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
Mount Ararat Indeed, the phrase is translated as "mountains of Armenia" ("montes Armeniae") in the Vulgate, the fourth century Latin translation of the Bible. Nevertheless, Mount Ararat is considered the traditional site of the resting place of Noah's Ark. It is therefore called a biblical mountain. Mount Ararat has been associated with the Genesis flood story since the 11–12th centuries. The local Armenian population began to identify it as the ark's landing place during those centuries. F. C. Conybeare wrote that the mountain was "a center and focus of pagan myths and cults [...] and it was only in the eleventh century,