The history of the kingdom of Greater Armenia (after 188 BCE–428 CE) has been generally interpreted from two different standpoints, an ‘inner’ and an ‘outer’ one. Greater Armenia as a marginal entity or a sidekick of Rome during the endless war with Iran, and even Iranian scholars neglected or diminished the role of Armenia in the balance of power. This paper discussed some methodological issues.

Ptolemyʾs Geographike Hyphegesis (Introduction to Geography) (ca. AD 150) consists of a huge and invaluable stock of topographical information. More than 6,000 toponyms are even defined by coordinates. Nevertheless, Ptolemyʾs cities are often misplaced or pop up more than once in his maps. This is especially true with his confusing description of Armenia (geogr. 5.13), which caused a modern scholar to call it a ‘parody’ of his work and method. This paper aims at clarifying the basic error in all of Ptolemyʾs coordinates and proposes some explanations and corrections for his Armenian toponyms.

The aim of this paper is to present Parthian-Armenian relations from the end of the 2nd century BCE to the so-called Treaty of Rhandeia (63 CE). This covers the period from the first contact of both states to the final conclusion of long-drawn-out military conflicts over Armenia between the Arsacids ruling the Parthian Empire and Rome. The author discusses reasons for the Parthian involvement in Armenia during the rule of Mithradates II and various efforts of the Arsacids to win control over this area. He also identifies three phases of their politics towards Armenia in the discussed period.

This paper discusses the idea of Armenian and Iranian identity in 3rd century CE. It is proposed that the bordering region of the Armeno-Iranian world, such as that of the Siwnik‘ and its house saw matters very differently from that of the Armenian kingdom. The Sasanians in return had a vastly different view of Armenia and Georgia as political entities, and used their differences to the benefit of their empire.

Narseh son of Šābuhr I reigned from 293 to 302, once he had won the dynastic war that saw him opposing his grand-nephew, Wahrām III, he narrated the events in the great Paikuli inscription, which also contains the names of a long list of nobles and magnates, who paid obeisance to the new king. In Šābuhr’s inscription at Naqš-i Rustam Narseh bore the title of « King of Hindestān, Sagestān and Tūrān up to the seashore,” while later, likely under either Ohrmazd I or Wahrām I, he became King of the Armenians and stayed in office until 293, when he moved south to challenge his nephew’s right to the crown. Crossing the lower ranges of the Zagros mountains on his way to Mesopotamia, Narseh met the nobles loyal to his cause near the pass of Paikuli, about one hundred kilometres south of the modern city of Sulaimaniya. Recent archaeological excavations on the site have brought to light a number of new inscribed blocks that allow for a better understanding of the structure of the monument. In this paper the passages relative to Armenia will be presented and discussed, together with those containing the name of the goddess Anāhīd, whose cult was widely spread in Armenia.

Even with the Principate, the Senate kept a major role in Rome’s diplomatic relations with Armenia. This paper will examine the extant evidence of the senatorial decrees, paying a spe­cial attention to the decrees dating to the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. These decrees can be reconstructed analysing some relevant epigraphic texts (the Res Gestae divi Augusti, the Senatus consultum de Cn. Pisone patre, the Senatus consultum de honoribus Germanico decernendis) and a source of absolute importance as the Annales of Tacitus.

Ancient Armenian sources are very scarce and do not permit a thorough understanding of Ancient Armenia. For this reason, all available sources relevant to Armenia need to be consid­ered and studied. This is notably the case for Roman Coinage, where issues related to Armenia were struck over the course of 200 years. This paper examines how Roman coinage is able to in­fluence our understanding of Roman, Armenian and Parthian relationships. The study begins with the analysis of the monetary iconography of Armenia and Armenians on Roman coinage through their attributes and postures. Following the first part, the study questions the Roman coinage as a source of ideological representations of the events. Indeed, the issues do not reflect the intricate relationships of the Romans, Armenians and Parthians, but rather highlight Roman victories and the image of the Emperor. Despite this Roman prism, the last part of the article shows that it is possible to use the coinage as a source for Roman, Armenian and Parthian reationship studies.

