РОЛЬ АХЕМЕНІДІВ ТА ГІДАРНІДІВ В ПОХОДЖЕННІ ТЕРМІНА «ВІРМЕНСЬКІ АРШАКІДИ» У СЕРЕДНЬОВІЧНИХ ВІРМЕНСЬКИХ ДЖЕРЕЛАХ
THE ROLE OF THE ACHAEMENIDS AND HYDARNIDS IN THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM «ARMENIAN ARSACIDS» IN ARMENIAN MEDIEVAL SOURCES

Summary/Abstract: Medieval Armenian sources which refer to the kings of Greater Armenia who ruled from 331 BC to 428 AD use the general term "Armenian Arsacids." At the same time, historians, based on a much larger number of sources, distinguish at least three royal dynasties (the Orontids, the Artaxiads, and the Arsacids) that successively ruled Greater Armenia during this period. Researchers studying the historiographical heritage of medieval Armenian chroniclers believed that the emergence of this term was influenced by the chroniclers' lack of awareness, stemming from the limited number of sources they used. This is partly true. It is easy to name numerous sources that were unknown to Armenian chroniclers. The absence of these sources limited the chroniclers' ability to reconstruct the historical narrative. This was primarily due to the fact that many of the sources they cited, which they relied upon to write the history of Armenia, contained only minor insertions of information about Armenia. Obviously, under such circumstances, chroniclers faced the challenge of linking fragmented pieces of information and determining which events occurred earlier and which came later. In such situations, they often resorted to imagination and intuition, which led to anachronisms and erroneous genealogical constructions, where successors were turned into predecessors and vice versa. In previous articles, I managed to address the anachronisms and chronology. The aim of this article is to attempt to trace the genealogy of the kings referred to as "Armenian Arsacids" in Armenian sources. It is important to understand whether medieval Armenian chroniclers had valid grounds for grouping them under a common term. The collected source material and its detailed analysis allow us to affirmatively answer this question.

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