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Satrapy of Armenia

The Satrapy of Armenia (Old Persian: 𐎠𐎼𐎷𐎡𐎴 Armina or 𐎠𐎼𐎷𐎡𐎴𐎹 Arminiya), a region controlled by the Orontid dynasty (570–201 BC), was one of the satrapies of the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century BC that later became an independent kingdom. Its capitals were Tushpa and later Erebuni.

This article is about the Satrapy of Armenia. For a list of other Armenian Kingdoms, see Kingdom of Armenia.

Satrapy of Armenia
𐎠𐎼𐎷𐎡𐎴

Satrapy

Tushpa
Erebuni

Armenian
Aramaic (South)
Median (East)

Armenian polytheism
Zoroastrianism[1]

Monarchy

 

 

570 BC

321 BC

Language

Despite the Hellenistic invasion of Persia, Persian and local Armenian culture remained the strongest element within society and the elites.[c][12]


The Orontid administration used Aramaic, where it was used in official documents for centuries.[13] Whereas most inscriptions used Old Persian cuneiform.[13] Xenophon used an interpreter to speak to Armenians, while some Armenian villages were conversant in Persian.[13]


The Greek inscriptions at Armavir indicate that the upper classes used Greek as one of their languages.[14] Under Orontes IV (r. ca. 210–200 B.C.), the structure of government had begun to resemble Greek institutions, and Greek was used as the language of the royal court. Orontes IV had surrounded himself by the Hellenized nobility and sponsored the establishment of a Greek school in Armavir, the capital of the Armenian kingdom.[15]

Orontid dynasty

List of Armenian monarchs

Urartu

Achaemenid Empire

Kingdom of Armenia (antiquity)

Allsen, Thomas T. (2011). The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 37.  978-0812201079.

ISBN

Ball, Warwick (2002). . Routledge. ISBN 9781134823871.

Rome in the East: The Transformation of an Empire

Bournoutian, George (2006). . California: Mazda Publishers, Inc. p. 23. ISBN 1-56859-141-1. Aramaic, the language of the imperial administration, was introduced into Armenia, where, for centuries, it continued to be used in official documents. Old Persian cuneiform, meanwhile, was used in most inscriptions. Xenophon mentions that he used a Persian interpreter to converse with Armenians and in some Armenian villages they responded in Persian.

A Concise History of the Armenian People

Canepa, Matthew (2010). "Achaemenid and Seleukid Royal Funerary Practices and Middle Iranian Kingship". In Börm, H.; Wiesehöfer, J. (eds.). . pp. 1–21.

Commutatio et Contentio. Studies in the Late Roman, Sasanian, and Early Islamic Near East in Memory of Zeev Rubin

(2015). "Dynastic Sanctuaries and the Transformation of Iranian Kingship between Alexander and Islam". In Babaie, Sussan; Grigor, Talinn (eds.). Persian Kingship and Architecture: Strategies of Power in Iran from the Achaemenids to the Pahlavis. I.B.Tauris. p. 80. ISBN 978-1848857513. Iranian culture deeply influenced Armenia, and Iranian dynasties ruled Armenia during several important periods, including the Orontids (c. sixth century - c. early second century BCE) and Arsacids (54-428 CE).

Canepa, Matthew P.

Chahin, M. (1987). The Kingdom of Armenia: A History. Curzon Press.

Drower, M; Grey, E.; Sherwin-White, S.; Wiesehöfer, J. (2021). . Oxford Classical Dictionary. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.777. ISBN 978-0-19-938113-5.

"Armenia"

Facella, Margherita (2021). . In Yarshater, Ehsan (ed.). Encyclopædia Iranica, Online Edition. Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation.

"Orontids"

Gaggero, Gianfranco (2016). "Armenians in Xenophon". Greek Texts and Armenian Traditions: An Interdisciplinary Approach. De Gruyter. The above mentioned Orontids..[..]..but also because the two satraps who were contemporaries of Xenophon's are explicitly stated to be Persian.

