khaldis, much in the same way as the Assyrians reflected the name of their god, Assur. The country was a theocracy and Khaldis was supreme. In the tablets, his wrath was invoked against whomever should destroy them. The capital city was Dhuspus, modern Van, which is the Disp, or Tsp of Armenian writers, and the Turuspa of Assyrian annals. The Assyrians styled the kingdom Urardhu, or Urarthu, which is the name appearing in the Bible in the familiar form Ararat.
The earliest inscriptions date back to the ninth century before Christ, and as the language is neither Semitic nor Indo-European, the people could neither have been Assyrians whose language was Semitic, nor Armenians, whose language is Indo-European. The first mention made of Urardhu was in the reign of Ashur-Nazir-Pal (885–860 B.C.) whose successor, Shalmanasar II (860–825 B.C.) was the first Assyrian king to invade Armenia.9 Raffi, however, (the son of the famous Armenian poet) speaks of an account given by Assur-Nazir-Haban (1882–1857 B.C.) of one of his victories. “They” (i.e., the people of Ararat or Urarthu), he said, “fled to the impregnable mountains so that I might not be able to get at them, for the mighty summits were like drawn swords pointing to the skies. Only the birds of heaven soaring on their wings could reach them. In three days I was there spreading terror in places where they had taken refuge. Their corpses like autumn leaves filled the clefts. The rest escaped to distant inaccessible heights.”10 This, clearly, is a much older record than any that Lynch found trace of, and although Raffi cites no authority for the quotation, I presume that it has been taken from a recent discovery. If this be true the Khaldeans were a very ancient people. One of the tablets shows that King Memas was the principal author of the magnificent canal which conducts the water of the river Khoshab to the suburbs of Van, and which is to-day called “Shamiram-Su” or river of Semiramis.11 The line of Vannic kings is traceable