File:Map of Artaxata ruins.jpg

Identifier: travelsingeorgia02port (find matches)
Title: Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, ancient Babylonia, &c. &c. : during the years 1817, 1818, 1819, and 1820
Year: 1821 (1820s)
Authors: Porter, Robert Ker, Sir, 1777-1842
Subjects: Porter, Robert Ker, Sir, 1777-1842
Publisher: London : Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown
Contributing Library: Tisch Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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self for its acropolis; and the rapidstream of the great river afforded facility for the floating downof necessary timber, from the abundant forests which then, itis said, stretched from a vast distance to its banks higher uptowards its source. The same authorities place the site of thecity near the junction of the great river, with a smaller oneflowing immediately from the lake above, meaning the Sevanor Gauche. On this plan, Artaxata, receiving its name from the royalfounder, soon rose above the plain, with fortress, palaces, andtemples ; and one more splendid than the rest, amongst thelatter erections, was a temple dedicated to Anaites and Arta-matea; while without the gates, a magnificent structure of thesame kind was inscribed to Apollo. Statues were raised in all.And when the whole was finished, the king not only placedmany of his native subjects in the new city, but brought manyindustrious Jewish families from Amavera, to complete theinhabitants. A CITY PLANNED BY HANNIBAL. 621
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Some writers have supposed that the small river mentionedhere, is intended to describe the Zengay, which flows from thelake Sevan into the Araxes considerably to the north-west ofthat great rivers junction with another minor stream, which runsdirect through these ruins. But on examining the ground inthe immediate neighbourhood of the Zengays union with theAraxes, no trace whatever of former building can be found, 622 RUINS OF ARTAXATA. which appears to me to prove the fact of there never havingbeen any ; and that we must, accordingly, return to the spotwhere such are actually presented, and therefore find the smallriver of the historians in the Gurney; which washes the mounds,and fallen towers to the west, in its way from the lake to thefull tide of the Araxes. In earlier times, the Gurney may haveoccupied an ampler bed than at present; but now the purposesof agriculture have carried it off through so many minor chan-nels, that a very small portion of the stream flows direct intothe

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