Dating back to the Assyrian invasion which took place during the
seventh and eighth centuries before Christ, one of the oldest of
Armenian legends, that of Semiramis, queen of Assyria, and Ara, king
of Armenia, is told. [11] Ara was very beautiful, and Semiramis having
heard speech of his beauty for many years, wished to possess him. But
she dared do nothing for fear of Ninus, protector over Armenia. After
the death of Ninus, however, the queen sent messengers to Ara, with
gifts and offerings, with prayers and promises of riches, begging
him to come to her at Nineveh and either wed her and reign over all
that Ninus had possessed, or fulfill her desire and return in peace to
Armenia with many gifts. But when the messengers had been turned away
repeatedly, Semiramis became angry, and taking her army she hastened
to Armenia. The battle was fought on the plain of Ara, called after
him Ararat; and although the queen had given careful orders to her
generals to devise some means of saving the life of Ara, the Armenian
king was slain. She found the dead body among the others that had
fallen, and ordered her servants to place it in an upper chamber in
her castle. And when the Armenian army again arose to drive away the
foe and avenge the death of Ara, the queen said, "I have commanded
the gods to lick his wounds and he shall live again." She tried to
bring Ara back to life by witchcraft and charms, but the body began to
decay and she commanded her servants to cast the corpse into a deep
pit and to cover it. And having dressed up one of her men in secret,
she caused the following proclamation to be spread among the people:
"The gods have licked Ara and have brought him back to life again,
thus fulfilling our prayers and our pleasures. Therefore from this
time forth shall they be the more glorified and worshipped by us,
for they are the givers of joy and the fulfillers of desire." And
she erected a statue to the gods, making it seem as though they had
brought Ara back to life again. This news was spread over all the
country of Armenia, and having satisfied the people, she put an end
to the fighting. The twelve-year-old son of the king was taken by the
Assyrian queen and appointed ruler over Armenia. She called him Ara,
in memory of her love for Ara the Beautiful.
To Semiramis is attributed the building of the ancient city of
Van on the shores of the beautiful lake of Van, where she made
her summer residence until the time of her departure. [12] She
might well have lingered there, for the Armenians have a proverb,
"Van in this world, paradise in the next." Nevertheless, Semiramis
and Ara are mythical characters, although the latter is spoken of in
the history of St. Martin as having lived along about 1769 B.C. [13]
As regards the popular belief in the legend, however, there is not
the slightest doubt. This is proved by the fact that even to-day the
city is called "Sham-iram-agerd" by the Armenians, meaning the city
of Semiramis. Lynch says that Ara and Semiramis are Tannuz and Istar,
the Adonis and the Aphrodite of the Hellenic myth, and that the quest
of the Assyrian queen may be connected with the introduction into
Armenia of the worship of Istar whose name is mentioned in one of the
cuneiform inscriptions at Van. [14] However, the results of modern
scholarship are by no means conclusive on this point, as we shall see.