Beautiful Haykazuni king-figure killed by Semiramis (Shamiram) in retaliation for rejecting her marriage proposal — one of the most-famous narratives of the Khorenatsi tradition and a recurring motif in modern Armenian literature, painting, and theater. The aralez-spirit resurrection attempt (the dog-spirits licking Ara's wounds in an unsuccessful effort to restore him to life per Khorenatsi 1.15) preserves a distinctively Armenian dying-and-rising-king mythologem with structural parallels to broader Mediterranean dying-and-rising-god material (Adonis, Tammuz, Osiris) but distinguished by the failure of the resurrection — the aralez-licking does not succeed, and Ara remains dead. The Ara-Semiramis episode has historical-conflation roots in the Assyrian-Armenian conflicts of the early 1st millennium BCE; the Semiramis figure of Khorenatsi conflates multiple historical Assyrian queens (Sammu-rāmat, regent c. 811-808 BCE, being the strongest candidate) into a singular mytho-historical antagonist.