Arame of Urartu (900–843 BCE)
Born 900 BCE, died 843 BCE.
Arame or Aramu (r. c. 858 – 844 BC) was the first known king of the state of Urartu. Living at the time of King Shalmaneser III of the Neo Assyrian Empire (r. 859–824 BC), Arame fought unsuccessfully against the Assyrian Empire. His capital at Arzashkun was captured by Shalmaneser. Sagunia, a previous capital, which was also captured by Shalamaneser, seems to have been located in the vicinity of Lake Van or Lake Urmia. Subsequent Urartian rulers probably came from a different dynasty than Arame. Arame has been suggested as the prototype of both Aram (and, correspondingly the popular given name Aram) and Ara the Beautiful, two of the legendary but not historically attested forefathers of the Armenian people. Khorenatsi's History (1.5) puts them six and seven generations after Hayk. It has been hypothesized that Aramu was a military leader of Aramean origin, the earliest recording of the name Aram referring to the Semitic speaking Aramean people of the Levant and southern Anatolia, appearing during the 13th century BC.
Text from the Wikipedia article Arame_of_Urartu, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.