Tour Armenia discusses the Armenian history of Noah and interesting descent from their patriarchs Haik & Togarmah or Torcom, in spite of way too ancient dating! Enjoy some truth!
TOUR ARMENIA ARTICLE:
The story of Noya (Noah) forms the basis of Armenia’s Christian religious identity, but in fact there is no recorded account of the Flood in ancestral Armenian mythology until the kingdom of Urartu and later, Christianity. Of all ancestral peoples who left records of their living in the region, there is not one single account of the Flood, which is widespread among other cultures in the region.
The reason for this is simple, if one believes the account of the biblical flood and subsequent regeneration of the human race:
According to the biblical timeline, the Armenians are direct descendants of Japheth, one the grandsons of Noah, whose ark landed on the top of Mount Ararat after the Great Flood. During the deluge Noah’s ark came to rest on the Mountains of Ararat, and his sons and grandsons, whose progeny increased there, had to emigrate to other lands. While some of Japheth’s sons stayed in the vicinity of Ararat, the others went towards Mesopotamia. Haik, who was believed to one of Japheth’s grandsons and the heroic patriarch of the Armenian people, was among those who went to Babylon. Another offspring, Aram, is credited with founding the Syrian kingdom.
“Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah; Shem, Ham and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood.
“The son of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.
“And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah”.
Armenians consider themselves as coming from the House of Togarmah or Torcom. There is a cuneiform inscription that refers to the walled town of Tilgarimnu near Malatia in ancient Armenia. Others think that Togarmah is made up from two words: “take” (meaning tribe or race in Sanskrit) and “Armah” (Armenia).
Of course some of you may want to suspend some archeological facts for a little mythical belief. However, considering the discovery of Troy was pointed to by a story of the “mythical” Trojan War (which is now known to have actually occurred), and the Old Testament has been more and more shown to indicate actual history, perhaps this timeline does not need to be treated so much as legend but as a symbolic representation of actual events.
For example, there was a flood that covered much of the world around 13,600 BC as the world warmed through a tilting of its rotational axis, causing glaciers to melt. The Bible speaks of the mountain Noah lands on as Ararat or Alarod. In the Aramaic version of Genesis, the bible doesn’t speak of Noah landing on ‘the mountain of Ararat’, but on ‘the mountains (plural) of Ararat’. Later cultures called the region Urartu or Arata. These different words describe the same place.
The consequent raising of seawater inundated all of the lowlands in the Near East. Some speculation is made that rather than being seen as an actual boat, Noah’s ark can be considered as a symbolic embodiment of life (the ark of the covenant, for example, existed both as a thing and as an idea–the compact between God and man). Continue reading Tour Armenia Speaks About Noya or Noah