Why Mount Ararat Means Home to Armenians

Ask an Armenian to name the one image that means home, and Mount Ararat comes up first. It stands just outside the country's borders now, in easternmost Turkey, yet it looms over Yerevan and the whole Ararat plain. This is what the mountain has meant for centuries, why we still call it ours, and why it belongs in an Armenian home.

The mountain we call Masis

Ararat is really two peaks joined at the base: Greater Ararat at 5,137 meters and Little Ararat at 3,896 meters. Armenians know the great peak as Masis (Մասիս); in older tradition the twin summits are Masis and Sis. It is a dormant volcano, snow-capped most of the year.

Though the mountain sits in Turkey today, it is the view that defines Armenia's capital. From much of Yerevan and the plain below, Masis fills the southern horizon. The classic vantage is Khor Virap, the monastery on the plain where the peak seems to rise straight out of the frame.

Noah's Ark, and the first Armenians

The Book of Genesis names the "mountains of Ararat" as the resting place of Noah's Ark after the flood. Scholars generally read that phrase as the wider region, ancient Urartu, rather than this single peak. Over the centuries, Christian tradition attached the story to this mountain, which is part of why it is known worldwide.

For Armenians the connection runs deeper than the Ark itself. By tradition, recorded by the fifth-century historian Movses Khorenatsi, the people descend from Hayk, a legendary patriarch of the line of Noah through Japheth, who settled at the foot of the mountain. Armenians still call themselves hay and their country Hayastan after him. The story places the beginning of the nation right here, in the mountain's shadow.

Why we call it ours

Ararat did not become Armenian by sentiment. It stood at the heart of the historic Armenian Highlands for millennia. The ancient kingdom centered there, Urartu, is the very name the Bible renders as Ararat. Historic Armenia surrounded the mountain on nearly every side.

The modern border is recent. In the boundary settlements of the early 1920s, Ararat fell outside the Republic of Armenia and into Turkey, where it remains. Armenia never accepted that as the end of the matter. The mountain still sits at the center of the country's coat of arms, above Noah's Ark.

The loss is not only lines on a map. Before 1915, Armenian communities lived across the lands around the mountain, in what is now eastern Turkey. They were destroyed and scattered in the genocide. For much of the diaspora, that is why Ararat carries grief as well as pride: a homeland we can see clearly and cannot stand on.

Keeping Ararat close

Most of the diaspora cannot see the mountain from a window. The image does the work the horizon used to do. That is why Ararat turns up on so much Armenian décor, and why we designed pieces around it.

Our Ararat designs live in the Pomegranate & Haykakan Symbols collection, beside the other national motifs. On a wall hanging the peak reads as a clear horizon line. On a blanket or throw it is quieter, part of the room rather than the focus of it, and it works the same way across a set of pillows.

It also makes a gift that needs no explanation. For a housewarming, a wedding, or a godchild's first home, the mountain says where a family comes from. Add a name from the Personalized & Monogram collection and it becomes theirs specifically.

Why it still matters

You never have to explain Ararat to another Armenian. That is the point of putting it on a wall or across a bed. It says where we come from without a word, in a home that may be thousands of miles from the plain the mountain watches over.

If you want to keep it close, the Ararat pieces sit in the Pomegranate & Haykakan Symbols collection.