The origin of the Armenian flag is very old and there is no resemblance between the flag of ancient times and the one that is used today. The ancient flag was a piece of carving representing a dragon, an eagle, or some mysterious object of the gods which was fastened to the end of a pole and led the armies into battle.
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The Armenian word "Drosh," meaning flag, is derived from the Persian "Drafsh" and perhaps the Parthian "Dravsha" which was very familiar during the Armenian Golden Age. The ancient Armenians Armenianized the word into "Dravshag," which in later centuries, with the introduction of the letter "o" into the Armenian alphabet, was converted into "Drosh" and "Droshag." In the beginning, the flag generally used by the Armenians was square or rectangular with cloth fastened to a pole.
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The flag was called "Var," the Armenian word for cloth. In the immediate aftermath of the introduction of Christianity, the Armenians named this flag "Khachvar" because the flag was embossed with a cross of gold brocade. Thus, the use of the cross on the flag followed the use of the oldest emblems such as the eagle, the lion and the dragon. |
The Armenian Apostolic Church, in the early centuries of the Christian era, adopted a second monogrammatic form of the flag in which the cross was accentuated even more. The color of the flag was purple, the royal colors, and the embossed cross was a gold brocade according to the custom. I.
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In the Middle Ages, the flag was unicolored regardless of the shades. When Levon II was being anointed King of the Rubenian Dynasty of Cilicia, Pope Celestine III of Rome sent him a banner with the insignia of a lion in 1197. The flag, which was white, carried a red lion with raised paws |
After the downfall of the Rubenian Dynasty and the loss of their independence, the Armenians naturally had no national flag. The question of the Armenian flag came up in 1885, when the Armenian Students Association of Paris, desirous of joining the funeral of Victor Hugo with a national flag, appealed to Father Alishan for the true colors of the flag.
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Father Alishan, without any historical proof, composed the "Armenian Flag" which later was adopted as the official flag of the Hunchak party. The flag was based solely on data from the Armenian Church calendar according to which the first Sunday of Easter is called "Red" Sunday, the second, "Green" Sunday, and selecting an arbitrary color of his own, the white completed the color combination. |
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Thereafter, Father Alishan created a second classification of colors: yellow, red and green or blue, red, and green, taking it from the colors of the rainbow based on the premise that God gave the Armenian flag on the very day when the colors of the rainbow bathed the Ark of Noah on Mount Ararat.
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The yellow, red, and green flag was adopted by the Armenians and used during World War I. Finally, seeing that the colors of Father Alishan were arbitrary, with no historic basis or value, the Government of the Independent Republic of Armenia selected the colors of the last period of the Rubenian Dynasty: red, blue and yellow, in which the yellow immediately was replaced by the orange, because it easily merged with the rest of the colors and presented a more pleasing composition. "This was the origin of the beautiful and glorious Armenian Tricolor which became the flag of the Independent Republic of Armenia." |
COATS OF ARMS
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From the Atlas of Historical Armenia- by H. K. Babessian.
