ii. Armenian Bat

In Armenian Bat is the name of the nahapet “family head” of the Šaharuni dynastic house in the fourth century A.D., according to the fifth-century historian Pʿawstos Buzand, 5.35. The name may be attested in Gk. Batis (Arrian) and Latin Betis (Quintus Curtius), but this is unlikely; according to W. B. Henning, Parthian bʾty, Bat, is merely an allegro form of Bagdāt, via an intermediate Baʾāt—the Gk. form Baat is attested where in Middle Iranian parallel texts the name Bat is found. From the title of Bʾt, šhrdʾr (Bat the šahrdār), who accompanied Mani on his final journey it is apparent that he was a petty king or nobleman. Mani’s mother belonged to the Kāmsarakān family, a branch of the noble Parthian house of Kārēn which had become established in Armenia. It is possible that Bat may have been a family friend as a fellow nobleman, as well as a disciple, and an Armenian. In a Sogdian text, we are informed that Mani had written an epistle to the Armenians. The name Bat in Arm., would appear to be a loan of the Sasanian period, for an earlier, Parthian, form of Bag(a)dāt, Bagarat, is found as the name of the progenitor of the Bagratuni naxarardom; Armenian intervocalic –r– is from Iranian –d-, which remained in Parthian but was lost or became –y– in Middle Persian, as in Baʾat > Bāt.