Kingdom, mint at Artaxata.

A mountainous region bordering on Media, on the southern edge of the Caucasus Mountains. The Armenians were an Indo-European people related to the Iranians, and they invaded the area following the collapse of the kingdom of Urartu. They were usually subject to the Medians, then the Persians, when those kingdoms were strong.

The Artaxiads issued a series of (mostly rare) coins of Seleukid inspiration. Under Tigranes the Great their kingdom reached its greatest extent, even taking Antioch, the Seleukid capital; but the Romans soon curtailed his expansion. From then on the kingdom was a client alternating between Rome and Parthia, or Byzantium and the Sasanian Empire, before being absorbed entirely by the Muslims.

The medieval kingdom of Armenia was set up, not in Armenia proper, but farther south, in Cilicia. The capital was Sis, but coins were issued from a secondary mint in Tarsus as well. The Armenians were Christian; the old kingdom of Armenia had been early converted to Christianity so that the traditional date for the conversion of the country is 301 AD. In Cilicia the Roupenids issued coinage from the late eleventh century to the late fourteenth.