The history of Armenia covers the topics related to the history of the Republic of Armenia, as well as the Armenian people, the Armenian language, and the regions of Eurasia historically and geographically considered Armenian.
Armenia is located between Eastern Anatolia and the Armenian highlands, surrounding the Biblical mountains of Ararat. The endonym of the Armenians is hay, and the old Armenian name for the country is Hayk' (, which also means "Armenians" in Classical Armenian), later Hayastan (). Armenians traditionally associate this name with the legendary progenitor of the Armenian people, Hayk. The names Armenia and Armenian are exonyms, first attested in the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great. The early Armenian historian Movses Khorenatsi derived the name Armenia from Aramaneak, the eldest son of the legendary Hayk.Moses of Chorene,The History of Armenia, Book 1, Ch. 12 Various theories exist about the origin of the endonym and exonyms of Armenia and Armenians (see Name of Armenia).
In the Bronze Age, several states flourished in the Armenian highlands, including the Hittite Empire (at the height of its power), Mitanni (southwestern historical Armenia), and Hayasa-Azzi (1600–1200 BC). Soon after the Hayasa-Azzi were the Nairi tribal confederation (1400–1000 BC) and the Kingdom of Urartu (1000–600 BC). Each of the aforementioned nations and tribes participated in the ethnogenesis of the Armenian people.Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia, v. 12, Yerevan 1987; Artak Movsisyan "Sacred Highland: Armenia in the spiritual conception of the Near East", Yerevan, 2000. 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 fully royal capital."
The Iron Age kingdom of Urartu was replaced by the Orontid dynasty, which ruled Armenia first as satraps under Achaemenid Persian rule and later as independent kings.Tiratsyan, Gevorg. «Երվանդունիներ» (Yerevanduniner). Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia. vol. iii. Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1977, p. 640. Following Persian and subsequent Macedonian rule, the Kingdom of Greater Armenia was established in 190 BC by Artaxias I, founder of the Artaxiad dynasty. The Kingdom of Armenia rose to the peak of its influence in the 1st century BC under Tigranes the Great before falling under Roman suzerainty. In the 1st century AD, a branch of the ruling Arsacid dynasty of the Parthian Empire established itself on the throne of Armenia.
In the early 4th century, Arsacid Armenia became the first state to institute Christianity as its state religion. The Armenians later fell under Byzantine, Sassanid Persian, and Islamic hegemony, but regained their independence with the Bagratid kingdom of Armenia in the 9th century. After the fall of the kingdom in 1045, and the subsequent Seljuk conquest of Armenia in 1064, the Armenians established a kingdom in Cilicia, which existed until its destruction in 1375. "1080 A.D. Rhupen, cousin of the Bagratonian kings, sets up on Mount Taurus (overlooking the Mediterranean Sea) the kingdom of New Armenia which lasts 300 years."
In the early 16th century, much of Armenia came under Safavid Persian rule. However, over the centuries Western Armenia fell under Ottoman rule, with only Eastern Armenia remaining under Persian control. 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, the Ottoman government subjected the Armenian people to a genocide in which up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed and many more were dispersed throughout the world via Syria and Lebanon. In 1918, an independent Republic of Armenia was established in Eastern Armenia in the wake of the collapse of the Russian Empire. This republic was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1920 as a Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1991, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the modern-day independent Republic of Armenia was established.
Prehistory
Stone tools from 325,000 years ago have been found in Armenia which indicate the presence of early humans at this time.
Excavations at Yerevan 1 Cave in the 1960s revealed evidence of Upper Paleolithic human habitation, including a cranial fragment and a molar tooth believed to belong to a child, dated between 47,800 and 49,000 years before present. These finds were discovered alongside faunal remains, shedding light on the early presence of Homo sapiens in the region.
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 (3,500 BC), straw skirt (3,900 BC), and wine-making facility (4,000 BC) 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 roughly 6000–4000 BC.
Bronze Age
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; thence it spread to Georgia by 3000 BC (but never reaching Colchis), proceeding westward and to the south-east into an area below the Urmia basin and Lake Van.
