Series Introduction
Todd B. Krause and Jonathan Slocum
Armenian is the state language of just what in current memory was the republic that is smallest of this previous Soviet Union, now the southernmost republic regarding the Commonwealth of Independent States. The language is talked by roughly four million individuals nevertheless residing inside the edges associated with republic. a tiny set of speakers are now living in mydirtyhobby north-western Iran, plus some communities dot the countryside of eastern Turkey. Many emigrees have spread the language to all or any corners associated with globe. The first documentary evidence of this Armenians is a sixth century b.c. inscription in Behistun by the Persian master Darius I. It absolutely was almost a lot of years, but, ahead of the Armenians on their own started initially to place their language to composing, when in 406 or 407 A.D. a priest MaЕЎtКїocКї (also referred to as Mesrop) developed A armenian alphabet. One additionally discovers mention of the an alphabet that is prior by the Syriac bishop Daniel, purportedly abandoned as it had been ill-suited into the audio system associated with the language. The language whose documents date back again to this era is termed traditional Armenian. Much later on, into the twelfth to centuries that are seventeenth one discovers the legacy of Middle Armenian, whose writers attemptedto emulate the model of the Golden Age of Classical Armenian. Between those two cycles one further differentiates two phases associated with Armenian language: post-Classical, spanning the sixth and seventh hundreds of years, and Pre-Middle Armenian, through the eighth to twelfth centuries. Following the seventeenth century, Armenian progressed into a contemporary type that has put into two varieties: West Armenian and East Armenian.
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Origin and Geographical Location
According to Greek mythic tradition, Armenia ended up being known as after Armenus, certainly one of Jason’s Argonauts. Herodotus, composing into the fifth century B.C., states that the Armenians lived in Thrace after which relocated into Phrygia, from where they crossed into the subsequent territory that is armenian. Strabo, composing within the century that is first, states that the Armenians joined the territory from two instructions, one team originating from Phrygia when you look at the western, one other originating from Mesopotamia into the southeast. Although by neither account had been they the initial inhabitants regarding the area, Xenophon documents in 400 B.C. which they appear to have absorbed almost all of the neighborhood dwellers.
Armenian tradition, recorded involving the fifth and centuries that are eighth, relates the Armenian people to the descendants of Noah. Following the Flood, Noah’s family members settled in Armenia before moving south to Babylon in successive generations. Certainly one of Noah’s descendants, Haik, revolted and returned to Armenia, pursued by the Babylonian Bel. Haik killed Bel and became ruler associated with Armenian land, and the descendants of Haik later defended Armenia through the forces of Assyria.
Contemporary scholarly views are only as wide-ranging. a typical view is that the Armenians had been of Indo-European stock and joined the region either along with all the Phrygians from the Balkan area or with all the Mitanni through the section of the Aral Sea. They encountered the Urartuan tradition in an amount of decrease and in the end arrived to rule over them along with other Caucasian teams in your community. Another concept attracts on linguistic similarities between your language that is armenian the Caucasian languages regarding the area to express that the Armenians had initially been by themselves a Caucasian tribe which adopted an Indo-European tongue, and this Caucasian substrate is in charge of the truth that Armenian is pretty genetically separated on the list of Indo-European languages. Just one more concept is the fact that the Armenians would be the many inactive people of the first speakers of Proto-Indo-European; that the Indo-European languages originated in the transcaucasian area, nevertheless the Armenians, whom selected to not migrate from the area, had been marginalized during durations of Hittite and Urartuan dominance. Suffice it to state, the origin that is true of Armenian individuals will remain shrouded in obscurity for a while in the future.
The land that is just armenian is a plateau situated approximately 5000 legs above sea degree and hemmed in by mountainous areas. It lies roughly southeast of the Ebony Sea and southwest associated with Caspian Sea. The ancient homeland that is armenian somewhat more expansive compared to modern Armenian Republic, also including much of eastern Turkey, the northeastern part of Iran, and components of Azerbaijan and Georgia. The Kur River separates the highland region from lowlands which sweep to the Caspian Sea in the northeast. The border that is northern continued because of the Pontus mountain range, which runs west through the way to obtain the Kur and shields Armenia through the Ebony water. The Taurus and Zagros hill ranges produce a normal boundary operating across the whole southern expanse and cutting Armenia removed from Mesopotamia. The Armenian plateau it self is split by a number of smaller hill ranges that furnish the sources for several unnavigable streams. The northermost area of the Euphrates would be to form the boundary between Greater and Lesser Armenia into the subsequent imperial battles.