ARAMNAHARAIM (a'r5m-na-ha-rd'im),(H eb.
ar-anz'nah-har-ah'yint, Aram of two rivers), the region between the Tigris and the Euphrates, called in Greek Ilesofiotanzia (Ps. lx, title).
ARAN (a'ran), ar-awn', wild goat), a Horite, son of Dishan and brother of Uz (Gen. xxxvi:28; i Chron. i:42), B.C. about 1963. ARARAT (ar'a-rat), (Heb.
wilderness), occurs nowhere in Scripture as the name of a mountain, but only as the name of a country, upon the 'mountains' of which the ark rested during the subsidence of the flood (Gen. viii:4).
(1) Various Locations. In almost every part of the East, where there is the tradition of a deluge, the inhabitants connect the resting place of the 'great vessel' with some conspicuous ele vation in their own neighborhood. Thus, where the Sufued Koh, or 'White Mountain,' rears its crest on one side, and the towering hill of Noor gill, or Kooner, on the other, here the Afghans believe the ark of Noah to have rested after the Deluge. Another sacred mountain in the East is Adam's Peak, in the island of Ceylon, and it is a curious circumstance that in Gen. viii :4, the Samaritan Pentateuch has `Sarandib,' the Arabic name of Ceylon. In the Sibylline verses it is said that the mountains of Ararat were in Phrygia ; but Bochart has ingeniously conjectured that the misconception arose from the city of Apamea there having been called Kibotos (the Greek word for an ark), because inclosed in the shape of an ark by three rivers. Shuckford, after Sir Walter Raleigh, would place Ararat far to the east, in part of the range anciently called Caucasus and Imaus, and terminating in the Himmaleh mountains, north of India ; and to this opinion a late writer (Kirby) inclines in his Bridgewater Treatise, p. 45. Dr. Pye Smith also, when advocating the local and par tial nature of the Deluge, seeks for a less ele vated mountain than the Armenian Ararat, and lays hold of this among other hypotheses (The Relation between Scripture and Geological Science, p. 302) ; whereas Kirby embraces it for the very opposite reason, viz., because, holding
the universality of the Flood, he thinks that mountain is not high enough to account for the long period that elapsed (Gen. viii :3) before the other mountains became visible. Now. it is evi dent that these and such like theories have been framed in forgetfulness of what the Bible has recorded respecting the locality of Ararat. We may be unable to fix with precision where that region lay, but we can without difficulty decide that it was neither in Afghanistan nor Ceylon, neither in Asia Minor nor in Northern India.
The only other passage. when_ 'Ararat' occurs are 2 Kings xix :37 (Is. xxxvii :38) and Jer. li :27. In the former it is spoken of as the country Cimmerians (Gen. x:2, 3)—then we arrive at the same conclusion, viz., that Ararat was a mountainous region north of Assyria, and in all probability in Armenia. In Ezck. xxxviii:6 we find Togarmah, another part of Armenia, con nected with Goner, and in Ezek. xxvii:14, with Meshech and Tubal, all tribes of the north. With this agree the traditions of the Jewish and Christian churches, and likewise the accounts of the native Armenian writers, who inform us that Ararad was the name of one of the ancient provinces of their country, supposed to corre spond to the modern pashaliks of Kars and Bayazccd, and part of Kurdistan. According to the tradition preserved in Jlnscs of Chorene, the name of Ararat was derived from Arai. the eighth of the native princes, who was kilted in a battle with the Babylonians, about B. C. 1750; whither the sons of Scnnacherib, king of Assyria. fled after they had murdered their father. The apocryphal book of Tobit (i:21) says it was to the mountains of Ararath. This points to a territory which did not form part of the im mediate dominion of Assyria, and yet might not be far off from it. The description is quite ap plicable to Armenia, and the tradition of that country bears that Sennacherib's sons were kindly received by king Paroyr, who allotted them portions of land bordering on Assyria.