Topic: Armenian Mythology

[Prometheus]

DEDICATION


THIS LITTLE RECORD OF THE PAST
IS REVERENTLY DEDICATED
TO THE MEMORY OF
THE ARMENIAN HOSTS
WHICH FOUGHT IN THE LAST WAR
FOR FREEDOM

AND OF THE GREAT ARMY OF MARTYRS
WHO WERE ATROCIOUSLY TORTURED TO DEATH


BY THE TURKS




https://archive.org/details/mythologyofallra71gray/page/n15


THE MYTHOLOGY OF ALL RACES


Volume VII

ARMENIAN








PLATE I


Illumination from an Armenian Gospel manu-
script in the Library of the Kennedy School of
Missions, Hartford, Connecticut.



THE MYTHOLOGY
OF ALL RACES

IN THIRTEEN VOLUMES


CANON JOHN ARNOTT MacCULLOCH, D.D., Editor

GEORGE FOOT MOORE, A.M., D.D., LL.D., Consulting Editor


ARMENIAN

BY

MARDIROS H. ANANIKIAN

B.D., S.T.M., LATE PROFESSOR OF THE
HISTORY AND LANGUAGES OF TURKEY,
KENNEDY SCHOOL OF MISSIONS, HART-
FORD, CONNECTICUT.


VOLUME VII



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF AMERICA
MARSHALL JONES COMPANY • BOSTON
M DCCCC XXV




n


Copyright, 1925
By Marshall Jones Company

Copyrighted in Great Britain
All rights reserved

Printed June, 1925


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BOUND BY THE BOSTON BOOKBINDING COMPANY


CONTENTS


Armenia


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY

BY

MARDIROS H. ANANIKIAN

B.D., S.T.M.




AUTHOR’S PREFACE


THE ancient religion of Armenia was derived from three


main sources: National, Iranian, and Asianic. The Asi-
anic element, including the Semitic, does not seem to have ex-
tended beyond the objectionable but widely spread rites of a
mother goddess.

The National element came from Eastern
Europe and must have had a common origin with the Iranian.
But it, no doubt, represents an earlier stage of development
than the Vedas and the Avesta. It is for the well-informed
scholar of Indo-European religion to pronounce a judge-
ment as to the value of the material brought together in this
study. The lexical, folk-loristic, and literary heritage of the
Armenians has much yet to disclose. No one can be more pain-
fully conscious than the author of the defects of this work.
He had to combine research with popular and connected ex-
position, a task far above his ability. The ancient material
was not so scanty as broken. So analogy, wherever it could be
found within the family, was called upon to restore the nat-
ural connections.

Among the numerous writers on Armenian mythology,
three names stand high: Mgrdich Emin of Moscow, Prof.
Heinrich Gelzer of Jena, and Father Leo Alishan of Venice.
Emin laid the foundation of the scientific treatment of Arme-
nian mythology in the middle of the nineteenth century, and
his excellent contribution has become indispensable in this field.
To Heinrich Gelzer, primarily a scholar of Byzantine history,
we owe the latest modern study of the Armenian Pantheon.
As for Alishan, he was a poet and an erudite, but had hardly
any scientific training. So his Ancient Faith of Armenia is a



6


AUTHOR’S PREFACE


naive production abounding in more or less inaccessible ma-
terial of high value and in sometimes suggestive but more often
strange speculations. Manug Abeghian will rightly claim the
merit of having given to Armenian folk-lore a systematic form,
while A. Aharonian’s thesis on the same subject is not devoid
of interest. Unfortunately Stackelberg’s article, written in
Russian, was accessible to the author only in an Armenian
resume. Sandalgian’s Histone Documentaire de VArmeme ,
which appeared in 1917 but came to the author’s notice only
recently, contains important chapters on ancient Armenian
religion and mythology. The part that interprets Urartian
inscriptions through ancient Greek and Armenian has not met
with general recognition among scholars. But his treatment of
the classic and mediaeval material is in substantial accord with
this book. The main divergences have been noted.

Grateful thanks are due to the editors as well as the publish-
ers for their forbearance with the author’s idiosyncrasies and
limitations. Also a hearty acknowledgement must be made here
to my revered teacher and colleague, Prof. Duncan B. Mac-
donald of the Hartford Theological Seminary, to Prof. Lewis
Hodous of the Kennedy School of Missions, and to Dr. John
W. Chapman of the Case Memorial Library for many fertile
suggestions. Prof. Macdonald, himself an ardent and able
folk-lorist, and Prof. Hodous, a student of Chinese religions,
carefully read this work and made many helpful suggestions.


Hartford, Connecticut,
April 23, 1922.


M. H. ANANIKIAN


Publisher’s Note

The death of Professor Ananikian occurred while this vol-
ume was in preparation. He did not see the final proofs.




INTRODUCTION

THE POLITICAL BACKGROUND


L ONG before the Armenians came to occupy the lofty pla-
teau, south of the Caucasus, now known by their name,
it had been the home of peoples about whom we possess only
scanty information. It matters little for our present purpose,
whether the older inhabitants consisted of different ethnic
types, having many national names and languages, or whether
they were a homogeneous race, speaking dialects of the same
mother tongue and having some common name. For the
sake of convenience we shall call them Urartians, as the As-
syrians did. The Urartians formed a group of civilized states
mostly centreing around the present city of Van. Although
they left wonderful constructions and many cuneiform inscrip-
tions, we depend largely on the Assyrian records for our in-
formation concerning their political history.

It would seem that the Urartians belonged to the same non-
Aryan and non-Semitic stock of peoples as the so-called Hit-
tites who held sway in the Western Asiatic peninsula long
before Indo-European tribes such as Phrygians, Mysians,
Lydians, and Bithynians came from Thrace, and Scythians and
Cimmerians from the north of the Black Sea to claim the pen-
insula as their future home.

The Urartians were quite warlike and bravely held their
own against the Assyrian ambitions until the seventh century
b.c., when their country, weakened and disorganized through
continual strife, fell an easy prey to the Armenian conquerors
(640-600).


8


INTRODUCTION


The coming of the Armenians into Asia Minor, according
to the classical authorities, forms a part of the great exodus
from Thrace. By more than one ancient and intelligent
writer, they are declared to have been closely related to
the Phrygians whom they resembled both in language and
costume, and with whom they stood in Xerxes’ army, ac-
cording to Herodotus. 1 Slowly moving along the southern
shores of the Black Sea, they seem to have stopped for a while
in what was known in antiquity as Armenia Minor, which,
roughly speaking, lies southeast of Pontus and just north-
east of Cappadocia. Thence they must have once more set
out to conquer the promised land, the land of the Urartians,
where they established themselves as a military aristocracy in
the mountain fastnesses and the fortified cities, driving most
of the older inhabitants northward, reducing the remainder to
serfdom, taxing them heavily, employing them in their in-
ternal and external wars, and gradually but quite effectively
imposing upon them their own name, language, religion, and
cruder civilization. It is very natural that such a relation
should culminate in a certain amount of fusion between the
two races. This is what took place, but the slow process be-
came complete only in the middle ages when the Turkish
(Seljuk) conquest of the country created a terrible chaos in the
social order.

Very soon after the Armenian conquest of Urartu, even be-
fore the new lords could organize and consolidate the land into
anything like a monarchy, Armenia was conquered by Cyrus
(558-529 b.c.), then by Darius (524-485 b.c.). After the
meteoric sweep of Alexander the Great through the eastern
sky, it passed into Macedonian hands. But in 190 b.c., under
Antiochus the Great, two native satraps shook off the Seleucid
yoke. One of them was Artaxias, who with the help of the
fugitive Hannibal, planned and built Artaxata, on the Araxes,
as his capital. Under the dynasty of this king, who became a


INTRODUCTION


9


legendary hero, the country prospered for a while and attained
with Tigranes the Great (94-54 b.c.) an ephemeral greatness
without precedent until then and without any parallel ever
since. In 66 a.d. a branch of the Parthian (Arsacid) Dynasty
was established in Armenia under the suzerainty and protec-
tion of Rome. The first king of this house was Tiridates I,
formerly the head of the Magi of his country, who may have
done much in Armenia for the establishment of Zoroastrianism.
It was under Tiridates II, a scion of this royal house, that,
in the beginning of the fourth century of our era, Christianity,
long present in the country, and often persecuted, achieved its
fuller conquest.



ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


CHAPTER I

THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT
HE URARTIANS believed in a supreme being, the god


of heaven, whose name was Khaldi. If not the whole,
at least a large part of the population called itself Khaldian,
a name which survived the final downfall of the Urartian state
in a province situated northwest of Armenia where evidently
the old inhabitants were driven by the Armenian conquerors.
In their ancient non-Aryan pantheon, alongside of Khaldi stood
Theispas, a weather-god or thunderer of a very wide repute
in Western Asia, and Artinis, the sun-god. These three male
deities came to form a triad, under Babylonian influence. From
the fact that in one Babylonian triad composed of Sin (the
moon), Shamas (the sun) and Ramman (a weather-god),
Sin is the lord of the heavens, scholars have concluded that
Khaldi may have been also (or become) a moon-god.
Whether this be the case or not, the Urartian pantheon contains
a secondary moon-god called Shelartish. Besides these no less
than forty-six secondary, mostly local, deities are named
in an official (sacrificial?) list. The original Khaldian pan-
theon knew no female deity. Thus it stands in glaring contrast
with Asianic (Anatolian) religions in which the mother goddess
occupies a supreme position. But in the course of time, Ishtar
of Babylon, with her singularly pervasive and migratory char-
acter, found her way into Urartu, under the name of Sharis . 1

One may safely assume that at least in the later stage of its
political existence, long before the arrival of the Armenians



12


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


on the scene, Urartu had made some acquaintance with the
Indo-Iranians and their Aryan manners and beliefs. For
the Medes had begun their national career long before 935
b.c., and a little later the Scythians had established themselves
in Manna, an Eastern dependency of Urartu. 2

As an undeniable evidence of such influences we may point
to the fact that in Manna, Khaldi had become identified with
Bag-Mashtu (Bag-Mazda) a sky-god and probably an older
form of the Iranian Ahura Mazda.

