Aran (Hastings' Dictionary)

Son of Dishan the Horite (Gn 36, 1 Ch 1=), a descendant of Esau. The name denotes ' a wild goat,' and Dishan ' an antelope ' or ' gazelle ' ; while Seir the ancestor is 'the he-goat.' On the subject of Totem-clans in the Bible, see Jacobs' Biblical ArcluEology (1894), pp. 64-103, and Robertson Smith on ' Animal Worship and Animal Tribes among the Ancient Arabs and in OT ' (Joum. of Philology, No. 17, vol. ix., 1880). H. E. RVLE. ARARA"r (D-ry*, 'Ap^fi-Io).— The Biblical A. is the As.syrian Ur.

ardhu (Urasdhu in the Persian period), the name given to the kingdom which hail its centre on the shores of Lake Van. The name seems to be connected with Urdhfl, which a cuneiform lexical tablet (WAI ii. 486, 13) ex- plains as ' Highlands' (7'i7/a),* and whicli appears as Urdlies in an inscription of the native king S.ar-duris n. , who describes it as in the neigh- bourhood of Lake Erivan. In Herodotus (in. 94) the word takes the form of Alarodians.

The cuneiform writing of Assyria was borrowed by the inhabitants of the country in the 9tli cent. B.C., and we leam from the inscriptions composed in it that the native name of the kingdom was ISiainas or Bianas, the Byana of Ptolemy, now Van. The o;i])ital of the kingdom, now rcnre- sented by the modem city of Van, was called Dliusp.os ; this gave it« name to the district tenned TlKxpitis in cla.ssical geography, now Tosp. It w.as upon ' the mountains of A.'

that the ark rested (Gn 8), and in Jer 51" A. is associatecl • ThlB Is the expIanatloQ hlthorto given by AsiiyriotojjiHt. But I bcllove that thi> tnin etjilanntinn is dltli'rciit. L'nihfl or Animt was rlennU"! by an tileo«mi)h, which uanally repreatint^vi Accad in Biiiiyli'nlan, and rilgnifled 'a mound' or ' tol,' in AHsyrlan tUlu, b<TaiiBfl Tilla tiiippenod to Ite the naiue c< a r-lty in Ararat witti whicli the Aa.syriana wore Arquaintc<l In parly tiinctt.

It la rallfd Tola by AaMUr-nazir-pal. and la RttU known aa Tillob at the Junction of the ^ert and tha TlKrifl. 140 ARAKAT AKAKAT with Minni and Ashkenaz. Minni, in fact, called Manna or Minnft in Assyrian, Mana in tlie \'annic texts, adjoined Ararat on the E., being separated from it ny the Kotur range, and Ashkena^ is probably the Asguza of the Assyr. monuments, which was situated in the same neighbourhood.

The name of Armenia, written Armina in Old Persian, Kharminuya in Amardian, first appears in the cuneiform inscriptions of Darius Hystaspis, but the origin of it is quite unknown. It may be connected with the Vannic word amuxni-lis, ' a stfele,' or with Arman ('the land of the Aram- seans ' ?), an Aramaean district south of Lake Van. Geographically, however, Armenia corresponds with Ararat. The supreme god of A.

was Khaldis, who was worshipped under a variety of forms, and from whom the inhabitants of the country took the name of ' people of Khaldis.' From this was derived the name of Khalda?i or Khaldeans, assigned by classical geographers to the Armenian population who bordered on Pontus, and which was still preserved as late as the fifteenth century in the name of Khaldia applied to Lazistan (BelcK in ZeitschriftfurAssyridlogic, ix. 1, p. 89).

The kingdom of Biainas or Ararat was originally bounded on the north by the Araxes, and although some of its kings made conquests still furtlier north, it never seems to have comprised the Mount Ararat of modem times. This is still called Massis by the Armenians themselves, and the extension to it of the name of Ararat is of comparatively modem date.

Its great height, the larger of its two peaks being 17,000 feet above the Ie\el of the sea, while the smaller peak, 7 miles distant, is 13,000 feet above the sea-level, has doubtless had much to do mtb the belief that it was the spot on which the ark rested. Arghuri, the only village which stood on its slopes, is even pointed out as the spot on which Noah planted his vineyard. It was first ascended by Parrot in 1829, and the ascent has since been achieved by Bryce and others.

The original site of the resting-place of the ark lay towards the south of Ararat in the Kurdish mountains, which divide Armenia from Mesopotamia and Kurdistan. According to the Bab. account of the Deluge, the ' sliip ' of Xisuthros, the Chaldean Noah, rested on the peak of ' the mountain of Nizir,' which lay E. of Assyria, between 35° and 36° N. lat. Similarly, Berosus the Chaldsean historian fixed the spot in ' the mountain of the Kordyieans ' or Kurds (Jos. Ant. I. iii.

6), and the Syriac version replaces Ararat by ^fardu in Gn 8*. Nicolaus Damascenus also stated that the ark had rested on ' a great mountain in Armenia, beyond Minyas, called Barw' (Jos. Ant. I. iii. 6). Minyas is Minni, and Baris is more accurately given as Lubar in the Book of Jubilees (ch. v.) Lubar was the boundary between Armenia and Kurdistan (Epiphanius, Adv. Hcer. i. 5). The Jebel Judi is still regarded by the Kurds as the scene of the descent from the ark.

