Abovyan City
Abovian (Arm: Աբովյան), Kotayk Marz
Abovian (38876 p), a new industrial city founded in 1963 on the site of the early village of Elar, was named after Khachatur Abovian, Yerevan school inspector, climber of Mt. Ararat, and founder of modern Armenian literature (1809-1848? -- his mysterious disappearance, perhaps at the hands of Czarist authorities fearful of Europe-inspired revolutions, has never been explained). Abovian is laid out ambitiously with wide streets and high-rise apartments. The ancient village of Elar, a key site at the time of the Urartian conquest, occupies a hill just S of town, but has been almost entirely obliterated by the modern cemetery (chapel of S. Stepanos). Elar was inhabited from the 4th millennium BC, as attested by chamber tombs and other finds. An Urartean cuneiform inscription of Argishti I refers to it as Darani.
Source: Rediscovering Armenia Guidebook