ARARAT. – A mountainous region between the Araxe River and Lakes Van and Urmia. This geographical name of the Old Testament (Gen. 8:4; II Reg. 19:37; Is. 37:38; Ier. 51:27) corresponds approximately to the Urartu of the Assyro-Babylonian documents and to modern Armenia.
Beroso (according to Flavio Giuseppe, Antiq. Jud., I, 93) and the Targumim identified the A. of Genesis with Kurdistan. Only later, as a result of an erroneous exegesis of Gen. 8:4 (Noah’s ark, after the flood, came to rest “on the mountains of A.”), was A. regarded as a specific mountain, identified with the present-day A., called in Persian Kôh-i-Nûh, “Mount Noah,” whose highest summit reaches 5156 m. Angelo Penna