It too was a tricolor, but unlike the previous design, this one was a vertical tricolor similar to the French flag. Its colors were red, green, and blue, from left to right, representing the rainbow that Noah saw after landing on Mount Ararat.
Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic:
In 1828, Persian Armenia was annexed to the Russian Empire after the last Russo-Persian War, and became known as Russian Armenia. When the Russian Empire collapsed, Russian Armenia declared its independence and joined the short-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, together with Georgia and Azerbaijan. This unified state hardly lasted a year and was soon dissolved. Since the Republic was short-lived, it did not use any flags or symbols.
Nevertheless, some historians consider a horizontal gold, black, and red tricolor, similar to that of the German flag but arranged differently, to have been the flag of Transcaucasia. The federation was dissolved on May 26, 1918, when Georgia declared its independence as the Democratic Republic of Georgia. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan declared their independence two days later, on May 28, 1918, as the First Republic of Armenia and the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, respectively.
First Republic of Armenia:
After gaining independence, the First Republic of Armenia adopted the modern Armenian tricolor. Upon Stepan Malkhasyants‘s appearance in the Armenian National Council, the independent Armenian government selected the colors used during the Lusignan period: red, blue and yellow. An earlier prototype, which was eventually rejected, was the rainbow flag.
This prototype can be seen at the Martiros Saryan House Museum in Yerevan, Armenia. They chose to replace the yellow with orange “because it merged better with the other two colors, presenting a more pleasing composition”.
The flag of independent Armenia then had a ratio of 2:3, but on August 24, 1990, when the Armenian Supreme Soviet adopted it as the flag of the Republic of Armenia, the ratio was changed to 1:2.
Previous Flags:
There have been several flags used in Armenia at different times.
