On primary sources of Ashkharatsuyts

Introduction. The article studies one of the most important issues related to Ashkharatsuyts (or Ancient Armenian Geography), the question of the history of its creation, i.e. its primary sources, which so far no one in science has tried to consider.

Materials and methods. The study is based both on narrative ancient sources and on ancient Armenian written monuments. Their comparison and comprehensive study allows for necessary conclusions. The study is based on hermeneutic and comparative research methods.

Analysis. Historical geography as a scientific discipline arose in the 6th c. BC and during the life of the first author of Ashkharatsuyts it already had a little more than a 1000 year-long history. As we have proved Ashkharatsuyts was based only on a narrow primary source base. We concluded that the main primary source of Ancient Armenian Geography was the Bible. With reference to Sovpar of Menaea, Apollinaria of Laodicea, Dionosius, Diodorus of Samea, Dionysius of Heraclea, Dionysius of Thracia, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Marinus of Tire, Cosme Indicopleus, as well as world-famous Homer, Aristotle and others, the authors of the Armenian work-source try to justify their views on the structure of the world. If these arguments seems insufficient, they also confirm their conjectures referring to God, Evangelists and church leaders. In all discussions, the main and central place is given to the Manual of Geography (Γεωγραφικὴ Ὑφήγησις) of Claudius Ptolemaeus (Κλαύδιος Πτολεμαῖος, Claudius Ptolemaeus, ca. 100 - approx. 170). We were also able to prove for the first time that even with the greatest desire, Ashkharatsuyts could not have any connection with Strabo’s Geography, which entered scientific circulation thanks to Stephen of Byzantium, i.e. in the process of presenting Ashkharatsuyts this work was not used.

Results. The author comes to the conclusion that Ashkharatsuyts, along with the works of Strabo, Ptolemy and other ancient historical geographers (from Anaximander of Miletus to Eratosthenes, Diodorus Siculus and finally Stephen of Byzantium) is also the most important source for studying issues of historical geography and cartography from ancient times until the 7th century AD.

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