It is in the midst of such a religion and civilization that the
Armenians came to live. Their respect for it is attested by the
fact that the ancient Urartian capital, Thuspa (the present
Van), was spared, and that another (later) capital, Armavira
in the North, became a sacred city for them, where according
to the national legend even royal princes engaged in the art of
divination through the rustling leaves of the sacred poplar
(Armen. Saus ). On the other hand the vestiges of Armenian
paganism conclusively show that the newcomers lent to the
Urartians infinitely more than they borrowed from them.

The Thracians and Phrygians, with whom the Armenians
were related, had in later times a crude but mystic faith and
a simple pantheon.

Ramsay, in his article on the Phrygians 3 assumes that the
chief deity whom the Thracian influx brought into Asia-
Minor was male, and as the native religion was gradually
adopted by the conquerors, this god associated himself with,
and usurped certain functions of, the Asianic goddess. At all
events the Phrygians, who had a sky-god called Bagos Papaios,
must have had also an earth-goddess Semele (Persian Zamin)
who no doubt became identified with some phase of the native
goddess (Kybele, Ma, etc.). The confusion of the earth-
goddess with the moon seems to have been a common phenome-
non in the nearer East. Dionysos or Sabazios represented the
principle of fertility of nature, without any marked reference


THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT


13


to the human race. He was a god of moisture and vegetation.
The com that sustains life, and the wine and beer that gladden
the heart, were his gifts. These things sprang from the
bosom of mother earth, through his mysterious influence, for
the earth and he were lovers.

Further the Thracians and Phrygians at the winter solstice,
held wild orgies (Bacchanalia), when naked women, wrought
into frenzy by music and dance, and driven by priests, wan-
dered in bands through fields and forests, shouting the name
of the deity or a part of it (like Saboi), and by every bar-
barous means endeavouring to awaken the dead god into repro-
ductive activity . 4 He was imagined as passing rapidly through
the stages of childhood, adolescence and youth. And as he was
held to be incarnate in a bull, a buck, a man, or even in an in-
fant, the festival reached its climax in the devouring of warm
and bloody flesh just torn from a live bull, goat, or a priest.
Sabazios under the name of Zagreus was thus being cut to
pieces and consumed by his devotees. In this sacramental
meal, the god no doubt became incarnate in his votaries and
blessed the land with fertility . 5

We have no clear traces of such repulsive rites in what
has been handed down to us from the old religion of the Ar-
menians in spite of their proverbial piety. Whatever they
have preserved seems to belong to another stratum of the
Phrygo-Thracian faith . 6

A careful examination of this ancient material shows among
the earliest Armenians a religious and mythological develop-
ment parallel to that observed among other Indo-European
peoples, especially the Satem branch of the race.

Their language contains an important fund of Indo-
European religious words such as Tiu (Dyaus = Zeus =
Tiwaz), “ day-light,” and Di-kh (pi. of Di , i.e. Deiva = Deus,
etc.), “ the gods.” When the ancient Armenians shouted, “ Ti
(or Tir), forward,” they must have meant this ancient Dyaus


14


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


Pitar who was also a war-god, and not Tiur y their much later
very learned but peaceful scribe of the gods. Even the name
of V aruna appears among them in the form of Vran (a cog-
nate of ovpavos) and in the sense of “ tent,” “ covering.”
It is not impossible that astwads , their other word for “ God,”
which in Christian times supplanted the heathen Di-kh ,
“ Gods,” was originally an epithet of the father of the gods
and men, just like the Istwo of Teutonic mythology, of which
it may well be a cognate . 7

The Perkunas of the Lithuanians and the Teutonic Fjor-
gynn, one as a god of heaven and of weather, and the other
as a goddess of the earth, are still preserved in the Armenian
words erkin, “heaven,” and erkir ( erkinr ?) “earth .” 8
The word and goddess, idrd y erd , “ earth,” seems to survive in
the Armenian ard , “ land,” “ field.”

Another ancient Armenian word for Mother-earth is
probably to be found in armat y which now means “ root.”
But in its adjectival form armti-kh y “cereals,” it betrays a
more original meaning which may shed some light upon the
much disputed Vedic aramati and Avestic armaiti. The
word ho\m y “ wind,” may have originally meant “ sky,” as
cognate of Himmel. The Vedic and Avestic vata (Teut.
V otan?) is represented in Armenian by aud y “ air,” “ weather,”
“ wind,” while Vayu himself seems to be represented by more
than one mythological name. Even the Vedic Aryaman and
the Teutonic Irmin may probably be recognized in the name of
Armenak, the better-known eponymous hero of the Armenians,
who thus becomes identical with the ancient Dyaus-Tiwaz. To
these may be added others whom we shall meet later. And in
the Vahagn myths we see how, as in India and Teutonic lands,
a violent storm-god has supplanted the grander figure of the
heaven-god.

The oak (which in Europe was sacred to the sky-god) and
water played an important part in the Armenian rites of the


THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT


i5


sacred fire. The sacred fire was, as in Europe, often extin-
guished in water. This religion was quite agricultural. In
view of the general agreement of the Slavic and old Armenian
data on this point, one may well ask whether the Thraco-
Phrygian mysteries just described were not a localized
development of the lightning worship so characteristic of the
Slavic family to which the Thraco-Phrygians and the Arme-
nians probably belonged . 9 In fact, according to Tomaschek 10
the lightning-god had a very prominent place in the Thracian
religion.

Lightning worship, more or less confused with the worship
of a storm-god, was widely spread through Indo-European
cults, and it is attested in the Thracian family not only by
the name of Hyagnis, a Phrygian satyr (see chapter on
Vahagn) and Sbel Thiourdos, but also by the title of “ Bull ”
that belonged to Dionysos and by such Greek myths as make
him wield the lightning for a short time in the place of Zeus . 11

Soon after their coming into Urartu the Armenians fell
under very strong Iranian influences, both in their social and
their religious life. Now began that incessant flow of Iranian
words into their language, a fact which tempted the philol-
ogists of a former generation to consider Armenian a branch
of Iranian. When Xenophon met the Armenians on his fa-
mous retreat, Persian was understood by them, and they were
sacrificing horses to the sun (or, perhaps to Mithra). But
we find in the remnants of Armenian paganism no religious
literature and no systematic theology, or cult of a purely Zoro-
astrian type. It would seem that the reformed faith of Iran
penetrated Armenia very slowly and as a formless mass of
popular beliefs which sometimes entered into mesalliances in
their new home . 12 In fact the names of the Zoroastrian gods
and spirits found in Armenia bear a post-classic and pre-
Sassanian stamp.

Finally the contact with Syria and with Hellenistic culture


1 6

[Prometheus]

ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


in Macedonian times and especially under Tigranes the Great
(95-54 b.c.), brought into the religion of the country a new
element. Statues of Syrian and Greek gods and goddesses
were acquired in some way or other and set up in Armenian
temples. Thus a small group of Semitic deities came into the
Armenian pantheon, and interesting comparisons were estab-
lished between the Armenian deities and the Olympians.
Evidently under the influence of the Greek West and the
Syrian South, the Armenians of the upper classes found the
number of their gods inadequate and set themselves to create a
pantheon of an impressive size. It was a time of conciliations,
identifications, one might say of vandalistic syncretism that
was tending to make of Armenian religion an outlandish
motley. Their only excuse was that all their neighbours
were following a similar course. It is, therefore, no wonder
that the Sassanians during their short possession of Armenia
in the middle of the third century seriously undertook to
convert the land to the purer worship of the sacred fire. How-
ever, all was not lost in those days of syncretism and con-
fusion. Most of the ancient traits can be easily recovered,
while the tenacious conservatism of the common people saved
a great amount of old and almost unadulterated material.
This is, in short, both the historical development and the back-
ground of Armenian mythology. We should expect to find
in it Urartian, Semitic, Armenian, Iranian, and Greek ele-
ments. But as a matter of fact the Urartian faith seems to
have merged in the Armenian, while the Greek could only
touch the surface of things, and the Semitic did not reach very
far in its invasion. Therefore Armenian paganism, as it has
come down to us, is mainly a conglomerate of native and Ira-
nian elements.


CHAPTER II


CHIEF DEITIES

S TRABO, the celebrated Greek traveller of the first century
of our era, in his notice of the Anahit worship at Erez
(or Eriza), says that “both the Medes and the Armenians
honour all things sacred to the Persians, but above everything
Armenians honour Anahit.”

An official (or priestly) reorganization of the national
pantheon must have been attempted about the beginning of
the Christian era. Agathangelos tells us plainly that King
Khosrau, on his return from successful incursions into Sas-
sanian lands, “ commanded to seek the seven great altars of
Armenia, and honoured (with all sorts of sacrifices and
ritual pomp) the sanctuaries of his ancestors, the Arsacids.”
These sanctuaries were the principal temples of the seven
chief deities whose names are: Aramazd, Anahit, Tiur, Mihr,
Baal-Shamin (pronounced by the Armenians Barshamina ),
Nane, and AstXik. It is possible that these gods and god-
desses were all patrons (genii) of the seven planets . 1 If
so, then Aramazd was probably the lord of Jupiter, Tiur
corresponded to Mercury, Baal-Shamin or Mihr to the sun,
AstXik to Venus, now called Arusyak, “ the little bride.” The
moon may have been adjudged to Anahit or Nane . 2 To these
seven state deities, was soon added the worship of the very
popular Vahagn, as the eighth , but he was in reality a native
rival of Baal-Shamin and Mihr. We may add that there was
a widely spread worship of the sun, moon, and stars as such,
and perhaps a certain recognition of Spentaramet and Zatik.


i8


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


Armenia enjoyed also its full share of nature worship ex-
pressed in veneration for mountains, rivers, springs, trees, etc.