It would seem, therefore, that the spot has been successively shifted from the mountain of Nizir (possibly Rowandiz) in the east, to Jebel Judi or Lubar, and then to the modem Mount Ararat in the far north. The great plateau of Annenia, rising to a height of from 6000 to 7000 feet above the sea, was naturally a district which appeared to the dwellers in the southern plains beyond the reach of the Deluge. Intensely cold in the winter, it is equally hot in the summer.

The vine is indigenous there (as it is in the Balkans), and the whole district is marked by the results of volcanic action. It is note- worthy that the present Armenian words for 'gold' and ' tin ' are identical with the Sumerian or proto- Cliahhcan names of the same objects (ushi, ' gold,' Sumerian, guski, wuski ; anag, ' tin,' Sum. nagga). The cuneiform characters of Assyria were intro- duced into the kiriirdom of Ararat in the 9tli cent. B.C.

The syllabary was greatly simplified, each character having only a single phonetic value attached to it, and the greater number of charac- ters expressing closed syllables being rejected. The vowels were usually denoted by separate characters, and a good many ideographs were borrowed. It is to the use of these ideo^aphs that the decipherment of the Vannic inscriptions is mainly due.

The inscriptions are carved on rocks, altar-stones, colunms, and the like, and are in a language which shows little resemblance to any other with which we are acquainted, though it may be distantly related to modern Georgian. The introduction of the cuneiform syllabary was partly the result of the campaigns of the Assyr. kings Assur-nazir-pal and Shalmaneser II.

in tlie north, and it seems to have been connected with the rise of a new dynasty which established itself on the shores of Lake Van (about B.C. 840). The founder of the dynasty was Sar-duris I. the son of Lutipris, who appears to have displaced Arame, the earlier antagonist of Shalmaneser II. Sar-duris was suc- ceeded by his son Ispuinis ('the settler'), who, towards the end of his reign, associated his son Menuas with him on the throne.

Menuas was a great conqueror and builder ; he carried his anns as far as Mount Rowandiz in the east, and beyond the Araxes in the north, and he also claims to have defeated the Hittites and the king of Mala- tiyeh in the west. An inscription commemorative of the event was engraved on the cliff overhangiii" the Euphrates near Palu. Menuas was followed by his son Argistis I.

, who has recorded in a long inscription on the rock of Van the campaigns he made year by year, and the amount of spoil he brought back from them. The kingdoms of the Minni and other nations in the neighbourhood of Lake Urumiyeh were ravaged, and the Assyr. forces are stated to have been overthrown. Siir- duris II., the son of Argistis, continued the con- ?[uests of his father, and extended his empire as ar as the borders of Cappadocia.

But his career was suddenly checked by the revival of Assyria under Tiglath-pileser III. The northern league, which the king of Armenia formed a^iainst the new power, was shattered, and the Assyrians swept the country up to the gates of the capital, Dhuspas or Van. Rusas I.

, the son and successor of Sar-duris, was equally unfortunate in his attempt to check the progress of Assyria, and after the overthrow of his allies by Sargon, and the fall of the city of Muzazir, he Killed himself in a fit of despair. His successor, Argistis II., however, managed to pre- serve his independence, as also did Erimenas, against whom Esarhaddon was carrying on war, wlien Sennacherib was murdered by his two sons. It was to the court of Erimenas that the murderers fled.

His son Rusas II. improved the water-supply of Van, and built a palace, on the site of wiiicli various objects of Vannic art, such as ornamental shields and man, headed bulls of bronze, hare been discovered. A few years later Sar-duris II. made alliance with the Assyr. king, Assur-bani- fial (B.C. 645). Ararat suffered soon afterwards, ike the rest of W.

Asia, from the invasion of the Kimmerians and Scj'ths, in the wake of which it Ls probable came the immigration of the Ar^-an Armenians, and the fall of the old kingdom of Ararat. According to the classical authors, these Aryan Armenians were a Phrygian colony (Herod, vii, 73; Eustath. on Dion. v. 694). The conquest of AJmenia by Cyrus took place in B.C. 546. LiTKRATrRK. — Savcc, 'The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Vrnn, In the JRAS xiT. 8, 4, xx. 1, XIV 1 (18U3), xitvi. 4 (1894). A. n. Sayce.

AKATHES ARCH 141 ARATHES ( Apiapidris, x, AV Ariarathes; 'kp6.0ri%, A, cursives, incorrectlj', 1 Mac 15, ), v. Philcpatok, formerly called Mithndates, was king of Canpadocia B.C. 1G3-130. He was a firm ally of the llomans, and, in accordance with their wi.shes, rejected the proposal of a marriage with the sister of Demetrius Soter. The latter made war upon him, and expelled him from his kingdom, setting up in his stead Holo- phemes, a supposititious son of A. IV. Philopator Bed to Rome about B.

C. 158, and by Rom. aid he was restored to a share in the government. A few years later he again became sole king. In B.C. 139, ID consequence of an embassy sent by Simon Mac- cabieus, the Romans wrote letters to A. and certain other eastern sovereigns in favour of the Jews (1 Mac I.e.) See Diodor. xxxi. 19. 28. 32; Justin XXXV. 1 ; Polyb. iii 6, xxxii. 20. 23, xxxiii. 12 ; Appian. Syr. 47. H. A. WHITE.