From 2200 BC to 1600 BC, the Trialeti-Vanadzor culture flourished in Armenia, southern Georgia, and northeastern Turkey.Joan Aruz, Sarah B. Graff, Yelena Rakic, Cultures in Contact: From Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean in the Second Millennium B.C. The Metropolitan Museum of art symposia. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013 pp. 12-24Aynur Özifirat (2008), The Highland Plateau of Eastern Anatolia in the Second Millennium BC: Middle/Late Bronze Ages pp.103–106 It has been speculated that this was an Indo-European culture.John A. C. Greppin and I. M. Diakonoff, Some Effects of the Hurro-Urartian People and Their Languages upon the Earliest Armenians Journal of the American Oriental Society Vol. 111, No. 4 (Oct. – Dec. 1991), pp. 721 Joan Aruz, Kim Benzel, Jean M. Evans, Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C. Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.) (2008) pp. 92 pp. 254 Other, possibly related, cultures were spread throughout the Armenia Highlands during this time, namely in the Aragats and Lake Sevan regions.Daniel T. Potts A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East. Volume 94 of Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. John Wiley & Sons, 2012 p. 681
Early 20th-century scholars suggested that the name "Armenia" may have possibly been recorded for the first time on an inscription which mentions Armanî (or Armânum) together with Ibla, from territories conquered by Naram-Sin (2300 BC) identified with an Akkadian colony in the current region of Diyarbekir; however, the precise locations of both Armani and Ibla are unclear. Some modern researchers have placed Armani (Armi) in the general area of modern Samsat, and have suggested it was populated, at least partially, by an early Indo-European-speaking people. Today, the modern Assyrians (who traditionally speak Neo-Aramaic, not Akkadian) refer to the Armenians by the name Armani.Martiros Kavoukjian, "The Genesis of Armenian People", Montreal, 1982. It is possible that the name Armenia originates in Armini, Urartian for "inhabitant of Arme" or "Armean country."Armen Petrosyan. The Indo-European and Ancient Near Eastern Sources of the Armenian Epic. Journal of Indo-European Studies. Institute for the Study of Man. 2002. p. 184. The Arme tribe of Urartian texts may have been the Urumu, who in the 12th century BC attempted to invade Assyria from the north with their allies the Mushki and the Kaskians. The Urumu apparently settled in the vicinity of Sason, lending their name to the regions of Arme and the nearby land of Urme.Armen Petrosyan. The Indo-European and Ancient Near Eastern Sources of the Armenian Epic. Journal of Indo-European Studies. Institute for the Study of Man. 2002. pp. 166-167. Thutmose III of Egypt, in the 33rd year of his reign (1446 BC), mentioned as the people of "Ermenen", claiming that in their land "heaven rests upon its four pillars".International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 1915 ; Eric H. Cline and David O'Connor (eds.) Thutmose III, University of Michigan, 2006; . Armenia is possibly connected to Mannaea, which may be identical to the region of Minni mentioned in the Bible. However, what all these attestations refer to cannot be determined with certainty, and the earliest certain attestation of the name "Armenia" comes from the Behistun Inscription (c. 500 BC).
The earliest form of the word "Hayastan", an endonym for Armenia, might possibly be Hayasa-Azzi, a kingdom in the Armenian Highlands that was recorded in Hittite records dating from 1500 to 1200 BC.
Between 1200 and 800 BC, much of Armenia was united under a confederation of tribes, which Assyrian sources called Nairi ("Land of Rivers" in Assyrian").
Iron Age
The Kingdom of Urartu, also known as the Kingdom of Van, flourished between the 9th century BC and 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 Taron and Vaspurakan. The main rival of Urartu was the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
During the reign of Sarduri I (834–828 BC), Urartu had become a strong and organized state, and imposed taxes on neighbouring tribes. Sarduri made Tushpa (modern Van) the capital of Urartu. His son, Ishpuinis, extended the borders of the state by conquering what would later be known as the Tigranocerta area and by reaching Urmia. Menuas (810–785 BC) extended the Urartian territory up north, by spreading towards the Araratian fields. He left more than 90 inscriptions by using the Mesopotamian cuneiform writing system in the Urartian language. Argishti I of Urartu conquered Latakia from the Hittites, and reached Byblos, and Phoenicia. He built the Erebuni Fortress, located in modern-day Yerevan, in 782 BC by using 6600 prisoners of war.
In 714 BC, the Assyrians under Sargon II defeated the Urartian king Rusa I at Lake Urmia and destroyed the holy Urartian temple at Musasir. At the same time, an Indo-European tribe called the Cimmerians attacked Urartu from the north-west region and destroyed the rest of his armies. Under Ashurbanipal (669–627 BC) the boundaries of the Assyrian Empire reached as far as Armenia and the Caucasus Mountains. The Medes under Cyaxares invaded Assyria later on in 612 BC, and then took over the Urartian capital of Van towards 585 BC, effectively ending the sovereignty of Urartu. According to the Armenian tradition, the Medes helped the Armenians establish the Orontid dynasty.
Antiquity Orontid dynasty
After the fall of Urartu around 585 BC, the Satrapy of Armenia arose, ruled by the Armenian Orontid dynasty, which governed the state in 585–190 BC. Under the Orontids, Armenia during this era was a satrapy of the Persian Empire, and after its disintegration (in 330 BC), it became an independent kingdom. During the rule of the Orontid dynasty, most Armenians adopted the Zoroastrian religion.Barbara A. West.Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania Infobase Publishing, 1 January 2009; , p. 50
Artaxiad dynasty