HistoryMemes.com

Making Sense of History

Kingdom of Armenia: A Visual History

Get My 10 Best History Memes:

Visual history of an empire

The buffer kingdom between Rome and Persia that under Tigranes the Great briefly ruled from the Caspian to the Mediterranean, and became the first Christian state.

Existed
331 BC to 428
Duration
759 years
Existed
331 BC to 428 AD
Peak area
About 1 million km2 (69 BC, under Tigranes)
Capitals
Armavir, Artashat, Tigranocerta, Vagharshapat, Dvin
Peak ruler
Tigranes II the Great
First Christian state
c. 301 under Tiridates III

The ancient Kingdom of Armenia emerged when the satrapy of Armenia became independent after Alexander's death in 331 BC. Under the Artaxiad dynasty from 190 BC, and especially Tigranes the Great (95-55 BC), it expanded to include Syria, Cilicia and parts of Iran before Pompey cut it down. For 400 years it was fought over by Rome and Parthia, ruled by Arsacid kings from 52 AD; Tiridates III adopted Christianity around 301, and Mesrop Mashtots created the Armenian alphabet in 405. Rome and Persia partitioned it in 387 and the Persian half's monarchy was abolished in 428.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Kingdom of Armenia (ancient). The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

1,000 BC750 BC500 BC250 BC0250500750100012501500Kingdom of Armenia (ancient) (331 BC to 428)Open: UrartuUrartu (860 BC to 590 BC)Open: Achaemenid EmpireAchaemenid Empire (550 BC to 330 BC)Open: Wars of Alexander the GreatWars of Alexander the Great (335 BC to 323 BC)Open: Seleucid EmpireSeleucid Empire (312 BC to 63 BC)Open: Parthian EmpireParthian Empire (247 BC to 224)Open: Roman-Greek warsRoman-Greek wars (214 BC to 148 BC)Open: Roman EmpireRoman Empire (27 BC to 476)Open: Jewish-Roman warsJewish-Roman wars (66 to 136)Open: Kingdom of AksumKingdom of Aksum (100 to 940)Open: Sasanian EmpireSasanian Empire (224 to 651)Open: Byzantine EmpireByzantine Empire (395 to 1453)

Armenian territory

00.250.50.751331 BC: 0.3190 BC: 0.2570 BC: 160 BC: 0.3100: 0.3387: 0.3428: 0.15300 BC200 BC100 BC0100200300400million km2 (approximate)

Timeline of the Kingdom of Armenia (ancient)

  1. 331 BC
    Armenia independent after Gaugamela
  2. 190 BC
    Artaxiad dynasty founded
  3. 95 BC
    Tigranes the Great
  4. 69 BC
    TigranocertaLucullus defeats Tigranes.
  5. 66
    Tiridates I crowned by NeroArsacid Armenia.
  6. 301
    Conversion to Christianity
  7. 387
    Roman-Persian partition
  8. 405
    Armenian alphabet
  9. 428
    Arsacid monarchy abolished

Orontids and Artaxiads

The Orontid satraps ruled Armenia under the Achaemenids and kept it after Alexander. In 190 BC, after Rome beat the Seleucids at Magnesia, the generals Artaxias and Zariadres set up independent kingdoms; Artaxias built Artashat with advice, tradition says, from Hannibal in exile. Tigranes II, freed from Parthian hostage-ship, took the throne in 95 BC and within 25 years ruled from the Caspian to Phoenicia, taking Syria from the dying Seleucids and calling himself king of kings.

Between Rome and Parthia

Lucullus and then Pompey defeated Tigranes in 69-66 BC and reduced Armenia to its highlands as a Roman client. For the next century Rome and Parthia installed rival kings; in 66 AD Nero crowned the Parthian prince Tiridates I in Rome, founding the Arsacid line that ruled Armenia for 360 years. Trajan annexed it briefly in 114; Sasanian Persia and Rome fought over it repeatedly.

Christianity and partition

Tiridates III, converted by Gregory the Illuminator around 301, made Armenia the first officially Christian state. The alphabet of Mesrop Mashtots (405) produced a golden age of Armenian literature. But in 387 Rome and Persia divided the country; the Persian side's Arsacid king was deposed in 428 and Armenia was ruled by marzbans (governors), though its nobles and church preserved its identity until the medieval kingdoms.

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

Wars of the same era and region

8 surprising things about the Kingdom of Armenia (ancient)

  1. Armenia is generally regarded as the first country to adopt Christianity as its state religion, about a decade before Constantine's Edict of Milan.
  2. Tigranes the Great forcibly moved the populations of twelve Greek cities to fill his new capital Tigranocerta.
  3. Hannibal, exiled from Carthage, is said to have designed the city of Artashat for King Artaxias.
  4. The Armenian alphabet of 405, with 36 original letters, is still in use unchanged in structure.
  5. Nero's coronation of Tiridates in Rome in 66 AD cost the treasury a fortune and Nero closed the doors of the Temple of Janus to mark peace.
  6. Mount Ararat, where Noah's Ark supposedly landed, was the heart of the kingdom and is now in Turkey.
  7. The Armenian Arsacids were a branch of the Parthian royal house that outlasted the Parthian Empire by 200 years.
  8. The Armenian Church broke with Chalcedonian Christianity in 506 and remains a separate Oriental Orthodox church.

Sources

Back to all empires and wars