[5] Ruled by the Orontid dynasty, the kingdom was culturally mixed with Greek, Armenian, Iranian, Syrian, Anatolian and Roman influences.

[7] 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 and Assyrian sources.

[9][11] Sophene most likely emerged as distinct kingdom in the 3rd century BC, during the gradual decline of Seleucid influence in the Near East and the split of the Orontid dynasty into several branches.

Three rulers belonging to a different Orontid branch, Sames I, Arsames I and Xerxes ruled the western part of Greater Armenia, perhaps from Commagene to Arzanene.

However, the younger line in Sophene managed to preserve the independence of their kingdom, due to their diplomatic (and possibly dynastic) link with Cappadocia.

[3] According to modern historian Michał Marciak, the well-attested existence of Iranian culture in Sophene could be understood, as it was by Nina Garsoïan, as a derivation of Greater Armenia and indirectly from Iran.

He also considers it possible that the strong existence of Iranian culture might have influenced Roman and Greek writers to regard the region as Armenian.

[26] Following E. L. Wheeler, Marciak cites Strabo's telling of the legend of the argonaut Armenus as an indication that the population of Sophene was not Armenian in origin.

[27][b] Wheeler argues that Sophene was more frequently a part of Mesopotamia than of Armenia in geographical, political, and cultural terms and emphasizes its role as a Hellenistic polity.

They created them in the style of a rock-cut tomb, thus greatly stressing their Persian royal connection, as well as recalling the stories of the Achaemenid necropolis near Persepolis.

[30] Similar to the early Arsacids of Parthia and Frataraka of Persis, the Orontids of Sophene experimented with images of Iranian royal power.

However, as late as the first half of the 2nd century BCE, Imperial Aramaic (with a fairly strong admixture of Persian terms), was used in governmental and court proceedings, which was rooted in Achaemenid practices from Armenia.