Armavir (Old Armenian: Արմաւիր; also called Armaouira in antiquity) was a large commercial city and the capital of ancient Armenia during the reign of the Orontid dynasty.

[1] During the first half of the 8th century BC, King Argishti I of Urartu built a fortress in the area and named it Argishtikhinili.

Slabs of clay have been found from the Achaemenid period written in the Elamite language concerning episodes of the Gilgamesh epic.

Various inscriptions in Hellenistic Greek carved around the third century BC, have been found, including poetry from Hesiod, lines from Euripides, a list of Macedonian months, and names of Orontid Kings.

[4] Movses' history preserves a tradition that when King Valarsace the Parthian settled in Armavir (ca.

149 BC), he built a temple there and asked prince aspet (knight) Smbat of the Bagratuni dynasty to give up his religion and worship idols.

Movses also relates that when King Tigranes II (whom he places on the throne from 90 to 36 BC), in order to take revenge on Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, sent an expedition to Palestine, he carried a great number of Jews into captivity, and settled them in Armavir and in Vardges.

The settlement remained abandoned until 1613, when 7 Armenian families rebuilt a new village just 1 km east of the ancient site of Armavir.