Niphates
ὁ Νιφάτης
Niphates (ὁ Νιφάτης, Strab. xi. pp. 522, 523, 527, 529; Ptol. 5.13.4, 6.1.1; Mela, 1.15.2; Plin. Nat. 5.27; Amm. Marc. 23.6.13; Virg. Geog. 3.30; Horat. Carm. 2.9. 20: the later Roman poets, by a curious mistake, made Niphates a river; comp. Lucan 3.245; Sil. Ital. 13.775; Juv. 6.409), the snowy range
of Armenia, called by the native writers Nebad or Nbadagan (St. Martin, Mém. sur l'Armenie, vol. i. p. 49). Taurus, stretching E. of Commagene (Aïn Táb) separates Sophene (Kharput Dawassi), which is contained between Taurus and Anti-Taurus (Strab. xi. p.521), from Osroene (Urfah), and then divides itself into three portions. The most northerly, and highest, are the Niphates (Así Kúr) in Acilisene. The structure of this elevated chain, consisting of the lofty groups of Sir Serah, the peaked glacier of Mut Khán, the Alí Tágh, Sapán, Nimrúd, and Darkish, Tághs, which are probably the highest range of Taurus, rising above the line of perpetual snow (10,000 feet ?), remains yet undetermined. Limestone and gypsum prevail, with basalt and other volcanic rocks. Deep valleys separate the parallel ridges, and also break their continuity by occasional passes from the N. to the S. sides. (Ainsworth, Assyria, Babylonia, and Chaldaea, p. 18; Chesney, Exped. Euphrat. vol i. p. 69; Ritter, Erdkunde, vol. x. p. 911.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.