Note 8 — Chapter XIII · THE HEART OF ARARAT

For a discussion of the name see Parrot, op. cit. p. 110. Ritter (Erdkunde, x. 508) also refers to Brosset (Bulletin de l’Acad. de Sc. de St. Pétersbourg, 1841, vol. viii. p. 43), but is in error when he says that Brosset spells it Aghuri. He actually spells it Acorhi, and throws doubt upon the popular derivation of the name. It would appear that the old Armenian name for the place was Akuri or Agguri, and that later Armenian writers turned the word into Ark-uri in order to extract the signification which I have given in the text. I have adopted the spelling of the Russian official map, which practically reproduces the old word. Dr. Belck has made the ingenious suggestion that the Adduri of the Assyrian inscription of Shalmaneser II. (859–824 B.C.)—a name which is applied to the mountains whither Arame, king of Urardhu or Ararat, fled before the armies of the Assyrian monarch—may be represented by the Armenian Akuri or Agguri (Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, 1893, p. 71). That the ancient name of a district often survives in that of a town in these countries is proved by the analogy of the town of Van, which bears the name of the kingdom of which it was formerly the capital, the Biaina of the Vannic texts. ↑