One very prominent context of the Pre-Christian history of Armenia of course lies with its relations with the great neighbouring empires of Parthia and Rome. These relations were mainly the result of Armenia’s geopolitical location between the two empires, its natural resources and its control of strategic long-distance routes. From a Roman point of view, Armenia certainly was the most important geopolitical concern in the East. Roman-Armenian relations therefore are a vast and complex subject, and their history extends over many centuries. In the years between 114 and 117 AD these relations assumed an extraordinary albeit short-lived condition when the kingdom of Greater Armenia became a Roman province. The present contribution reviews the Roman inscriptions that can be dated to this period, as well as the historical evidence they provide for the history of Greater Armenia as a Roman province.

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the geopolitical status of the Upper Tigris area in antiquity, with a special focus on the period between ca. 401 BCE and the 6th century CE. Despite the popular impression that this area had a distinctly Armenian character, a closer look at its history shows that it was rather a territory with many local geopolitical entities that many neighboring countries periodically fought to possess. This area was strategically significant as a transit region located on the crossroads of important long-distance communication lines. Likewise, its natural resources were undoubtedly crucial to the neighboring countries. Indeed, powerful neighbors around the Upper Tigris area, including Armenia, the Iranian kingdoms of the Parthians and Sasanians, and Rome, sought to control this area, which was often located on the fringes of their states and as such was inevitably doomed to be contested by these empires onmany occasions. This situation can be acutely seen in the conflict between Rome and the Iranian kingdoms of the Parthians and Sasanians, when northern Mesopotamia became a real battleground between the competing empires. In particular, the paper will sketch the development of the geopolitical status of several small geopolitical entities in this region—Sophene, Osrhoene, Gordyene, and Adiabene.

Tigranakert in Artsakh was founded at the end of 90s BC by the Armenian King Tigranes II the Great (95–55 BC) and in the Early Christian period continued to play a role of an important military-administrative and religious center. As аresult of excavations the Early Christian square of the Central district with two churches, remains of a monumental stela witha cross, as well as an Early Christian underground reliquary and a graveyard were unearthed.

The sepulchre-reliquary was opened under the floor of the small church of early Christian Square. It has only the eastern entrance. As had been shown by further excavations Saint Grigoris’s sepulchre-reliquary in Amaras also had an eastern entrance. Saint Stephanos’s reliquary in Vachar also has only an eastern entrance. All these three structures are dated from 5th–6th centuries. In early Christian East the only tomb that had an only eastern entrance is Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

Analysis of the data on Vachagan the Pious (end of 5th–early 6th centuries), king of Albania (which included since the middle of 5th century the eastern provinces of Greater Armenia – Artsakh and Utik), allows us to conclude that at the end of the 5th century the king initiated theecclesiastical reform, trying to link the origin of the Albanian church to Jerusalem. One ofthe manifestations of this reform was the creation of the legend of the Apostle Yeghisha arriving to Albania from Jerusalem. Comparative analysis of archaeological, architectural and written data leads to the conclusion that all three tombs with the single east entrance are the result of the reformist activity of Vachagan, and the idea of single eastern entrance, most likely, was taken from the tomb of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

A new approach to the localizations of Early Christian sanctuaries in and near Tigranakert allows to compare this sacred area with early Christian sacred topography of Jerusalem.

Since the early 4th century, ancient Armenian authors (P‘awstos Buzand, Movsēs Xorenac‘i, Agat‘angełos, Movsēs Dasxuranc‘i, the Ašxarac‘oyc) begin to mention the Land of the Mazk‘ut‘ (Arm. ašharh Mazk‘t‘acʻ), located in the East Caucasus. The Sarmato-Alan burial mounds of plain Daghestan of the 3rd–5th centuries (Lvov, Palasa-Syrt, etc.) are attributed to this ethnic community. In 216 AD these tribes invaded Armenia through the Derbent pass (Arm. durn Čoray) (Khorenatsi 2,65), and took part in the Armenian-Iranian war in the middle of the 3rd century.

