The origins
The Artaxiads (Artashesiank') and the empire of Tigran
The dynasty of the Arsacids (Arshakuni)
The interregnum: 428-861
The Armenia, of the Bagratids (Bagratuni) and Artzruni
The principality and Kingdom of Cilicia. (1080-1375)
The political-cultural situation after the fall of the kingdom of Cilicia
Isolated nuclei of independence and the beginnings of the liberation movement
The Renaissance
The Reawakening (c. 1840-1880)
The Armenian question and the catastrophe
The Armenian Republic
Diaspora
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A historical outline of the Armenian people
The origins
The appearance of the Armenians in history is linked with the last great wave of Indo-European peoples that flooded the table lands of Eastern Anatolia in about the seventh century before Christ. There were many migrations in the area during this period. Each in turn, the Cimmerians, the Scythians and the Medes brought down the kingdoms of the Phrygians (676-675) and the empire of the Assyrians (612) and finally gave the coup de grace to the kingdom of Urartu.
It is not improbable that the advance of the armenioi towards the east was a consequence of the collapse of the Phrygian kingdom. Herodotus (vii, 73) and Eudoxus (quoted by Stephen of Byzantium) connect the Armenians with the Phygians. But the question of the origins of the Armenian people is far more complicated than this.
If the Armenian language is Indo-European - and indeed, it is an independent branch of this linguistic family - the somatic characteristics of the Armenians are local and classified anthropologically as the Armenoid type: average to tall stature; strong bones; white skin; dark hair and eyes; abundant body hair; long head; short, high skull; long face; narrow, jutting nose, often aquiline; and relatively short legs. All of this would confirm the decisive role of autochthonous features in the ethnic configuration of the Armenian people, while the Indo-European origins of the migrants would be remotely echoed in traditional epics telling of the feats and deeds of a race of tall, blond heroes with blue eyes. This is, in fact, how one of the more popular gods, Vahagn, is depicted in the hymn of his birth. So we can safely say that the Armenians are another example of a fairly common phenomenon in history whereby the language of a conquering minority prevails, but without any effect whatsoever on the influence of climatic and environmental factors on the prevailing physionomy.
The main autochthonous feature - the Urartian - underlying the ethnic composition of the Armenians can definitely be narrowed down to similar "Human" population groups that can be seen as the earliest inhabitants, in the historical period, of the regions surrounding the lake ofVan. All that can be said of this aboriginal or "Anatolian" population is that it was neither Indo-European nor Semitic, even though there had been infiltrations of Indo-European elements from the earliest days onwards, the first of these occurring at the beginning of the second millennium. The Hittite empire was founded and there were small kingdoms of unrelated peoples, such as the Hayasa and the Mitanni, on its eastern and southern borders. It seems that there had already been a symbiosis in these kingdoms between the invading Indo-European warriors and the indigenous tribes. Among these latter, above all, in certain central areas, close to the Human stock, certain traces of language reveal the presence of "Caucasian" populations that might also have had some affinity with the Hurrians.
From this panorama, we can easily conclude that, as early as the second millenium, the regions east of the Euphrates, between the Pontian promontories and Northern Mesopotamia, were a point of encounter for Anatolian, Caucasian and Indo-European tribes.
Nevertheless, certain recent studies bring quite new perspectives to this view, according to which the land of historical Armenia was the cradle of the great family of Indo-European peoples and the starting point of their first mass migrations. If this theory, put forward by Ivanov and Gamkrelidze, were accepted — and this would completely upset early Indo-European history and geography — we would have to conclude also that the Indo-European dimension of the Armenian language has its most ancient roots in loco, even though it was later subjected to the stratification effects of waves of migration from the west and/or from the north east.
The kingdom of Urartu collapsed towards the end of the seventh or beginning of the sixth century b.c. The Greeks called the new ethnopolitical entity that succeeded the Urartians the armenioi.
It is first mentioned in the Old Persian form arminiya in the cuneiform three-language Behistun inscription by Darius I (c. 520) as one of the peoples subjugated to his rule. The new ethnopolitical situation remained substantially unaltered until the extinction of the Armenian kingdom of the Bagratids (Bagratuni) in 1045 a. d., when the Turkish tribes made their arrival on the political scene in Anatolia. But even after these changes in the late Middle Ages, the Armenian people were to go on living in the same regions for another 900 years, until the tragic depopulation of most of those parts during the First World War.
The Orontid (Ervanduni) dynasty, the periods ofAchaemenian and Macedonian dominion
The first Armenian dynasty was that of the Ervanduni, from the name Errand (Eruand), known in Greek historiography in the form Orontes or Aroandes. But it was a short-lived sovereignty, for the Ervanduni were soon subjugated to the rule of Darius I, who shared out their territory between the two satrapies, the xin and thexvin, of his administrative system. Thus, among the twenty-three populations dominated by Darius were the Armenians, alongside the Medes and the Susians, in Adapadana of Persepolis.
Then began a long period of Achaemenian supremacy for Armenia, which still took place within the framework of a certain internal administrative automomy. It was led by its own dynasty, the Orontids who, being related to the Persian court, acted as satraps, or provincial governors. The political supremacy of the Achaemenians was accompanied by a strong influence, particularly in the use of the Persian language, which is revealed by the large number of words, often fairly common ones, borrowed from Persian.
Only Macedonian expansion put an end to the Achaemenian domination, after the victory of Arbela in 331- A general tendency towards autonomy ensued, above all in the central-eastern regions, which were to be called Greater Armenia (Armenia Major).
Xenophon had already spoken of "Western Armenia" as a distinct administrative entity, but subordinated to "Armenia" (Anabasis ra, 5,17), which was led not by a satrap, but by a hyparchos, that is, a lieutenant. Further developments, the consequences of various political and cultural factors, were to result in the formation of two distinct territorial entities known respectively, around the middle of the fourth century, as Greater Armenia and Armenia Minor. The former was to include the eastern regions of the Euphrates, while the latter extended roughly over the territory delineated by the present-day cities of Sivas, Erzincan and Malatya, west and north of the upper elbow of the Euphrates.
Although it often possessed its own rulers, this area was to be deeply affected by the political and cultural influence of the Hellenistic world, finding itself in direct contact with the heavily Hellenized regions of the Pontus and Cappadocia. Greater Armenia, on the other hand, which was more protected from this point of view, was to have a more harmonious development, with greater emphasis on Armenian identity.
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