Moses' history was read by St. Martin who became exceedingly interested
in Van, and in the cuneiform inscriptions spoken of. It was due to
him that the French government dispatched a mission to Armenia in
1827, under the direction of a young German Professor, Friedrich
Edward Schulz. Schulz was murdered by the Kurds, a thing which
rarely happens in Armenia, and his work was left incomplete. He had
succeeded, however, in making copies of forty-two inscriptions, which
were published in 1840, and proved to be remarkably accurate. Shortly
afterward, orientalists made great discoveries in the Mesopotamian
valley, but the inscriptions at Van did not tally with any syllabaries
discovered up to that time, nor could they be translated in any known
language. A number of them were found to be Assyrian, but the great
majority were peculiar to Van, and entirely baffled the students. Not
until 1880 were they finally unravelled. M. S. Guyard discovered at
that time that the concluding phrase of many Vannic texts represented
an imprecatory formula found in exactly the same place in Assyrian
counterparts. This discovery enabled Professor Sayce, of Oxford,
to decipher the inscriptions at a rapid rate.
Among the important facts discovered were that the nation was a
rival nation of Assyria, and that its people were called Khaldeans,
or children of Khaldis, much in the same way as the Assyrians reflected
the name of their god, Assur. The country was a theocracy and Khaldis
was supreme. In the tablets, his wrath was invoked against whomever
should destroy them. The capital city was Dhuspus, modern Van, which
is the Disp, or Tsp of Armenian writers, and the Turuspa of Assyrian
annals. The Assyrians styled the kingdom Urardhu, or Urarthu, which
is the name appearing in the Bible in the familiar form Ararat.
The earliest inscriptions date back to the ninth century before
Christ, and as the language is neither Semitic nor Indo-European,
the people could neither have been Assyrians whose language was
Semitic, nor Armenians, whose language is Indo-European. The first
mention made of Urardhu was in the reign of Ashur-Nazir-Pal (885-860
B.C.) whose successor, Shalmanasar II (860-825 B.C.) was the first
Assyrian king to invade Armenia. [15] Raffi, however, (the son of the
famous Armenian poet) speaks of an account given by Assur-Nazir-Haban
(1882-1857 B.C.) of one of his victories. "They" (i.e., the people
of Ararat or Urarthu), he said, "fled to the impregnable mountains
so that I might not be able to get at them, for the mighty summits
were like drawn swords pointing to the skies. Only the birds of
heaven soaring on their wings could reach them. In three days I was
there spreading terror in places where they had taken refuge. Their
corpses like autumn leaves filled the clefts. The rest escaped to
distant inaccessible heights." [16] This, clearly, is a much older
record than any that Lynch found trace of, and although Raffi cites no
authority for the quotation, I presume that it has been taken from a
recent discovery. If this be true the Khaldeans were a very ancient
people. One of the tablets shows that King Memas was the principal
author of the magnificent canal which conducts the water of the river
Khoshab to the suburbs of Van, and which is to-day called "Shamiram-Su"
or river of Semiramis. [17] The line of Vannic kings is traceable as
far down as 644 B.C.
Most of these inscriptions are to be found on a huge isolated rock,
situated in the curve of the bay, and known as the "rock of Van." [18]
Among them are inscriptions left by Xerxes (485 B.C.), the Persian
conqueror whose father's empire (Darius, 521-486 B.C.) succeeded the
loose Scythian rule.
But the ancient Khaldean kingdom had already vanished when Xerxes'
victorious army overran the country, for shortly after the great influx
of Scythians and the break-up of Assyria, came another horde from the
west, perhaps to fill up the void left by the Scythian ravages. It is
at this time that the Armenian people are first heard from, and it is
this horde, therefore, that is regarded as the foundation stock of
the Armenian people. They seem to have been an Indo-European people
residing in the territory north of the Black Sea, for, coming from
the west they must have entered Asia from Europe by crossing the
straits. The ancient Khaldeans were assimilated to some extent,
but for the most part, they were driven to the north and south,
where they have left traces that have been recognized and recorded
by Xenophon and Herodotus. [19]
That the civilization and culture of the ancient Khaldeans were
utilized is beyond doubt. Their most ancient cities, Van, Armavir,
were foundations of Vannic kings, while recently it has been disclosed
that the city of Hajk, southeast of Van, shows some of the familiar
features of a Khaldean settlement. But their supreme god during the
pre-Christian era was not Khaldis, but the Persian Ormuzd, which
indicates that the Persians exercised an even greater influence.
How then could Semiramis ever have come to Van in quest of an Armenian
king, since it seems that the Scythians had already conquered Assyria
before the great influx of Armenian hordes? Nor does it seem that the
city of Van was built by the Assyrian queen, for the inscriptions
make no mention of her name. King Memas who, in the view of Lynch,
constructed the famous canal, was in all probability the author of
the garden city. The belief, according to Lynch, as already stated,
is that this legend is the Armenian version of the old Hellenic myth of
Aphrodite and Adonis, taken over during the domination of the Seleucid
dynasty which followed the conquest of Alexander about 325 B.C. [20]
But this is unreasonable. That a myth should be taken over by a subject
people and the characters rechristened is not difficult to understand,
but that the name of one of them should be applied to the ancient
city is very improbable to say the least. Furthermore, the legend is
flavored rather strongly with Persian voluptuousness, and is not at
all suggestive of Greek delicacy and refinement. Nor is the fact that
the horde overran the country after the destruction of Assyria in any
way conclusive, for if there were any assimilation at all, as there
must unquestionably have been, the Khaldean culture and history was to
that extent the actual possession of the Armenians. Even intermarriage
would perhaps be unnecessary, for what Irishman who has been in the
United States two months does not speak of Benjamin Franklin and George
Washington as his forefathers? It is to be noted also that to this day
the canal spoken of is called "Shamiram-Su" or river of Semiramis, by
all Armenians. [21] On the whole it seems to me conclusive, therefore,
that the legend of Semiramis and Ara has its roots in Armenian history,
and is not at all a version of the Hellenic myth.