At the beginning of the 4th century the post of “bdeašx from the Mazk‘ut‘s” (Agatangełos. 874) appears in administrative apparatus of Armenia, which shows the military and strategic value of the Land of Mazk‘ut‘s. At the same time, the family dynastic ties are apparently established between the ruling houses of Armenia and the kingdom of the Mazk‘ut‘ (Ašxen, Ašxadar, Trdat, Sanesan, Xosrow). The importance of this kingdom can be seen by the events of the 330s’—the struggle for the Armenian throne after the king Trdat’s death in c. 330 AD, in which the different tribes led by Sanesan, the King of the Mazk‘ut‘, took active part.

The discontinuance of the Mazk‘ut‘ burial mounds in the middle of the 5th century might be explained, on the one hand, by the possible annexation of the Mazk‘ut‘ by the Huns during the invasion of Transcaucasia and the seizure of the Derbent pass in circa 440 AD; on the other hand, by the subsequent forceful displacement of the Mazk‘ut‘s and the Huns from the territory to the south of Derbent along with the strengthening of Sasanian Iran in the East Caucasus in the 440s’ and regain of control over the Derbent pass, which can be traced both in written sources (Ełishe, History of Karka de Beth Selok) and fortification monuments (mud-brick fortifications of Derbent and Torpakh-kala).

The early relationships between the polities of Armenia and K‘art‘li in the South Caucasus and their neighbours in the North Caucasus is a central, but underappreciated, factor in the development of the South Caucasus’ social and political world in the Hellenistic period. Typically, only military aspects of these interactions are considered (e.g., Alan raids and control thereof). Hazy evidence of cross-Caucasus marriage alliances preserved in both the Armenian and Georgian historiographic traditions, however, hints at a far wider sphere of interaction, despite the inherent challenges in gleaning historical reality from these medieval accounts. This paper contextualizes two stories of cross-Caucasus marriage related to foundational dynastic figures in the Armenian and Georgian traditions, Artašēs and P‘arnavaz respectively, within a wider body of evidence for and thought about North-South Caucasus interaction. Taken as a whole, this consideration argues that North-South relationships should be seen as integral to the political development of the South Caucasus.

The paper deals with the first results of the Armenian-German Artaxata Project which was initiated in 2018. The city of Artaxata was founded in the 2nd century BC as the capital of the Artaxiad kingdom. The city stretches over the 13 hills of the Khor Virap heights and the adjacent plain in the Ararat valley. The new project focusses on Hill XIII and the Lower city to the south and the north of it. This area was investigated by magnetic prospections in 2018 and on the basis of its results, in total eleven 5 × 5 m trenches were excavated in 2019. On the eastern part of Hill XIII several structures of possibly domestic function were uncovered. They were laid out according to a regular plan and in total three phases could be determined. According to 14C data, the first phase already dates to the 2nd century BC while the subsequent two phases continue into the 1st/2nd century AD. In the 2019 campaign, the overall layout and exact function of the structures could not be determined and more excavations will be undertaken in the forthcoming years. North of Hill XIII the foundations of piers of an unfinished Roman aqueduct on arches were excavated. This aqueduct is attributed to the period 114–117 AD when Rome in vain tried to establish the Roman province of Armenia with Artaxata being the capital.

This article examines the seal impressions from Artaxata discovered in 1979/80 during excavations carried out by the Armenian Academy of Sciences on Hills V and VIII. As the archive on Hill VIII is quite small with only 20 to 25 seal impressions, the focus of this paper lies on the approximately 8,000 seal impressions found on hill V. The complex was dated to the period from 180 BC to 59 AD and it was assumed that it was a “private” archive or a kind of “chancellery.” An analysis of the finds in a wider context and the comparison with other archival complexes of the Hellenistic period as well as an examination of the characteristic features of “official” seals (size, image, shape, number of impressions) leads to the conclusion that it must have been a public archive, most probably it is the city archive of Artaxata.