The master’s thesis examines how Mount Ararat, despite being located outside the borders of the Republic of Armenia, retains a central significance in Armenian national identity. Although Ararat was for centuries regarded primarily as a Christian holy mountain, the thesis argues that its religious significance in the contemporary Armenian context is closely intertwined with national symbolism and armenian collective memory. Drawing on historical sources, media debates, and ethnographic fieldwork, the thesis analyses how the meanings of Ararat are created at the intersection of the sacred, space, and the border. Particular attention is paid to understanding Ararat as a non-human actor whose material presence and political inaccessibility continuously reproduce armenian collective memory, national identity, and political debates. The thesis argues that Ararat remains important to Armenians not despite the fact that it lies beyond the Turkish border, but precisely because of it. It is its inaccessibility that reinforces its symbolic power and establishes it as one of the central sites of Armenian collective memory.
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