The Legend of Ara and Semiramis
The tragic tale of Assyrian queen Semiramis and the beautiful king of Armenia, Ara.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“Pre-Christian Mythology and Religion,” from Armenian Legends and Festivals by Louis Boettiger, 1920.
The Legend of Ara and Semiramis
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. 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 fulfil 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. 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.
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. However, the results of modern scholarship are by no means conclusive on this point, as we shall see.
Historical Background of the Legend of Ara and Semiramis
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. 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." 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. 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." 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.
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.
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. 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.
Boettiger, Louis A. Armenian Legends and Festivals. University of Minnesota, 1920.
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