Of the main deities Aramazd was the most powerful and
Anahit the most popular; with Vahagn they formed a triad.
This pre-eminence of the three gods forced the rest of the
pantheon into the less enviable position of secondary deities.

We know very little of the cultus of ancient Armenia, but
we may perhaps say in general that it was not as much of a
mixture as the pantheon.

We have two Armenian words for “temple,” Mehyan,
probably derived from Mithra-Mihr, and Tajar, which also
meant a dining-hall. The plural of Bagin , “altar,” also
meant “ temple ” or “ temples.” Temples contained large
treasures, and exercised hospitality towards all comers.

Agathangelos 3 describes the sacrifices of Chosroes after his
return from victorious incursions in these words:

‘ He commanded to seek the seven great altars of Armenia, and he
honoured the sanctuaries of his ancestors, the Arsacids, with white
bullocks, white rams, white horses and mules, with gold and silver
ornaments and gold embroidered and fringed silken coverings, with
golden wreaths, silver sacrificial basins, desirable vases set with pre-
cious stones, splendid garments, and beautiful ornaments. Also he
gave a fifth of his booty and great presents to the priests.’

In Bayazid (the ancient Bagravand) an old Armenian re-
lief was found with an altar upon which a strange animal
stands, and on each side a man clothed in a long tunic. One
is beardless, and carries a heavy club. The other has a beard.
Their head-gear, Phrygian in character, differs in detail.
Both have their hands raised in the attitude of worship . 4

Probably the word for sacrifice was spand (Lithu. sventa,
Persian spenta “ holy,” Gr. crrrevSoj “ to pour a libation ”) ;
the place of sacrifice was called Spandaran y “ the place of holy
things ”; and the priestly family that exercised supervision over
the sacrificial rites was known as the Spandunis. They held





PLATE II


Relief found in Bayarid. A priestess (?) and a
priest with the Phrygian hood, in the act of worship
and of offering a lamb as a sacrifice. The tail of
the animal indicates a variety now extinct. The
figure of the deity seems to have disappeared. From
Alishan’s Ancient Faith of Armenia.




CHIEF DEITIES


i9


a high rank among the Armenian nobility . 5 Even to-day
Spandanotz means “ a slaughterhouse ” and Spananel , “ to
slay.” No other Armenian word has come down to us in
the sense of “ priest,” seeing that Kurm is of Syriac or Asianic
origin. Besides the Spandunis there were also the Vahunis
attached to the temples of Vahagn, probably as priests. The
Vahunis also were among the noble families.

The priesthood was held in such high esteem that Armenian
kings often set up one or more of their sons as priests in cele-
brated temples. The burial place for priests of importance
seems to have been Bagavan (“the town of the gods”).
Whatever learning the country could boast was mainly in the
possession of the sacerdotal classes.


CHAPTER III
IRANIAN DEITIES


I. ARAMAZD

W HOEVER was the chief deity of the Armenians when
they conquered Urartu, in later times that important
position was occupied by Aramazd. Aramazd is an Armenian
corruption of the Auramazda of the old Persian inscriptions.
His once widely spread cult is one of our strongest proofs
that at least a crude and imperfect form of Zoroastrianism
existed in Armenia. Yet this Armenian deity is by no means
an exact duplicate of his Persian namesake. He possesses
some attributes that remind us of an older sky-god.

Unlike the Ahura-Mazda of Zoroaster, he was supreme,
without being exclusive. There were other gods beside him,
come from everywhere and anywhere, of whom he was the
father . 1 Anahit, Nane and Mihr were regarded as his chil-
dren in a peculiar sense . 2 Although some fathers of the
Greek Church in the fourth century were willing to consider
Armenian paganism as a remarkable approach to Christian
monotheism, it must be confessed that this was rather glory
reflected from Zoroastrianism, and that the supremacy of Ar-
amazd seems never to have risen in Armenia to a monotheism
that could degrade other gods and goddesses into mere angels
(Ameshas and Yazatas). Aramazd is represented as the cre-
ator of heaven and earth by Agathangelos in the same manner
as by Xerxes who says in one of his inscriptions: “Auramazda
is a great god, greater than all gods, who has created this
heaven and this earth.” The Armenian Aramazd was called
“ great ” 3 and he must have been supreme in wisdom (Arm.


IRANIAN DEITIES


21


imastun , a cognate of mazdao) but he was most often char-
acterised as ari, “ manly,” “ brave,” which is a good Armenian
reminiscence of “ Arya.” 4

He seems to have been of a benign and peaceloving dis-
position, like his people, for whom wisdom usually conveys
the idea of an inoffensive goodness. As far as we know he
never figures as a warlike god, nor is his antagonism against
the principle of evil as marked as that of the Avestic Ahura-
Mazda. Nevertheless he no doubt stood and fought for the
right (Armen. ardar y “ righteous,” Iran., arda , Sansk. rita).

Aramazd was above all the giver of prosperity and more
especially of “ abundance and fatness ” in the land. Herein
his ancient character of a sky-god comes into prominence.
Amenaber , “bringer of all (good) things,” was a beloved title
of his. 6 He made the fields fertile and the gardens and the
vineyards fruitful, no doubt through rain. The idea of an
Earth goddess had become dim in the Armenian mind. But
it is extremely possible that in this connection, something like
the Thracian or Phrygian belief in Dionysos lingered among
the people in connection with Aramazd, for, besides his avowed
interest in the fertility of the country, his name was some-
times used to translate that of the Greek Dionysos. 6 Yet
even the Persian Ahura-mazda had something to do with the
plants (Ys. xliv. 4), and as Prof. Jackson says, he was a
“generous” spirit.

It was in virtue of his being the source of all abundance
that Aramazd presided at the Navasard (New Year’s) fes-
tivals. These, according to the later (eleventh century) calen-
dar, came towards the end of the summer and, beginning with
the eleventh of August (Julian calendar), lasted six days, but
originally the Armenian Navasard was, like its Persian proto-
type, celebrated in the early spring. 7 In spite of the fact that
al-Biruni, according to the later Persian (Semitic?) view,
makes this a festival commemorating the creation of the world,


22


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


one may be reasonably sure that both in Armenia and in Persia,
it was an agricultural celebration connected with commemo-
ration of the dead (see also chapter on Shahapet) and aiming
at the increase of the rain and the harvests. In fact al-Biruni *
informs us that in Navasard the Persians sowed “around a
plate seven kinds of grain in seven columns and from their
growth they drew conclusions regarding the corn of that
year.” 9 Also they poured water upon themselves and others,
a custom which still prevails among Armenians at the spring
sowing and at the festival of the Transfiguration in June. 10
This was originally an act of sympathetic magic to insure rain.
Navasard’s connection with Fravarti (Armen. Hrotik ), the
month consecrated to the ancestral souls in Persia and perhaps
also in Armenia, is very significant, for these souls are in the old
Aryan religion specially interested in the fertility of the land.

The later (Christian) Navasard in August found the second
crop of wheat on the threshing floor or safely garnered,
the trees laden with mellowing fruit and the vintage in prog-
ress. 11 In many localities the Navasard took the character
of a fete champetre celebrated near the sanctuaries, to which
the country people flocked with their sacrifices and gifts, their
rude music and rustic dances. But it was also observed in the
towns and great cities where the more famous temples of Ar-
amazd attracted great throngs of pilgrims. A special men-
tion of this festival is made by Moses (II, 66) in connection
with Bagavan, the town of the gods. Gregory Magistros
(eleventh century) says that King Artaxias (190 b.c.) on his
death-bed, longing for the smoke streaming upward from the
chimneys and floating over the villages and towns on the New
Year’s morning, sighed:

“ O! would that I might see the smoke of the chimneys,

And the morning of the New Year’s day,

The running of the oxen and the coursing of the deer!

(Then) we blew the horn and beat the drum as it beseemeth
Kings.”


IRANIAN DEITIES


23


This fragment recalls the broken sentence with which al-
Biruni’s chapter on the Nauroz (Navasard) begins: “And he
divided the cup among his companions and said, c O that we
had Nauroz every day!’” 12

On these joyful days, Aramazd, the supremely generous
and hospitable lord of Armenia, became more generous and
hospitable. 13 No doubt the flesh of sacrifices offered to him
was freely distributed among the poor, and the wayworn
traveller always found a ready welcome at the table of the
rejoicing pilgrims. The temples themselves must have been
amply provided with rooms for the entertainment of strangers.
It was really Aramazd-Dionysos that entertained them with
his gifts of corn and wine.

Through the introduction of the Julian calendar the Arme-
nians lost their Navasard celebrations. But they still preserve
the memory of them, by consuming and distributing large
quantities of dry fruit on the first of January, just as the
Persians celebrated Nauroz, by distributing sugar. 14

No information has reached us about the birth or parentage
of the Armenian Aramazd. His name appears sometimes
as Ormizd in its adjectival form. But we do not hear that
he was in any way connected with the later Magian speculation
about Auramazda, which (perhaps under Hellenistic influ-
ences) made him a son of the limitless time (Zervana Akarana)
and a twin brother of Ahriman. Moreover, Aramazd was a
bachelor god. No jealous Hera stood at his side as his wedded
wife, to vex him with endless persecutions. Not even Spenta-
Armaiti (the genius of the earth), or archangels, and angels,
some of whom figure both as daughters and consorts of Ahura-
mazda in the extant Avesta (Ys. 454 etc.), appear in such an
intimate connection with this Armenian chief deity. Once only
in a martyrological writing of the middle ages Anahit is called
his wife. 15 Yet this view finds no support in ancient authorities,
though it is perfectly possible on a priori grounds.