Garsoian, N. (2005). "TIGRAN II". . Tigran (Tigranes) II was the most distinguished member of the so-called Artašēsid/Artaxiad dynasty, which has now been identified as a branch of the earlier Eruandid [Orontid] dynasty of Iranian origin attested as ruling in Armenia from at least the 5th century B.C.E

Encyclopaedia Iranica

Hovannisian, Richard G. (1997). The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times. Vol. I: The Dynastic Periods: From Antiquity to the Fourteenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan. ..but the existence of a local Armenian dynasty, probably of Iranian origin..

Stausberg, Michael; de Jong, Albert (2015). "Armenian and Georgian Zoroastrianism". The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Zoroastrianism. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. pp. 119–128.

Lang, David M. (2000). "Iran, Armenia and Georgia". In Yarshater, Ehsan (ed.). The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 3: The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanid Periods. . p. 535. ISBN 0-521-20092-X. The most striking example of the syncretism of gods in ancient Parthia actually occurs in a former Armenian satellite kingdom, namely Commagene, the modern Malatya district. Here a scion of the Armenian Orontid house, King Antiochus I (69 — 38 B.C.) built himself a funeral hill at Nimrud Dagh.(..) We see the king's paternal ancestors, traced back to the Achaemenian monarch Darius, son of Hystaspes, while Greek inscriptions record the dead ruler's connections with the Armenian dynasty of the Orontids.

Cambridge University Press

Manandian, Hagop (1965). . Armenian library of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. p. 37.

The Trade and Cities of Armenia in Relation to Ancient World Trade

Michels, Christoph (2021). "'Achaemenid' and 'Hellenistic' Strands of Representation in the Minor Kingdoms of Asia Minor". . Franz Steiner Verlag. pp. 475–496. ISBN 978-3515129251.

Common Dwelling Place of all the Gods: Commagene in its Local, Regional, and Global Context

Olbrycht, Marek Jan (2021). . Brill. ISBN 978-9004460751.

Early Arsakid Parthia (ca. 250-165 B.C.)

Panossian, Razmik (2006). . United Kingdom: Columbia University Press. pp. 35. ISBN 9781850657880. It is not known whether the Yervandunis were ethnically Armenian. They probably had marriage links to the rulers of Persia and other leading noble houses in Armenia.

The Armenians From Kings and Priests to Merchants and Commissars

Payaslian, Simon (2007). (1st ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 8–9. ISBN 978-1403974679.

The history of Armenia : from the origins to the present

(1986). "ARMENIA AND IRAN iii. Armenian Religion". In Yarshater, Ehsan (ed.). Encyclopædia Iranica, Volume II/4: Architecture IV–Armenia and Iran IV. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp. 438–444. ISBN 978-0-71009-104-8. Iran, however, was to be the dominant influence in Armenian spiritual culture. The Orontid, Artaxiad, and Arsacid dynasties were all Iranian in origin, and the greater part of the Armenian vocabulary consists of Mid. Ir. loanwords. The Armenians preserved strong regional traditions which appear to have been incorporated into Zoroastrianism, a religion adopted by them probably in the Achaemenid period.

Russell, J. R.

Sartre, Maurice (2005). The Middle East Under Rome. Harvard University Press. p. 23.  978-0674016835. The Commagene kings claimed to be descended from the Orontids, a powerful Iranian family that had ruled the area during the Achaemenid period. They were related to the Achaemenids who had built a kingdom (...)

ISBN

Schmitt, Rüdiger (2002). "ORONTES". .

Encyclopaedia Iranica

Strootman, Rolf (2020). . Dabir. 7: 201–227. doi:10.1163/29497833-00701016. hdl:1874/408015.

"Hellenism and Persianism in Iran"

(1963). Studies in Christian Caucasian history. Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press. p. 278. The eponym's praenomen Orontes is as Iranian as the dynasty itself..

Toumanoff, Cyril

Adrych, Philippa; Bracey, Robert; Dalglish, Dominic; Lenk, Stefanie; Wood, Rachel (2017). Elsner, Jaś (ed.). Images of Mithra. Oxford University Press.  9780192511119.

ISBN