"Zena Sopheli" (Upper Country), one of the central regions in the Eastern Georgia corresponds to the later "Shida Kartli" (Inner Kartli).
The immediate goal of the present research is to identify the circumstances attending the origin of the name "Zena Sopheli" and consequently, detect those historical and geographical conditions that brought about the change of the land called "Upper Country" into the "Inner Kartli".
As the investigation revealed, the division of the territory of Kartli into "upper" and "lower" lands (later, the division of the kingdom of Kartli into "Upper", "Inner" and "Lower" Kartli) corresponded to the division of the Mtkvari, the major river in the kingdom into upper, middle and lower flows. And the vicinity of Mtskheta, the oldest capital of Kartli (namely the "Kartli Mountain", the same as the "Armazi Mountain") that must have been an important Eastern-Georgian cultural, political and religious centre of that period, must be regarded as a supposed region that gave name to the Upper Country. The territory of the Upper Country was referred to by name of the Inner Kartli shortly after the kingdom of Kartli was settled by the Southern Georgian communities that had resided the upper part of the Mtkvari ravine (Meskheti, Javakheti, Shavsheti, Kola, Artaani). Later these communities themselves together make the integral territorial unit of the "Upper Country" or "Upper Kartli".

Boris Kuftin was a Soviet archaeologist and ethnographer. From 1933 to 1953, he worked in Tbilisi, Georgia. In the 1930s, he discovered the Trialeti culture; and in 1940, he coined the term Kura-Araxes. He participated in the South Turkmenistan Complex Archaeological Expedition in the 1940s-1950s.
Kuftin became a member of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences in 1946.

Archangelo Lamberti was a member of Theatin Catholic Order, a monk from Naples, who was sent in Georgia according the decision of Pope Urban VIII by The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) together with another missioner Giuseppe Judiche to spread Catholic faith. For this mission he arrived in Kartli in 1631 and joined the Catholic Mission of Gori. Lamberti was received by the Georgian king Teimuraz I in his residence. About two years later Lamberti together with Judiche moved to Odishi Principality, where the missionaries continued their activities under the protection of influential prince of Odishi, Levan II Dadiani (1611-1657). Lamberti generally lived in Georgia for 18 years.

From the recent past