24


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


Our uncertainty in this matter leaves us no alternative but
to speculate vaguely as to how Aramazd brought about the
existence of gods who are affiliated to him. Did he beget
or create them? Here the chain of the myth is broken or left
unfinished.

Aramazd must have had many sanctuaries in the country,
for Armenian paganism was not the templeless religion which
Magian Zoroastrianism attempted to become. The most
highly honored of these was in Ani, a fortified and sacred city
(perhaps the capital of the early Armenians) in the district of
Daranali, near the present Erzinjan. It contained the tombs
and mausolea of the Armenian kings , 16 who, as Gelzer sug-
gests, slept under the peaceful shadow of the deity. Here
stood in later times a Greek statue of Zeus, brought from the
West with other famous images . 17 It was served by a large
number of priests, some of whom were of royal descent. 1 *
This sanctuary and famous statue were destroyed by Gregory
the Illuminator during his campaign against the pagan temples.

Another temple or altar of Aramazd was found in Bagavan
(town of the gods) in the district of Bagrevand , 19 and still
another on Mount Palat or Pashat along with the temple of
AstXik. Moses of Khoren incidentally remarks 20 that there
are four kinds of Aramazd, one of which is Kund (“bald ”) 21
Aramazd. These could not have been four distinct deities,
but rather four local conceptions of the same deity, repre-
sented by characteristic statues . 22

II. ANAHIT

After Aramazd, Anahit was the most important deity of
Armenia. In the pantheon she stood immediately next to
the father of the gods, but in the heart of the people she was
supreme. She was “ the glory,” “ the great queen or lady,”
“ the one born of gold,” “ the golden-mother.”


IRANIAN DEITIES


25


Anahit is the Ardvi Sura Anahita of the Avesta, whose name,
if at all Iranian, would mean “moist, mighty, undefiled,”
a puzzling but not altogether unbefitting appellation for the
yazata of the earth-born springs and rivers. But there is a
marked and well-justified tendency to consider the Persian
Anahita herself an importation from Babylonia. She is
thought to be Ishtar under the name of Anatu or the Elamite
“ Nahunta.” If so, then whatever her popular character may
have been, she could not find a place in the Avesta without be-
ing divested of her objectionable traits or predilections. And
this is really what happened. But even in the Avestic portrai-
ture of her it is easy to distinguish the original. This Zoroas-
trian golden goddess of the springs and rivers with the high,
pomegranate-like breasts had a special relation to the fecundity
of the human race. She was interested in child-birth and nur-
ture, like Ishtar, under whose protection children were placed
with incantation and solemn rites. Persian maids prayed to her
for brave and robust husbands. Wherever she went with the
Persian armies and culture in Western Asia, Armenia, Pontus,
Cappadocia, Phrygia, etc., her sovereignty over springs and
rivers was disregarded and she was at once identified with
some goddess of love and motherhood, usually with Ma or the
Mater Magna. It would, therefore, be very reasonable to sup-
pose that there was a popular Anahita in Persia itself, who
was nothing less than Ishtar as we know her. This is further
confirmed by the fact that to this day the planet Venus is called
Nahid by the Persians . 23

The Armenian Anahit is also Asianic in character. She does
not seem to be stepping out of the pages of the Avesta as a
pure and idealized figure, but rather she came there from the
heart of the common people of Persia, or Parthia, and must
have found some native goddess whose attributes and ancient
sanctuaries she assimilated. She has hardly anything to do
with springs and rivers. She is simply a woman, the fair


1 6


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


daughter of Aramazd, a sister of the Persian Mihr and of the
cosmopolitan Nane. As in the Anahit Yashts of the A vesta,
so also in Armenia, “ golden ” is her fairest epithet. She was
often called “ born in gold ” or “ the golden mother ” prob-
ably because usually her statue was of solid gold.

In the light of what has just been said we are not surprised
to find that this goddess exhibited two distinct types of woman-
hood in Armenia, according to our extant sources. Most of
the early Christian writers, specially Agathangelos, who would
have eagerly seized upon anything derogatory to her good
name, report nothing about her depraved tastes or unchaste
rites.

If not as a bit of subtle sarcasm, then at least as an echo of
the old pagan language, King Tiridates is made to call her
“ the mother of all sobriety,” i.e. orderliness, as over against a
lewd and ribald mode of life . 24 The whole expression may also
be taken as meaning “the sober, chaste mother.” No sugges-
tion of impure rites is to be found in Agathangelos or Moses in
connection with her cultus.

[Prometheus]

On the other hand no less an authority than the geographer
Strabo (63 B.C.-25A.D.) reports that the great sanctuary of
Anahit at Erez (or Eriza), in Akilisene (a district called also
Anahitian 25 owing to the widely spread fame of this temple)
was the centre of an obscene form of worship. Here there
were hierodules of both sexes, and what is more, here daugh-
ters of the noble families gave themselves up to prostitu-
tion for a considerable time, before they were married. Nor
was this an obstacle to their being afterwards sought in
marriage . 26

Strabo is not alone in representing Anahit in this particularly
sad light. She was identified with the Ephesian Artemis by
the Armenians themselves. Faustus of Byzantium, writing in
the fifth century, says of the imperfectly Christianized Arme-
nians of the preceding century, that they continued “ in secret


in 3 taj/:

- ' J f v ' ' . • ' '

./ . - . _?

T' ; - :J . ? J J ’ . r;







PLATE III


Bronze Head of Anahit, a Greek work (probably
Aphrodite) found at Satala, worshipped by the Ar-
menians, now in the British Museum.




IRANIAN DEITIES


27


the worship of the old deities in the form of fornication.” 27
The reference is most probably to the rites of the more popu-
lar Anahit rather than her southern rival, AstXik, whom the
learned identified with Aphrodite, and about whose worship
no unchastity is mentioned. Mediaeval authors of Armenia
also assert similar things about Anahit. Vanakan Vardapet
says, “ Astarte is the shame of the Sidonians, which the Chal-
deans (Syrians or Mesopotamians) called Kaukabhta, the
Greeks, Aphrodite, and the Armenians, Anahit.” 28

In a letter to Sahag Ardsruni, ascribed to Moses of Khoren , 29
we read that in the district of Antzevatz there was a famous
Stone of the Blacksmiths. Here stood a statue of Anahit and
here the blacksmiths (no doubt invisible ones) made a dread-
ful din with their hammers and anvils. The devils (i.e.
idols) dispensed out of a melting pot bundles of false medi-
cine which served the fulfilling of evil desires, “ like the
bundle of St. Cyprian intended for the destruction of the Vir-
gin Justina.” 30 This place was changed later into a sanctuary
of the Holy Virgin and a convent for nuns, called Hogeatz
vank.

There can be no doubt, therefore, that the Armenian Anahit
admitted of the orgiastic worship that in the ancient orient
characterized the gods and especially the goddesses of fertility.
No doubt these obscene practices were supposed to secure her
favor. On the other hand it is quite possible that she played
in married life the well-known role of a mother of sobriety
like Hera or rather Ishtar , 31 the veiled bride and protector of
wedlock, jealously watching over the love and faith plighted
between husband and wife, and blessing their union. We may
therefore interpret in this sense the above mentioned descrip-
tion of this goddess, which Agathangelos 32 puts in the mouth
of King Tiridates: “ The great lady (or queen) Anahit, who is
the glory and life-giver of our nation, whom all kings honour,
especially the King of the Greeks (sic!), who is the mother of


28


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


all sobriety , and a benefactress (through many favours, but
especially through the granting of children) of all mankind}
through whom Armenia lives and maintains her life.” Al-
though clear-cut distinctions and schematic arrangements are
not safe in such instances, one may say in general that Ara-
mazd once created nature and man, but he now (speaking from
the standpoint of a speculative Armenian pagan of the first
century) sustains life by giving in abundance the corn and
the wine. Anahit, who also may have some interest in the
growth of vegetation, gives more especially young ones to ani-
mals and children to man, whom she maternally tends in their
early age as well as in their strong manhood. Aramazd is the
god of the fertility of the earth, Anahit the goddess of the
fecundity of the nation.

However, as she was deeply human, the birth and care of
children could not be her sole concern. As a merciful and
mighty mother she was sought in cases of severe illness and
perhaps in other kinds of distress. Agathangelos mentions the
care with which she tends the people. In Moses 33 we find that
King Artaxias, in his last sickness, sent a nobleman to Erez to
propitiate the tender-hearted goddess. But unlike Ishtar and
the Persian Anahita, the Armenian Anahit shows no war-like
propensities, nor is her name associated with death.

Like Aramazd, she had many temples in Armenia, but the
most noted ones were those of Erez, Artaxata, Ashtishat, and
Armavir. 34 There was also in Sophene a mountain called the
Throne of Anahit, 35 and a statue of Anahit at the stone of the
Blacksmiths. The temple at Erez was undoubtedly the rich-
est sanctuary in the country and a favorite centre of pilgrim-
age. It was taken and razed to the ground by Gregory the
Illuminator. 36 It was for the safety of its treasures that the
natives feared when Lucullus entered the Anahitian province. 37

Anahit had two annual festivals, one of which was held,
according to Alishan, on the 1 5th of Navasard, very soon after


IRANIAN DEITIES


29


the New Year’s celebration. Also the nineteenth day of every
month was consecrated to her. A regular pilgrimage to her
temple required the sacrifice of a heifer, a visit to the river
Lykos near-by, and a feast, after which the statue of the god-
dess was crowned with wreaths . 38 Lucullus saw herds of heifers
of the goddess , 39 with her mark, which was a torch, wander up
and down grazing on the meadows near the Euphrates, without
being disturbed by anyone. The Anahit of the countries west
of Armenia bore a crescent on her head.

