Ara the Handsome

Ara the Handsome (or the Beautiful, Armenian: Արա Գեղեցիկ, romanized: Ara Gełec‘ik) is a legendary Armenian hero and king. He is the son of the legendary king Aram and a descendant of the Armenian patriarch Hayk. Scholars believe that Ara, Aram and Hayk were originally deities who were later reinterpreted as legendary human heroes. Ara represented a dying-and-rising agricultural god and is thought to have embodied fertility within the Indo-European triad of sovereignty, war, and fertility, along with Hayk and Aram. Ara is the subject of a popular legend in which the Akkadian queen Semiramis (Shamiram in Armenian), desiring the handsome Armenian king, wages war against Armenia to capture him and bring him back to her, alive. Ara is killed in the war, and Semiramis attempts to bring him back to life.

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