ARMENIA, a country of Western Asia, is not mentioned in Scripture under that name, but is supposed to be alluded to in the three following Hebrew designations, which seem to refer either to the country as a whole, or to particular districts. I. Ararat DTI:, the land upon (or over) the moon. tains of which the ark rested at the Deluge (Gen viii. 4); whither the sons of Sennacherib fled after murdering their father (2 Kings xix. 37 ; Is. xxxvii. 38) ; and one of the kingdoms' summoned, along with Minni and Ashkenaz, to arm against Babylon (Jer. li. 27). That there was a province of Ararad in ancient Armenia, we have the testimony of the native historian, Moses of Chorene. It lay in the centre of the kingdom, was divided into twenty circles, and, being the principal province, was commonly the residence of the kings or governors. For other particulars respecting it, and the cele brated mountain which in modern times bears its name, see the article ARARAT. IL Afinni 'LtZ is mentioned in Jer. li. 27, along with Ararat and Ashkenaz, as a kingdom called to arm itself against Babylon. The name is by some taken for a con traction of ' Armenia,' and the Chald. in the text in Jeremiah has There appears a trace of the name Minni in a passage quoted by Josephus (Antiq. L 3, 6) from Nicholas of Damascus, where it is said that there is a great mountain in Armenia, frirep rip MamciSa, called Baris, upon which it is reported that many who fled at the time of the Deluge were saved, and that one who was carried in an ark came on shore upon the top of it ; and that the remains of the timber were a great while preserved. This might be the man about whom Moses, the legislator of the Jews, wrote.' Saint Martin, in his erudite work entitled Memoires sur Armenie (vol. i. p. has the not very probable conjecture that the word Minni' may refer to the Manavazians, a distinguished Armenian tribe, descended from Manavaz, a son of Haik, the capital of whose country was Manavazagerd, now Melazgerd. In Ps. xlv. 8, where it is said out of the ivory palaces whereby they made thee glad,' the Hebrew word rendered ` whereby' is minni, and hence some take it for the proper name, and would translate palaces of Armenia,' but the interpreta tion is forced and incongruous. III. Thogarmah rityvn, in some MSS. Thorgamah, and found with great variety of orthography in the Septuagint and Josephus. In the ethnographic table in the
tenth chapter of Genesis (ver. 3 ; comp. I Chron. i. 6) Thogarmah is introduced as the youngest son of Gomer (son of Japhet), who is supposed to have given name to the Cimmerian on the north coast of the Euxine Sea, his other sons being Ashkenaz and Riphat, both progenitors of northern tribes, among whom also it is natural to seek for the posterity of Thogarmah. The prophet Ezekiel (xxxviii. 6) also classes along with Gomer ' the house of Thogarmah and the sides of the north' (in the Eng. Vers. ' of the north quarters'), where, as also at Ezek. xxvii. 14, it is placed beside Meshech and Tuba], probably the tribes of the Moschi and Tibareni in the Caucasus. Now, though Josephus and Jerome find Thogarmah in Phrygia, Bochart in Cappadocia, the Chaldee and the Jewish rabbins in Germany, etc. ; yet a com parison of the above passages leads to the con clusion that it is rather to be sought for in Armenia, and this is the opinion of Eusebius, Theodoret, and others of the fathers. It is strikingly con firmed by the traditions of that and the neighbour ing countries. According to Moses of Chorene (Whiston's edition, i. 8, p. 24), and also King Wachtang's History of Georgia (in Klaproth's Travels in the Caucasus, vol. ii. p. 64), the Armenians, Georgians, Lesghians, Mingrelians, and Caucasians are all descended from one common progenitor, called Thargamos, a son of Awanan, son of Japhet, son of Noah (comp. Eusebius, Chron. ii. 12). After the dispersion at Babel, he settled near Ararat, but his posterity spread abroad between the Caspian and Euxine seas. A similar account is found in a Georgian chronicle, quoted by another German traveller, Guldenstedt, which states that Targamos was the father of eight sons, the eldest of whom was Aos, the ancestor of the Armenians. They still call themselves `the house of Thorgom,' the very phrase used by Ezekiel, no-um roz, the corresponding Syriac word for `house' denoting `land or district.' From the house or province of Thogarmah the market of Tyre was supplied with horses and mules (Ezek. xxvii. 14) ; and Armenia, we know, was famed of old for its breed of horses. The Satrap of Armenia sent yearly to the Persian court 20,000 foals for the feast of Mithras (Strabo, xi. 13, 9 ; Xenoph. Anabas. iv. 5, 24 • Herod. vii. 4o).