We have already seen that the statues representing Anahit
in the main sanctuaries, namely in Erez, Ashtishat, and prob-
ably also in Artaxata, were solid gold. According to
Pliny 40 who describes the one at Erez, this was an unprece-
dented thing in antiquity. Not under Lucullus, but under
Antonius did the Roman soldiers plunder this famous statue.
A Bononian veteran who was once entertaining Augustus in a
sumptuous style, declared that the Emperor was dining off the
leg of the goddess and that he had been the first assailant of the
famous statue, a sacrilege which he had committed with im-
punity in spite of the rumours to the contrary . 41 This statue
may have been identical with the (Ephesian) Artemis which,
according to Moses , 42 was brought to Erez from the west.

III. TIUR (TIR)

Outside of Artaxata, the ancient capital of Armenia (on the
Araxes), and close upon the road to Valarshapat (the winter
capital), was the best known temple of Tiur. The place was
called Erazamuyn (Greek Weipopoucros), which probably
means “ interpreter of dreams .” 43 Tiur had also another
temple in the sacred city of Armavir . 44

He was no less a personage than the scribe of Aramazd,
which may mean that in the lofty abode of the gods, he kept
record of the good and evil deeds of men for a future day of


30


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


reckoning, or what is more probable on comparative grounds,
he had charge of writing down the decrees ( hraman , Pers.
firman) that were issued by Aramazd concerning the events of
each human life . 46 These decrees were no doubt recorded not
only on heavenly tablets but also on the forehead of every
child of man that was born. The latter were commonly called
the “ writ on the forehead ” 46 which, according to present folk-
lore, human eyes can descry but no one is able to decipher.

Besides these general and pre-natal decrees, the Armenians
seem to have believed in an annual rendering of decrees, re-
sembling the assembly of the Babylonian gods on the world-
mountain during the Zagmuk (New Year) festival. They
located this event on a spring night. As a witness of this we
have only a universally observed practice.

In Christian Armenia that night came to be associated with
Ascension Day. The people are surely reiterating an ancient
tradition when they tell us that at an unknown and mystic
hour of the night which precedes Ascension silence envelops
all nature. Heaven comes nearer. All the springs and streams
cease to flow. Then the flowers and shrubs, the hills and
stones, begin to salute and address one another, and each one
declares its specific virtue. The King Serpent who lives in his
own tail learns that night the language of the flowers. If
anyone is aware of that hour, he can change everything into
gold by dipping it into water and expressing his wish in the
name of God. Some report also that the springs and rivers
flow with gold, which can be secured only at the right moment.
On Ascension Day the people try to find out what kind of luck
is awaiting them during the year, by means of books that tell
fortune, or objects deposited on the previous day in a basin of
water along with herbs and flowers. A veil covers these things
which have been exposed to the gaze of the stars during the
mystic night, and a young virgin draws them out one by one
while verses divining the future are being recited . 47


IRANIAN DEITIES


3i


Whether Tiur originally concerned himself with all these
things or not, he was the scribe of Aramazd. Being learned
and skilful, he patronized and imparted both learning and
skill. His temple, called the archive 48 of the scribe of Ara-
mazd, was also a temple of learning and skill, i.e. not only a
special sanctuary where one might pray for these things and
make vows, but also a school where they were to be taught.
Whatever else this vaunted learning and skill included, it
must have had a special reference to the art of divination.
It was a kind of Delphic oracle. This is indirectly attested
by the fact that Tiur, who had nothing to do with light, was
identified with Apollo in Hellenic times , 49 as well as by the
great fame for interpretation of dreams which Tiur’s temple
enjoyed. Here it was that the people and the grandees of
the nation came to seek guidance in their undertakings and to
submit their dreams for interpretation. The interpretation
of dreams had long become a systematic science, which was
handed down by a clan of priests or soothsayers to their pupils.
Tiur must have also been the patron of such arts as writing
and eloquence, for on the margin of some old Armenian
MSS. of the book of Acts (chap, xiv, v. 12), the name of Her-
mes, for whom Paul was once mistaken because of his elo-
quence, was explained as “ the god Tiur.”

Besides all these it is more than probable that Tiur was the
god who conducted the souls of the dead into the nether world.
The very common Armenian imprecation, “ May the writer
carry him! ” 50 or “The writer for him! ” as well as Tiur’s
close resemblance to the Babylonian Nabu in many other re-
spects, goes far to confirm this view.

In spite of his being identified with Apollo and Hermes,
Tiur stands closer to the Babylonian Nabu 51 than to either of
these Greek deities. In fact, Hermes himself must have de-
veloped on the pattern of Nabu. The latter was a god of
learning and of wisdom, and taught the art of writing. He


32


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


knew — and so he could impart — the meaning of oracles and
incantations. He inspired (and probably interpreted) dreams.
In Babylonia Nabu was identified with the planet Mercury.

But the name of Tiur is a proof that the Babylonian Nabu
did not come directly from the South. By what devious way
did he then penetrate Armenia?

The answer is simple. In spite of the puzzling silence of
the Avesta on this point, Iran knew a god by the name of Tir.
One of the Persian months, as the old Cappadocian and Ar-
menian calendars attest, was consecrated to this deity (perhaps
also the thirteenth day of each month). We find among the
Iranians as well as among the Armenians, a host of theopho-
rous names composed with “ Tir ” such as Tiribazes, Tiridates,
Tiran, Tirikes, Tirotz, Tirith, etc., bearing unimpeachable wit-
ness to the god’s popularity. Tiro-naKathwa is found even in
the Avesta 52 as the name of a holy man. It is from Iran that
Tir migrated in the wake of the Persian armies' and civilization
to Armenia, Cappadocia, and Scythia, where we find also Tlr’s
name as Teiro on Indo-Scythian coins of the first century of
our era . 53

We have very good reasons to maintain that the description
of the Armenian Tiur fits also the Iranian Tir, and that they
both were identical with Nabu. As Nabu in Babylonia, so
also Tir in Iran was the genius presiding over the planet Mer-
cury and bore the title of Dabir , “ writer.” 54

But a more direct testimony can be cited bearing on the orig-
inal identity of the Persian Tir with Nabu. The Neo'-Baby-
lonian king Nebuchadnezzar was greatly devoted to Nabu,
his patron god. He built at the mouth of the Euphrates a
city which he dedicated to him and called by a name containing
the deity’s name, as a component part. This name was ren-
dered in Greek by Berossus (or Abydenus?) as TepijScov and
AtpiSwrt?, “ given to Mercury.” The latter form, says
Rawlinson, occurs as early as the time of Alexander . 55 The


IRANIAN DEITIES


33


arrow-like writing-wedge was the commonest symbol of
Nabu, and could easily give rise to the Persian designation . 36
That the arrow seems to have been the underlying idea of the
Persian conception of Nabu is better attested by the fact that
both Herodotus and Armenian history know the older form
of Tiran, Tigranes, as a common name. Tigranes is, no doubt,
derived from Tigris , old Persian for “ arrow.”

IV. MIHR (MITHRA)

Our knowledge of the Armenian Mihr is unfortunately
very fragmentary. He was unquestionably Iranian. Although
popular at one time, he seems to have lost some ground when
we meet with him. His name Mihr (Parthian or Sassanian for
Mithra) shows that he was a late comer. Nevertheless he
was called the son of Aramazd, and was therefore a brother of
Anahit and Nane. In the popular Zoroastrianism of Persia,
especially in Sassanian times, we find that the sun (Mihr) and
moon were children of Ormazd, the first from his own mother,
or even from a human wife, and the moon, from his own sis-
ter . 57 Originally Mihr may have formed in Armenia a triad
with Aramazd and Anahit like that of Artaxerxes Mnemon’s
inscriptions. If so he soon had to yield that place to the
national god Vahagn.

The Armenian Mithra presents a puzzle. If he was a
genius of light and air, a god of war and contracts, a creature
of Aramazd equal in might to his creator, as we find him to
be in the Avesta, no trace of such attributes is left. But for
the Armenians he was the genius or god of fire, and that is why
he was identified with Hephaistos in syncretistic times . 58 This
strange development is perhaps further confirmed by the
curious fact that until this day, the main fire festival of the
Armenians comes in February, the month that once corre-
sponded to the Mehekan (dedicated to Mihr) of the Arme-


34


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


man calendar. But it must not be overlooked that all over the
Indo-European world February was one of the months in
which the New Fires were kindled.

The connection of Mihr with fire in Armenia may be ex-
plained as the result of an early identification with the native
Vahagn, who, as we shall see, was a sun, lightning, and fire-
god. This conjecture acquires more plausibility when we re-
member that Mihr did not make much headway in Armenia
and that finally Vahagn occupied in the triad the place which,
by right and tradition, belonged to Mihr.

Of Mithraic mysteries in Armenia we hear nothing. There
were many theophorous names compounded with his name,
such as Mihran, Mihrdat. The Armenian word “ Mehyan”
“ temple,” seems also to be derived from his name.

We know that at the Mithrakana festivals when it was the
privilege of the Great King of Persia to become drunk (with
haoma?), a thousand horses were sent to him by his Armenian
vassal. We find in the region of Sassun (ancient Tarauntis) a
legendary hero, called Meher, who gathers around himself a
good many folk-tales and becomes involved even in eschato-
logical legends. He still lives with his horse as a captive in a
cave called Zympzymps which can be entered in the Ascension
night. There he turns the wheel of fortune, and thence he
will appear at the end of the world.

The most important temple dedicated to Mihr was in the
village of Bagayarij (the town of the gods) in Derjan, Upper
Armenia, where great treasures were kept. This sanctuary also
was despoiled and destroyed by Gregory the Illuminator. It
is reported that in that locality Mihr required human sacrifices,
and about these Agathangelos also darkly hints . 59 This is,
however, very difficult to explain, for in Armenia offerings
of men appear only in connection with dragon (i.e. devil) wor-
ship. On the basis of the association of Mihr with eschato-
logical events, we may conjecture that the Armenian Mihr had


IRANIAN DEITIES


35


gradually developed two aspects, one being that which we have
described above, and the other having some mysterious re-
lation to the under-world powers. 60

V. SPANTARAMET

The Amesha Spenta, Spenta Armaiti (holy genius of the
earth) and the keeper of vineyards, was also known to the
translators of the Armenian Bible who used her name in
2 Macc. vi. 7, to render the name of Dionysos.

