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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2014
Few peoples of the Middle East have produced as many historical works as the Armenians: their historiography dates back at least to the fifth century A.D. While most medieval Armenian historians have concerned themselves with contemporary history and the immediate past, there have been some who have attempted to trace Armenian history from the earliest times. It is to two of these, Pseudo-Sebeos and Pseudo-Moses of Khoren, that we owe the survival of the body of historical memories now generally referred to as the Primary History of Armenia.
This Primary History has come to us in two redactions, a long and a short. The shorter version is attributed to the earliest known Armenian historian, Agathangelos (fourth century A.D.?) and is presented in the opening section of a seventh-century work ascribed-probably wrongly-to a certain bishop named Sebeos. The longer version, much expanded and edited, is contained in Book One of the compilation of Armenian antiquities known as the History of Armenia by Pseudo-Moses of Khoren. While the date of this work has been much disputed, it appears now to be a product of the late eighth or early ninth century.
According to Pseudo-Sebeos the short redaction of the Primary History was a work originally written by Agathangelos, secretary to Tiridates HI (298–330), the first Christian king of Armenia, and was based on information contained in a book written by a certain Marab the Philosopher from Mtsurn, a town in western Armenia. Pseudo-Moses, on the other hand, claims that the parallel material in his history (I. 9–32 and II. 1–9) is an extract by Marabas Katiba from a Greek translation of a Chaldean history of Armenia made by order of Alexander the Great.
1. For the only serious discussion of this work in English see Toumanoff, Cyril, Studies in Christian Caucasian History (Washington, 1963).Google Scholar
2. For the short redaction, translated into French under the title “Le Pseudo-Agathange: histoire ancienne de l'Arménie,” see Langlois, V., Collection des historiens anciens et modernes de l'Arménie (2 vols.: 1869–1880), 1:195–200Google Scholar; for the long version, published under the title “Mar Apas Catina: histoire ancienne de l'Arménie,” see ibid., pp. 18–53, and also the first book of “Moise de Chorène,” ibid., 2:53–78.
3. Abgarian, G., “Remarques sur l'histoire de Sebeos,” Revue des études arméniennes, 1 (1964), pp. 203–15Google Scholar, where it is demonstrated that the real author of this work was probably the monk Khosrovik.
4. Toumanoff, C., “On the Date of Pseudo-Moses of Chorene,” Handes Amsorya (Dec. 1961), pp. 468–76.Google Scholar
5. Toumanoff, , Studies, pp. 306–16.Google Scholar
6. Ibid., p. 307.
7. Ibid., pp. 307–9, where the evidence on this question is discussed in detail.
8. Ibid., p. 55n49.
9. Herodotus, , The Persian Wars, 7.73.Google Scholar
10. Pseudo-Moses (I. 10) referred to Hayk as i meĵ skayic'n, ‘One of the giants,’ but, after demonstrating that several of the princely houses of Armenia were descended from him, felt obliged (III. 65) to deny that the princes were descended from gods, implying that in pre-Christian times Hayk himself was considered a god. Other traces of his cult as a divinity survived among the Christian Armenians; not only does he appear to have been the subject of religious veneration but he was of astrological significance as well, for Hayk was the name given by the Armenians to the constellation Orion. See Toumanoff, , Studies, p. 108n68.Google Scholar
11. Saharuni, Suren, “On the Origins of the Armenians,” Armenian Review, 13 (May 1960), p. 69.Google Scholar
12. Ibid., p. 68.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid. For some other aspects of traditional accounts of Armenian origins see Gulbekian, E.V., “The Significance of the Narrative Describing the Traditional Origin of the Armenians,” Le Muséon, 86 (1973), pp. 365–75.Google Scholar
15. Piotrovsky, Boris B., The Ancient Civilization of Urartu (New York, 1969), p. 85.Google Scholar
16. Zacharias the Rhetor, , Ecclesiastical Chronicle (Eng. tr., London, 1889).Google Scholar
17. Plato, , Republic, X.13.Google Scholar
18. Xenophon, , Cyropaedia, III, 1, 1:17.Google Scholar
19. Toumanoff, , Studies, p. 109n168Google Scholar; idem, “Caucasia and Byzantium,” Traditio, 27 (1971), p. 158.
20. For the best discussion of the Orontid dynasty see Toumanoff, , Studies, pp. 277–305.Google Scholar
21. Strabo, II. 14, 15.
22. Toumanoff, , Studies, p. 297.Google Scholar
23. Attempts to assign dates to the kings listed in the Primary History have not been wanting. Michael Chamich (Chamchian) in the eighteenth century was the first to address himself to this task, and his dates, adjusted by Saint-Martin, are in Langlois, , Collection, 2:385.Google Scholar In this effort Hayk is dated to 2107 B.C. These dates were then revised by Morgan, Jacques de in his L'histoire du peuple arménien (Paris, 1916; English translation, Boston, 1957), p. 401Google Scholar, where Hayk is dated to 2350 B.C., and this has been reproduced with less specific dates by Kurkjian, Vahan, A History of Armenia (New York, 1958), p. 501.Google Scholar While there may be some excuse for Chamich's efforts, there is none for the two modern works.
24. Toumanoff, , Studies, pp. 112ff., 139.Google Scholar
25. Ibid., p. 133.
26. Ibid., p. 108.
27. The confused nature of early Armenian historical traditions is evident even in Book II of Pseudo-Moses' work, which deals with events from the time of Alexander to after the conversion of Armenia to Christianity early in the fourth century A.D. Although this material is much more historical, there is still an astonishing degree of anachronism, confusion, and telescoping. Only in Book HI do the data come into reasonably full accord with what we know from contemporaneous sources.