Kingdom of Sophene

The Kingdom of Sophene (Armenian: Ծոփք, romanized: Tsop’k’, Ancient Greek: Σωφηνή, romanized: Sōphēnḗ) was a Hellenistic-era political entity situated between ancient Armenia and Syria. Ruled by the Orontid dynasty, the kingdom was culturally mixed with Greek, Armenian, Iranian, Syrian, Anatolian and Roman influences. Founded around the 3rd century BCE, the kingdom maintained independence until c. 95 BCE when the Artaxiad king Tigranes the Great conquered the territories as part of his empire.

Name

The name Sophene is thought to derive from the ethnonym Ṣuppani, a people who lived in the region in the first half of the 1st millennium BCE and appear in Hittite (as Isuwa) and Assyrian sources. According to historian Nicholas Adontz, the Ancient Greek Sōphēnḗ was coined after the Armenian Tsop’k’, which stems directly from Ṣuppani.

History

Origin and early history

The Kingdom of Sophene was ruled by the Orontids, a dynasty of Iranian origin which ruled the Satrapy of Armenia under the Achaemenid Empire. They were descended from Orontes I, a Bactrian nobleman who was the son-in-law of the Achaemenid King of Kings Artaxerxes II (r. 404–358 BCE). The Orontids maintained their control over Armenia following the conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE, effectively ruling Armenia as kings. Most scholars concur that Sophene formed part of the Satrapy of Armenia in the Achaemenid period. In the Hellenistic period, the western regions of Armenia may have been more under the control of the Seleucids while the Orontids maintained control over the eastern regions of Armenia.