However, it would seem that she did not hold a place in the
Armenian pantheon, and was known only as a Persian
goddess. We hear of no worship of Spantaramet among the
Armenians and her name does not occur in any passage on Ar-
menian religion. It is very strange, indeed, that the translators
should have used the name of an Iranian goddess to render
that of a Greek god. Yet the point of contact is clear. Among
the Persians Spenta Armaiti was popularly known also as the
keeper of vineyards, and Dionysos was the god of the vine.
But, whether it is because of the evident dissimilarity of sex
or because the Armenians were not sufficiently familiar with
Spantaramet, the translators soon (2 Macc. xiv. 33 ; 3 Macc. ii.
29) discard her name and use for Dionysos “ Ormzdakan
god,” i.e. Aramazd, whose peculiar interest in vegetation we
have already noticed. Spenta Armaiti was better known to the
ancient religion of Armenia as Santaramet, the goddess of
the under-world.

The worship of the earth is known to Eznik 61 as a magian
and heathen practice, but he does not directly connect it with
the Armenians, although there can be little doubt that they
once had an earth-goddess, called Erkir (Perkunas) or Armat,
in their pantheon.


CHAPTER IV

[Prometheus]

SEMITIC DEITIES

S EMITIC deities were introduced into the Armenian pan-
theon comparatively late, notwithstanding the fact that
the Armenians had always been in commercial intercourse
with their southern neighbours. It was Tigranes the Great
(94-54 b.c.) who brought these gods and goddesses back
from his conquests along with their costly statues. 1 It is not
easy to say how much of politics can be seen in this procedure.
As a semi-barbarian, who had acquired a taste for western
things, he surely was pleased with the aesthetic show and
splendor of the more highly civilized Syrian empire of the Se-
leucids and its religion. He must have seen also some under-
lying identity between the Syrian deities and their Armenian
brothers. However, in Armenia itself no real fusion took
place between the native and foreign gods. The extant
records show that out of all the Syrian gods and goddesses
who migrated north, only AstXik (Astarte- Aphrodite) ob-
tained a wide popularity. On the contrary, the others became
little more than local deities, and that not without at first hav-
ing encountered fierce opposition. The early stage of things
is clearly reflected in the relation of Ba’al Shamin to Vahagn
and in the manner in which he figures in the hero stories of
Armenia as one who' is discomfited or slain in battle. It is
becoming more and more certain that almost all of these Se-
mitic gods were brought from Phoenicia. But they hardly
can have come in organized, coherent groups like Ba’al Sha-
min — AstXik as Jensen thinks in his fantastic Hit titer und
Armenier.


SEMITIC DEITIES


37


I. BA’AL SHAMIN (Armen. Barshamina)

In the village of Thortan, where patriarchs descended from
Gregory the Illuminator were buried, later stood the “ bril-
liantly white ” statue of the Syrian god Ba’al Shamin, the lord
of heaven. This statue was made of ivory, crystal, and silver . 2
It was a current tradition that Tigranes the Great had captured
it during his victorious campaign in Syria. No doubt the
costly material was expressive of the character and story of the
deity whom it endeavored to portray. In the legendary his-
tory of Armenia, where euhemerism rules supreme, Ba’al Sha-
min appears as a giant whom the Syrians deified on account of
his valorous deeds, but who had been vanquished by Aram and
slain by his soldiers . 3 In reality Ba’al Shamin was originally
a supreme god of the heavens, who gave good and evil, life
and death, rain and sunshine, but who had already merged
his identity in that of the Syrian sun-god, when he came
to Armenia. In his adoptive home he ever remained a
more or less unpopular rival of Vahagn, a native sun and
fire god.

The one genuine Armenian myth about him that has sur-
vived is that Vahagn stole straw from him in a cold winter
night. The Milky Way was formed from the straw that
dropped along as the heavenly thief hurried away . 4 This may
be a distinctly Armenian but fragmentary version of the Pro-
metheus legend, and the straw may well have something to do
with the birth of fire. (See chapter on Vahagn.) Needless
to say that the myth which was current even in Christian Ar-
menia was not meant as a compliment to the foreign deity.
It was an Armenian god playing a trick on a Syrian intruder.
If AstXik was the wife of Ba’al Shamin, Vahagn won another
victory over him, by winning her love.


38


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


II. NANE (HANEA?)

Nane is undoubtedly the Nana of ancient Babylonia, orig-
inally a Sumerian goddess. In Erech (Uruk), a city of South
Babylonia, she was the goddess of the evening star and mis-
tress of heaven. In fact, she was simply the Ishtar of Erech,
the heroine of the famous Gilgamesh epic, a goddess of the
life and activity of nature, of sensual love, of war and of
death. Her statue had been in olden times captured by the
Elamites, and its return to Erech was celebrated as a great
triumph. Her worship in later times had spread broadcast
west and north. She was found in Phrygia and even as far
as Southern Greece. According to the First Book of the Mac-
cabees (Chap, vi, v. 2) her temple at Elam contained golden
statues and great treasures.

She may have come to Armenia long before Tigranes en-
riched the pantheon with Syrian and Phoenician gods. It is
difficult to explain how she came to be called the daughter of
Aramazd, unless she had once occupied an important position.

We hear nothing about orgiastic rites at her Armenian
temple in Thil (the ©aXiVa of Ptolemy). On the con-
trary, in Hellenizing times she was identified with Athene , 5
which perhaps means that she had gradually come to be recog-
nised as a wise, austere and war-like goddess.

III. AST A IK

Among all the Semitic deities which found their way into
the Armenian pantheon, none attained the importance that was
acquired by AstXik, especially in Tarauntis. In spite of
the presence of Anahit and Nana — two goddesses of her own
type and therefore in rivalry with her — she knew how to hold
her own and even to win the national god Vahagn as her lover.


SEMITIC DEITIES


39


For her temple at Ashtisat (where Anahit and Vahagn also
had famous sanctuaries) was known as “Vahagn’s chamber,”
and in it stood their statues side by side. However it is now
impossible to reconstruct the myth that was at the basis of
all this. It may be that we have here the intimate relation
of a Syrian Ba’al to Astarte. It may also be that the myth is
purely Greek and reflects the adventures of Ares with Aphro-
dite, for AstXik was called Aphrodite by Hellenizing Arme-
nians . 6 Hoffman recognized in the Armenian name AstXik
(which means “ little star ”) a translation of the Syrian Kau-
kabhta, a late designation of Ashtart (Ishtar) both as a god-
dess and as the planet Venus. The latter is no more called
AstXik by the Armenians, but Arusyak } “ the little bride,”
which is an old title of Ishtar, “ the veiled bride,” and shows
that the Armenians not only identified the planet Venus with
their goddess AstXik, but were familiar with one of her most
important titles.

In view of their essential identity it was natural that some
confusion should arise between AstXik and Anahit. So Vana-
gan Vartabed says: “Astarte is the shame of the Sidonians,
whom the Syrians called Kaukabhta, the Greeks Aphrodite,
and the Armenians Anahit.” Either this mediaeval author
meant to say AstXik instead of Anahit, or for him AstXik’s
name was not associated with sacred prostitution in Armenia.

The custom of flying doves at the Rose-Sunday of the Ar-
menians in Shirag (see Chapter VIII) suggests a possible rela-
tion of AstXik to this festival, the true character of which will
be discussed later.

Her memory is still alive in Sassoun (ancient Tarauntis),
where young men endeavor to catch a glimpse of the goddess
at sunrise when she is bathing in the river. But AstXik, who
knows their presence, modestly wraps herself up with the
morning mist. Her main temple was at Ashtishat, but she had
also other sanctuaries, among which was that at Mount Palat
or Pashat.


40


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


IV. ZATIK

The Armenian translation of the Bible calls the Jewish pass-
over “ the festival of Zatik,” while the Armenian church has
from time immemorial applied that name to Easter. Zatik,
in the sense of Passover or Easter, is unknown to the Greeks
and Syrians. Here occurs, no doubt, an old word for an
old deity or an old festival. But what does it mean? The
Iberians have a deity called “ Zaden,” by whom fishermen
used to swear, but about whom we know nothing definite
except that this deity is feminine and her name probably under-
lies that of Sathenik, the Albanian queen of King Artaxias
(190 b.c.). We may perhaps infer from this queen’s reputed
devotion to AstXik that Zaden was a northern representative
of Ishtar. But Zatik’s form and associations remind us of the
Palestinian Sedeq = Phoenician S-ySy/c. It is becoming
clearer and clearer that once in Canaan there was such a chief
deity whose name occurs in Melchi-sedeq , “ Sedeq is my King,”
Adoni-Sedeq y “ Sedeq is my Lord,” or, according to a later
view, “ Sedeq is King,” “ Sedeq is Lord.” Farther East, the
Babylonian Shamash has two sons called respectively Kettu
(which, like Sedeq, means “ righteousness ”) and Misharu
(‘‘rectitude”). These two deities are mentioned also in the
Sanchoniatho fragments of Philo Byblios under the names of
Sydyk and Misor, as culture-heroes who have discovered the
use of salt. Phoenician inscriptions have Sedeqyathan , “ Sedeq
gave,” as a personal name, as well as combinations of Sedeq
with Ramman and Melek. Fr. Jeremias thinks that Sydyk
and Misor were respectively the spring and autumn sun in
sun-worship and the waxing and waning moon in moon
worship.

