ISSN 1829-4618

FIRST HAYKIDES AND THE «HOUSE OF TORGOM»

By: Aram Kosyan, Doctor in History, Institute of Oriental Studies, NAS RA, aramkosyan@yahoo.com

The article deals with one of the crucial problems of the early Armenian history - “Torgomian“ hypothesis. According to it, Hayk, the forefather of Armenians, was son of Torgom, who, after leaving Babylonia with his kinsmen and defeating Bel, its king, began to settle down in different parts of Armenia. Attempts to prove or deny the historicity of this story told by Movses Khorenatsi, did not advance much.
Evidently, the story of Hayk and his descendants is built according to the Biblical model. The First Haykides are regarded as forefathers who began and finished the Armenization of the Armenian Highland, although it seems that this model hides another historical process. Trying to show that during the Haykides, era a considerable part of the Highland was already Armenian, he had included in the Haykides, genealogical tree representatives of several political entities (probably, also non-Armenian speaking components) and representing contemporary events in different chronological secions as well.

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