ARARAT

(Arʹa·rat) [holy ground, highlands].

The name applied to a region and also to a mountain range in what is now eastern Turkey, lying close to the borders of Iran and the U.S.S.R.

Following the flood, Noah’s ark settled on the “mountains of Ararat.” (Gen. 8:4) In the reign of King Hezekiah, it was to the “land of Ararat” that Sennacherib’s sons, Adrammelech and Sharezer, fled after murdering their father. (2 Ki. 19:37; Isa. 37:38) Jeremiah foretold that Ararat would be among the “kingdoms” to come up against Babylon at the time of her destruction in the sixth century B.C.E. (Jer. 51:27) These latter Scriptural references indicate a land N of Assyria. Eusebius and Jerome and the majority of other early Christian writers considered Ararat as equivalent to Armenia, and the Septuagint and Vulgate translations so represent it. Numerous Assyrian inscriptions from the reigns of Ashurnasirpal II, Shalmaneser, Tiglath-pileser III, and Sargon in the ninth and eighth centuries B.C.E. make reference to Ararat as “Urartu.” An inscription of Esar-haddon, another son of Sennacherib and successor to the Assyrian throne, says that he defeated his parricidal brothers’ armies at Hanigalbat, in the area of Armenia. On the basis of these inscriptions and the association by Jeremiah of Ararat with the kingdoms of Minni and Ashkenaz, it appears that the land of Ararat was centered on the mountainous region of Lake Van in ancient Armenia, with the headwaters of the Tigris River to the S and the Caucasus Mountains to the N.

The name Ararat is specifically applied to the culminating mountain of this region and it is the traditional resting-place of Noah’s ark. There are two conical peaks about seven miles (11.3 kilometers) apart and separated by a deep depression. The higher of the peaks rises some 16,946 feet (5,165 meters) above sea level and is covered with perpetual snow for the last 3,000 feet (914 meters) up to its summit. The lower peak, to the SE, is 12,840 feet (3,913 meters) above sea level. The loftier peak is of particularly difficult ascent and was first ascended by Parrot in 1829. Many place-names in the region recall the Biblical account. Mount Ararat itself is called by the Turks Aghri Dagh (Mount of the Ark) and by the Persians Kuhi—Nuh (Noah’s Mountain).—See ARK No. 1.