As twins they were represented by Ashera at the door of
Phoenician temples. According to the above mentioned San-


SEMITIC DEITIES


4i


choniatho fragments, Sydyk was in Phoenicia the father
of the seven Kabirs (great gods) and of Eshmun (Asklepios)
called the Eighth. In conformity with this in Persian
and Greek times Sedeq was recognized among the Syrians
as the angel (genius) of the planet Jupiter, an indication
that he once was a chief deity. This god may have had also
some relation to the Syrian hero-god Sandacos mentioned
by Apollodorus of Athens , 7 while on the other hand San-
dakos may be identified also with the Sanda of Tarsus. At all
events Sandakos went to Cilicia and founded (i.e. he was the
god of) the city of Celenderis and became through two gener-
ations of heroes the father of Adonis. Zatik, as well as Sedeq,
was probably a vegetation god, like Adonis, whose resurrec-
tion began at the winter solstice and was complete in the
spring. The spring festival of such a god would furnish a
suitable name both for the Jewish passover and the Christian
Easter. The spring celebrations of the death and resurrection
of Adonis were often adopted and identified by the Christian
churches with the Death and Resurrection of Christ. How-
ever, no trace of a regular worship of Zatik is found among
the Armenians in historical times, although their Easter cele-
brations contain a dramatic bewailing, burial, and resurrection
of Christ.

Unsatisfactory as this explanation is, it would seem to come
nearer the truth than Sandalgian’s (supported by Tiryakian
and others) identification of Zatik with the Persian root zad,
“to strike,” from which is probably derived the Armenian
word zenum , “ to slaughter.”


CHAPTER V

VAHAGN “THE EIGHTH” GOD
A NATIONAL DEITY

I N the extant records Vahagn presents himself under the
double aspect of a national hero and a god of war or
courage . 1 A thorough study, however, will show that he was
not only a deity but the most national of all the Armenian gods.
It is probable that Vahagn was intentionally overlooked when
the Armenian pantheon was reorganized according to a stereo-
typed scheme of seven main “ worships.” For his official
cult is called “ the eighth,” which probably means that it
was an after-thought. Yet once he was recognized, he soon
found himself at the very side of Aramazd and Anahit,
with whom he formed a triad 2 on the pattern of that of
Auramazda, Anahita, and Mithra of the later Persian in-
scriptions. Moreover, he became a favorite of the Armenian
kings who brought sacrifices to his main temple at Ashtishat . 8

How did all this take place? We may venture to suggest
that when Zoroastrian ideas of a popular type were pervading
Armenia and a Zoroastrian or perhaps Magian pantheon of a
fragmentary character was superseding the gods of the country
or reducing them to national heroes, Vahagn shared the fate
of the latter class. Yet there was so much vitality in his wor-
ship, that Mithra himself could not obtain a firm foothold in
the land, in the face of the great popularity enjoyed by
this native rival.

Moses of Khoren reports an ancient song about Vahagn’s
birth, which will give us the surest clue to his nature and origin.
It reads as follows:


VAHAGN “THE EIGHTH” GOD


43


The heavens and the earth travailed,

There travailed also the purple sea,

The travail held

The red reed 4 (stalk) in the sea.

Through the hollow of the reed (stalk) a smoke rose,
Through the hollow of the reed (stalk) a flame rose
And out of the flame ran forth a youth.

He had hair of fire,

He had a beard of flame,

And his eyes were suns.

Other parts of this song, now lost, said that Vahagn had
fought and conquered dragons. VishapaxaX, “ dragon-
reaper,” was his best known title. He was also invoked, at
least in royal edicts, as a god of courage. It is mostly in this
capacity that he became a favorite deity with the Armenian
kings, and in later syncretistic times, was identified with
Herakles. Besides these attributes Vahagn claimed another.
He was a sun-god. A mediaeval writer says that the sun
was worshipped by the ancients under the name of Vahagn , 5
and his rivalry with Ba’al Shamin and probably also with
Mihr, two other sun-gods of a foreign origin, amply con-
firms this explicit testimony.

These several and apparently unconnected reports about
Vahagn, put together, evoke the striking figure of a god which
can be paralleled only by the Vedic Agni, the fire-god who
forms the fundamental and original unity underlying the
triad: — Indra, the lightning, Agni, the universal and sacri-
ficial fire, and Surya, the sun. Besides the fact that Vahagn’s
name may very well be a compound of Vah and Agni, no
better commentary on the birth, nature and functions of Va-
hagn may be found than the Vedic songs on these three
deities.

From the above quoted fragment which was sung to the
accompaniment of the lyre by the bards of GoXthn 6 long after
the Christianization of Armenia, we gather that Vahagn’s birth


44


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


had a universal significance. He was a son of heaven, earth,
and sea, but more especially of the sea. This wonderful youth
may be the sun rising out of the sea, but more probably he is
the fire-god surging out of the heavenly sea in the form of
the lightning, because the travail can be nothing else than the
raging storm. However, this matters little, for in Aryan
religion, the sun is the heavenly fire and only another aspect
of Agni. It is very significant that Armenians said both of
the setting sun and of the torch that went out, that “ they were
going to their mother,” i.e. they returned to the common es-
sence from which they were born. Once we recognize the unity
of all fire in heaven, in the skies, and on earth, as the Vedas do,
we need no more consider the universal travail at Vahagn’s
birth as a poetic fancy of the old Armenian bards. Here we
are on old Aryan ground. At least in the Rgveda the fire
claims as complex a parenthood as Vahagn. It is the child of
heaven, earth, and water . 7 Even the description of the ex-
ternal appearance of the Vedic Agni (and of Indra himself)
agrees with that of Vahagn. Agni is always youthful, like
Vahagn, with a continual fresh birth. Agni (as well as Indra)
has tawny hair and beard like Vahagn, who has “ hair of fire
and beard of flame.” Surya, the sun, is Agni’s eye. Vahagn’s
eyes are suns.

However, the key to the situation is the “ reed ” or u stalk.”
It is a very important word in Indo-European mythology in
connection with fire in its three forms, sun, lightning, and
earthly fire. It is the specially sacred fuel which gives birth
to the sacred fire. The Greek culture-hero Prometheus
brought down the fire stolen from the gods (or the sun) in a
fennel stalk. Indra, the lightning-god of the Vedas, after
killing Vrtra was seized with fear and hid himself for a while in
the stalk of a lotus flower in a lake. Once Agni hid himself
in the water and in plants, where the gods finally discovered
him. The sage Atharvan * of the Vedas extracted Agni from


VAHAGN “THE EIGHTH” GOD


45


the lotus flower, i.e. from the lotus stalk. Many dragon-
killers, who usually have some relation to the fire, sun, or
lightning, are born out of an enchanted flower . 9 We must
regard it as a very interesting and significant echo of the same
hoary myth that Zarathustra’s soul was sent down in the stalk
of a haoma-plant. Such a righteous soul was no doubt con-
ceived as a fiery substance derived from above.

It is not more than reasonable to see one original and primi-
tive myth at the root of all these stories, the myth of the mi-
raculous birth of the one universal fire stolen from the sun or
produced by the fire-drill in the clouds whence it comes down
to the earth (see Chapter VII).

Further, the dragon-slaying of ancient mythology is usually
the work of fire in one or another of its three aspects. The
Egyptian sun-god (evidently a compound being) kills the
dragon through his fire-spitting serpents. The A tar of the
Avesta (who gives both heat and light) fights with Azi Da-
haka. The Greek Herakles, manifestly a sun-god, strangles
serpents in his early childhood. Agni, as well as Indra and
Surya, is a Vrtra-slayer. Nothing scares away the Macedonian
dragon so successfully as the name of the thunderbolt, and it
is well known how the evil spirits of superstition and folk-lore,
which are closely allied with dragons, as we shall see, are al-
ways afraid of fire-brands and of fire in general. Macdonell
says that Agni is very prominent as a goblin-slayer, even more
so than Indra.

Finally, Vahagn’s attributes of courage and victory are not
strangers to the Vedic Agni and Indra . 10 Both of them are
gods of war and victory, no doubt mostly in virtue of their
meteorological character. The war-like nature of weather-
gods is a commonplace of universal mythology. Even the
Avestic Verethraghna inherits this distinctive quality from his
original Indo-European self, when his name was only a title
of Indra or Vayu.


46


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


We purposely delayed the mention of one point in our gen-
eral description of Vahagn. Modern Armenian folk-lore
knows a storm god called Dsovean (sea-born), who with an
angry storm goddess, Dsovinar (she who was born of the sea),
rules supreme in the storm and often appears to human eyes . 11
In view of the fact that we do not know any other sea-born
deity in Armenian mythology, who else could this strange
figure of folk-lore be but Vahagn, still killing his dragons in
the sky with his fiery sword or arrow and sending down the
fertilizing rain? His title “ sea-born,” which must have been
retained from an ancient usage and is in perfect keeping with
the extant Vahagn song, strongly recalls the Vedic Apam napat
“ water child,” who is supreme in the seas, dispensing water to
mankind, but also identical with Agni clad with the lightning
in the clouds . 12 Dsovinar may very well be a reminiscence of
the mermaids who accompanied the “ water-child,” or even
some female goddess like Indrani, the wife of Indra.

From these considerations it becomes very plain that Vahagn
is a fire and lightning god, born out of the stalk 13 in the
heavenly ( ? ) sea, with the special mission among other benef-
icent missions, to slay dragons. His title of dragon-reaper
is a distant but unmistakable echo of a pre-Vedic Vrtrahan.

