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Origins

Prior to the 9th century BC, the geographic region known as the Armenian Highlands was inhabited by Proto-Armenian and other tribes which did not yet constitute a unitary state or nation. The first state to rule over a significant part of the Armenian Highlands was the Kingdom of Urartu, also known as the Kingdom of Van or Ararat and called Biainili in the Urartian language used by its rulers. The kingdom competed with Assyria over supremacy in the highlands of Ararat and the Fertile Crescent.

Both kingdoms fell to Iranian invaders from the east (the Medes, followed by the Achaemenid Persians) in the 6th century BC. Its territory was reorganized into a satrapy called Armenia. The Orontid dynasty ruled as satraps of the Achaemenid Empire for three centuries until the empire was defeated by Alexander the Great 's Macedonian Empire at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC. After Alexander's death in 323 BC, a Macedonian general named Neoptolemus obtained Armenia until he died in 321 BC and the Orontids returned, not as satraps, but as kings.