to Greek.” According to Martirosyan 2013, p. 85, an analysis of shared lexical
innovations indicates “that Armenian, Greek, (Phrygian) and Indo-Iranian were
dialectally close to each other.”
49 Col. 2, 7–11 (Tolman trans.)
50 If one believes in national migrations and takes one’s prehistory from Herodotos one
will discover that the Medians got their name from Medea and the Persians theirs from
Perses, son of Perseus and Andromeda. One will also learn that the Phoenicians
migrated from the Red Sea (whence they got their name), the Etruscans from Lydia,
the Phrygians from Macedon, and the Hellenes from Phthia, where they lived in the
time of Deukalion, to numerous stopovers until they reached the Peloponnesos. The
Persian Army List that Herodotos gives us (7.61–99) probably was constructed by
Hellanikos. See Drews 1973, pp. 28–29. On the supposed Etruscan migration from
Lydia see Drews 1992, and on the Phrygian migration from Macedon see Drews 1993b.
51 Movses Khorenatsi 1.9. For the English translation of this text see Moses Khorenats’i,
History of the Armenians(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978.
Translation and commentary by Robert W. Thomson). In Book 1 Pseudo-Movses quotes
extensively from the “old book” that he claims was found in the archives of Niveveh
and that detailed the origins of the Armenians. When building the Tower of Babylon,
a fearful wind brought the confusion of languages and stopped the men from their
building. “One of these [men] was Hayk, descended from Yapetost’ē, the renowned
and valiant prince, strong and accurate in drawing the bow.”
52 Zimansky 2011, pp. 548–549: “The Bible and Neo-Hittite documents followed the
Assyrian lead, the Biblical Ararat simply being a rendering of Urartu transposed by
writers who were no longer familiar with the original pronunciation.”
53 Zimansky 2011, p. 557: “Urartian literacy was strongly tied to the government of
Biainili, and was otherwise probably quite superficial.”
54 See the observations at Greppin 1991, p. 722:
It is certain, though, that the Armenians cannot be a people who resulted from an
Indo-European overlay upon a Hurro-Urartian people. Were this true, we would
find considerably more Hurro-Urartian linguistic detritus in Armenian, not only
lexical material, but remnants of their syntax and perhaps phonology. Hurro-
Urartian, an ergative language with great agglutinative powers, is considerably
different from Armenian, and there have been no claims that its syntax left scars
on the Armenian language, such as Old French did on English.55 On the comparative regression in the Carpathian basin see Metzner-Nebelsick 2013,
pp. 342–348: “Das Problem des Endes der Tell-Siedlungen.” The tell-settlements in
the basin faded gradually and by the 15th century BCwere either gone or considerably
diminished. One reason, Metzner-Nebelsick suggests, was over-exploitation of the metal
resources, but she also notes that the rulers in the basin– unlike their counterparts in
the Greek mainland—failed to adopt institutions and practices essential for centralized
societies.
234 The question of origins