ARARAT. — A mountainous region between the Araxes River and Lakes Van and Urnia. This geographical name from the Old Testament (Gen. 8:4; 2 Kgs 19:37; Isa. 37:38; Jer. 51:27) roughly corresponds to the Urratu of Assyro-Babylonian documents and to present-day Armenia.
BEROSUS (according to Flavius Josephus, *Antiquitates Judaicae*, I, 93) and the Targumim identified Ararat in Genesis with Kurdistan. Only later, due to a mistaken exegesis of Gen. 8:4 ("the ark of Noah after the flood rested 'upon the mountains of Ararat'"), was Ararat considered a specific mountain, identified with the present-day Ararat, called in Persian *Kūh-i-Nūḥ*, "Mountain of Noah," whose highest peak reaches 5,156 meters.