The massive volcanic body is located at the crossing point of the frontiers of Turkey, Iran, and Armenia. It has two lofty peaks within 11 km from each other – the Big and Small Aghri Daghs.
Both mountains are also known as Masis, which has its roots in the Middle Persian ‘masist’ for the largest.
Armenians call the duo Big and Small Ararat and consider them their property. No wonder Ararat has become a national symbol of Armenia, with its image shining on the coat-of-arms of the country. Interestingly, Armenians enjoy telling stories about Ararat being the resting place of the Ark of Noah after the Deluge. Here is a quote from the Encyclopaedia Britannica: “Ararat is sacred to the Armenians, who believe themselves to be the first race of humans to appear in the world after the Deluge.”
That being said, none of the reputed scholars has ever confirmed the relation between the so-called Armenian Ararat and the Bible.
Yet one can find the images of Ararat almost on all the souvenirs produced in Armenia, including candies, bottled water, sausages, cheese, juices, local brandy, cigarettes, and so on and so forth. There is a province, a city, two villages, a railway station, a football club from Yerevan, a popular FM radio station, a museum, and many other facilities like hotels called Ararat. Not only in Armenia, but also in other countries. You can see Ararat on banknotes and paintings, in poems and songs. It is also common to name people after Ararat. For example, Ararat Mirzoyan, the former speaker of the Armenian parliament, who presently holds the post of the minister of foreign affairs.
Ask anyone outside of science what Ararat means for him and you’ll definitely hear about Armenia. Yet another example of the power of propaganda in action! In fact, a fraud of international scale!
Forget about the ordinary people… Unfortunately, even the prestigious international publications are glad to be deceived. For example, the Big Russian Encyclopaedic Dictionary writes that “according to a biblical legend, the Ark of Noah landed on Ararat during the Deluge”.
In 2011, Estonian filmmaker Riho Västrik presented his documentary called Journey to Ararat.
František Mikloško, a member of the National Council of the Slovak Republic, has once said that “the Mount Ararat is a Christian heritage of Armenians.”
Prominent German expert on genocide, Dr. Tessa Hofmann, has made a similar statement too.
Ararat has been widely popularised as an Armenian asset thanks to a plethora of articles and stories distributed through Le Figaro, France 2, Telegraph, and BBC.
Even the outstanding figures of the Christian clergy have made statements on the symbolic affiliation of Ararat with the Armenians and its being the resting place of Noah’s Ark.
In his homily given in Yerevan on September 26, 2001, Pope John Paul II said: “We are close to Mount Ararat, where tradition says that the Ark of Noah came to rest.”
Yet another quote, from His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church. This is what he said in a welcome address during his visit to Armenia back in March 2010: “Seeing the main symbol of Armenia, the sacred Mount Ararat, where Noah’s Ark landed after the deluge, is an indelible impression.”
To be honest, we do not know how they’ve managed to deceive the heads of the Russian Orthodox and Catholic churches, but we know for sure that they failed to do so with one of the patriarchs of the Russian oriental studies.
Let’s listen to the Russian historian, orientalist, professor, director of the State Hermitage Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky: I must say that the ancient Ararat and the one mentioned in the Bible have nothing to do with Ararat that we know today. In fact, it is Mount Masis that was later renamed Ararat. They should look for the ark on another mountain. So, any claims that the present-day Ararat is the resting place of the Ark of Noah just make me smile.
The resting place of Noah’s Ark is indicated in the Old Testament (Genesis Chapter 8, Verse 4) as ‘the mountains of Ararat’. These biblical mountains are located in the north of Assyria and had nothing to do with the Mount Aghri Dagh, as the story told in the Bible about the deluge and the ark actually took place within Mesopotamia only. As one of the ancient sources of our civilisation, the Bible presents us the famous myth about the global flood through the legends of Mesopotamia, which have never taken the legends and tales about the incident “outside Mesopotamia”.
That’s why both in ancient times and in the Middle Ages, they have searched for the mountain with the artefacts of Noah’s Ark at the territory where the present-day Turkey borders with Syria, not in the Caucasus.
Jewish historian Josephus Flavius, the founding father of Armenian historiography Moses of Chorene, Armenian historian Faustus the Byzantine say the same truth in their works as well. There are also articles in the Brockhaus Biblical Encyclopaedia and the Jewish Encyclopaedia.
We can find evidence in the works of the Russian historian and ethnographer, expert on the Caucasus and the Chairman of the Caucasian Archaeographic Commission Yevgeni Weidenbaum, Russian historian and geographer Leo Berg, the greatest 19th-century expert on the Caucasus Peter Uslar, professor of Jewish and Biblical Studies at the Vanderbilt University, Tennessee Jack Sasson, British historian James Bryce, and many others.
It is also worth mentioning that all these stories about the alleged artefacts found on the mountain, which the Armenians call Ararat, are nothing but a huge pile of rumours. And it’s quite natural that serious scientists like Mikhail Piotrovsky find them funny.
Fuad Akhundov, political scientist: I would like to draw your attention to Mr. Piotrovsky’s words, when he said that with the migration of population to the north, they have relocated the names of geographic locations as well. What did he mean? All Armenian historians know about the large-scale resettlement of the Armenian population from Iran and Turkey to the Caucasus, the then frontiers of Russia, at the turn of the 19th century. In other words, during the relocation of the Armenian population to the north, they have artificially taken along the names of mountains, rivers, and cities as well. The extent of fraud has been so large that many believed that Mount Ararat was indeed the one indicated in the Bible. But historians, especially the Armenian scholars, know perfectly well that this is not the same mountain at all. The names of many geographical locations have been changed later. Like Armavir, for example. We will tell you about it too.
So, where did this myth about “the biblical Ararat near Yerevan” stem from?
It was created by the Mkhitarists, who tried really hard to make up a romantic historical background for the Armenian nation, also taking care of its special status in the Christian civilisation. The idea was that the Christendom would forget about everything and present the “biblical Ararat” to the Christian Armenia as a gift, while in fact Armenia has never had any exclusive affiliation with Ararat. In parallel, it was necessary to erase from history the original locations of these biblical mountains, that is—the Euphrates region.
We hope you did not forget about our bet and its terms–whoever finds a confirmation to the myth about the biblical status of Ararat near Yerevan will get the indicated amount from us.
Science knows everything very well.
Please note that our commentary presented in this video refers to a mega-fake, which concerns not only Armenia, but also the history of the Ancient East. Despite its truly global proportions, the fake is effectively rejected by the international community of historians!
By no means do we dispute the right of Armenia to make up any symbols and place them on its coat-of-arms, to use them in historiography, education, culture, and tourism.
And it is up to the personal preferences of anyone interested in Armenia to believe us or not, however solid is the scientific background of our statements.
Sources:
https://slovar.cc/enc/bolshoy-rus/169…
https://web.archive.org/web/201710112…
https://armenpress.am/eng/news/801959…
http://panarmenian.net/eng/news/53489
https://www.lefigaro.fr/lefigaromagaz…
https://armenpress.am/eng/news/813796…
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/de…
https://www.bbc.com/russian/features/…
https://web.archive.org/web/201612191…
https://rus.azatutyun.am/a/2142231.html
https://www.bible-center.ru/dict/brodict
https://eleven.co.il/bible/pentateuch…
https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Istorija_T…
https://archive.org/details/khorenats…
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