Sacred mountains Examples of this would be the Hindu belief that Mount Kailas is the final resting place for the souls of the dead, as well as the large cemetery placed on Mount Koya-san. Sacred mountains can also provide an important piece of a culture's identity. For example, Messerli and Ives write, “The Armenian people regard Mount Ararat, a volcano in eastern Turkey believed to be the site of Noah's Ark in the Bible, to be a symbol of their natural and cultural identity”. As a result of the mountain's role as a part of a cultural identity, even people who do
Urartu tradition. Some scholars have speculated that Ovid may have read the Pentateuch due to his use of the word "ararat" in the "Metamorphoses" flood narrative, which describes humanity's suffering the consequences of angering the Roman god Jupiter. The name "Ayrarat" that was later used to describe lands located in the central region of the Kingdom of Armenia seems to have been of local usage as no known classical works use this word to refer to Armenia. The Ararat Province of modern Armenia is named after Mount Ararat, which itself receives its name from the biblical Mountains of Ararat (or "Mountains