[Prometheus]

In fact, the Armenian myth about him is an independent
tradition from the original home of the Indo-Iranians, and
confirms the old age of many a Vedic myth concerning Agni,
which modern scholars tend to regard as the fancies of later
poets . 14 And is it not a striking coincidence that the only sur-
viving fragment about Vahagn should be a birth-song, a topic
which, according to Macdonell, has, along with the sacrificial
functions of Agni, a paramount place in the minds of the Vedic
singers of Agni? 16


CHAPTER VI


NATURE WORSHIP AND NATURE MYTHS

I. SUN, MOON, AND STARS

M OSES of Chorene makes repeated allusions to the wor-
ship of the sun and moon in Armenia. In oaths the
name of the sun was almost invariably invoked , 1 and there
were also altars and images of the sun and moon . 2 Of what
type these images were, and how far they were influenced by
Syrian or Magian sun-worship, we cannot tell. We shall
presently see the medieval conceptions of the forms of the
sun and moon. Modern Armenians imagine the sun to be like
the wheel of a water-mill . 3 Agathangelos, in the alleged
letter of Diocletian to Tiridates, unconsciously bears witness
to the Armenian veneration for the sun, moon and stars . 4
But the oldest witness is Xenophon, who notes that the Ar-
menians sacrificed horses to the sun , 5 perhaps with some refer-
ence to his need of them in his daily course through the skies.
The eighth month of the Armenian year and, what is more sig-
nificant, the first day of every month, were consecrated to the
sun and bore its name, while the twenty-fourth day in the Ar-
menian month was consecrated to the moon. The Armenians,
like the Persians and most of the sun-worshipping peoples of
the East, prayed toward the rising sun, a custom which the
early church adopted, so that to this day the Armenian churches
are built and the Armenian dead are buried toward the east,
the west being the abode of evil spirits. As to the moon,
Ohannes Mantaguni in the Fifth Century bears witness to the
belief that the moon prospers or mars the plants , 6 and Anania
of Shirak says in his Demonstrations / “ The first fathers called


48


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


her the nurse of the plants,” a quite widely spread idea which
has its parallel, both in the west and in the short Mah-yasht
of the Avesta, particularly in the statement that vegetation
grows best in the time of the waxing moon . 8 At certain of its
phases the moon caused diseases, especially epilepsy, which was
called the moon-disease, and Eznik tries to combat this super-
stition with the explanation that it is caused by demons whose
activity is connected with the phases of the moon! 9 The
modern Armenians are still very much afraid of the baleful
influence of the moon upon children and try to ward it off by
magical ceremonies in the presence of the moon . 10

As among many other peoples, the eclipse of the sun and
moon was thought to be caused by dragons which endeavor
to swallow these luminaries. But the “ evil star ” of the
Western Armenians is a plain survival of the superstitions
current among the Persians, who held that these phenomena
were caused by two dark bodies, offspring of the primeval ox,
revolving below the sun and moon, and occasionally passing
between them and the earth . 11 When the moon was at an
eclipse, the sorcerers said that it resembled a demon (?). It
was, moreover, a popular belief that a sorcerer could bind the
sun and moon in their course, or deprive them of their light.
He could bring the sun or moon down from heaven by witch-
craft and although it was larger than many countries (worlds?)
put together, the sorcerers could set the moon in a threshing
floor, and although without breasts, they could milk it like a
cow . 12 This latter point betrays some reminiscence of a pri-
maeval cow in its relation to the moon and perhaps shows that
this luminary was regarded by the Armenians also as a goddess
of fertility. Needless to add that the eclipses and the appear-
ance of comets foreboded evil. Their chronologies are full of
notices of such astronomical phenomena that presaged great
national and universal disasters. Along with all these practices,
there was a special type of divination by the moon.


SUN, MOON AND STARS 49

Both sun and moon worship have left deep traces in the
popular beliefs of the present Armenians. 13

A few ancient stellar myths have survived, in a fragmentary
condition. Orion, Sirius, and other stars were perhaps in-
volved in myths concerning the national hero, Hayk, as they
bear his name.

We have seen that Vahagn’s stealing straw from Ba’al Sha-
min and forming the Milky Way, has an unmistakable refer-
ence to his character. The Milky Way 14 itself was anciently
known as “ the Straw-thief’s Way,” and the myth is current
among the Bulgarians, who may have inherited it from the
ancient Thracians.

Some of the other extant sun-myths have to do with the
great luminary’s travel beyond the western horizon. The
setting sun has always been spoken of among the Armenians
and among Slavs as the sun that is going to his mother.
According to Frazer “ Stesichorus also described the sun em-
barking in a golden goblet that he might cross the ocean in the
darkness of night and come to his mother, his wedded wife and
children dear.” The sun may, therefore, have been imagined
as a young person, who, in his resplendent procession through
the skies, is on his way to a re-incarnation. The people prob-
ably believed in a daily occurrence of death and birth, which
the sun, as the heavenly fire, has in common with the fire, and
which was most probably a return into a heavenly stalk or tree
and reappearance from it. This heavenly stalk or tree itself
must therefore have been the mother of the sun, as well as of
the fire, and in relation to the sun was known to the Letts and
even to the ancient Egyptians. The Armenians have forgotten
the original identity of the mother of the sun and have pro-
duced other divergent accounts of which Abeghian has given us
several. 15 They often think the dawn or the evening twilight
to be the mother of the sun. She is a brilliant woman with eyes
shining like the beams of the sun and with a golden garment,


50


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


who bestows beauty upon the maidens at sunset. Now she is
imagined as a good woman helping those whom the sun pun-
ished, now as a bad woman cursing and changing men into stone.
The mother of the sun is usually supposed to reside in the
palace of the sun, which is either in the east at the end of the
world or in a sea, like the Lake of Van. In the absence of a
sea, there is at least a basin near the mother. Like the Letto-
Lithuanians, who thought that Perkuna Tete, the mother of
the thunder and lightning, bathes the sun, and refreshes him
at the end of the day, the Armenians also associate this
mother closely with the bath which the sun takes at the close
of his daily journey. The palace itself is gorgeously described.
It is situated in a far-off place where there are no men, no birds,
no trees, and no turf, and where the great silence is disturbed
only by the murmur of springs welling up in the middle of
each one of the twelve courts, which are built of blue marble
and spanned over by arches. In the middle court, over the
spring, there is a pavilion where the mother of the sun waits for
him, sitting on the edge of a pearl bed among lights. When
he returns he bathes in the spring, is taken up, laid in bed and
nursed by his mother.

Further, that the sun crosses a vast sea to reach the east
was also known to the Armenians. Eznik is trying to prove
that this is a myth but that the sun passes underneath the earth
all the same. The sea is, of course, the primaeval ocean upon
which the earth was founded. It is on this journey that the
sun shines on the Armenian world of the dead as he did on the
Babylonian Aralu and on the Egyptian and Greek Hades.
The following extract from an Armenian collection of folk-
lore unites the sun’s relation to Hades and to the subterranean
ocean: “And at sun-set the sun is the 'portion of the dead.

It enters the sea and, passing under the earth, emerges in the
morning at the other side.” 18

Mediaeval writers 17 speak about the horses of the sun,


5i


SUN, MOON, AND STARS

an idea which is no more foreign to the Persians than to the
Greeks. One counts four of them, and calls them Enik, Me-
nik, Benik, and Senik, which sound like artificial or magic
names, but evidently picture the sun on his quadriga. Another,
mingling the scientific ideas of his time with mythical images,
says: “The sun is a compound of fire, salt, and iron, light

blended with lightning, fire that has been shaped — or with a
slight emendation — fire drawn by horses. There are in it
twelve windows with double shutters, eleven of which look up-
ward, and one to the earth. Wouldst thou know the shape of
the sun? It is that of a man deprived of reason and speech
standing between two horses. If its eye (or its real essence)
were not in a dish, the world would blaze up before it like a
mass of wool.” The reader will readily recognize in “ the win-
dows of the sun ” a far-off echo of early Greek philosophy.

Ordinarily in present-day myths the sun is thought to be a
young man and the moon a young girl. But, on the other hand,
the Germanic idea of a feminine sun and masculine moon is not
foreign to Armenian thought. They are brother and sister, but
sometimes also passionate lovers who are engaged in a weary
search for each other through the trackless fields of the
heavens. In such cases it is the youthful moon who is pining
away for the sun-maid. Bashfulness is very characteristic of
the two luminaries, as fair maids. So the sun hurls fiery needles
at the bold eyes which presume to gaze upon her face, and the
moon covers hers with a sevenfold veil of clouds . 18 These very
transparent and poetic myths, however, have little in them that
might be called ancient.

The ancient Armenians, like the Latins, possessed two dif-
ferent names for the moon. One of these was Lusin , an un-
mistakable cognate of Luna (originally Lucna or Lucina ), and
the other Ami(n)s, which now like the Latin mens , signifies
“month.” No doubt Lusin designated the moon as a female
goddess, while Amins corresponded to the Phrygian men
or Lunus.


52


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


The same mediaeval and quasi-scientific author who gives
the above semi-mythological description of the sun, portrays
the moon in the following manner: “ The moon was made out
of five parts, three of which are light, the fourth is fire, and
the fifth, motion . . . which is a compound. It is cloud-like,
light-like (luminous) dense air, with twelve windows, six of
which look heavenward and six earthward. What are the
forms of the moon? In it are two sea-buffaloes (?). The
light enters into the mouth of the one and is waning in the
mouth of the other. For the light of the moon comes from the
sun! ” 19 Here again the sea-buffaloes may be a dim and
confused reminiscence of a w primaeval cow ” which was associ-
ated with the moon and, no doubt, suggested by the peculiar
form of the crescent. Let us add also that the Armenians
spoke of the monthly rebirth of the moon, although myths
concerning it are lacking.

Fragments of Babylonian star-lore found their way into Ar-
menia probably through Median Magi. We have noticed
the planetary basis of the pantheon. In later times, however,
some of the planets came into a bad repute . 20 Anania of
Shirak (seventh century) reports that heathen (?) held Ju-
piter and Venus to be beneficent, Saturn and Mars were ma-
licious, but Mercury was indifferent.

Stars and planets and especially the signs of the Zodiac were
bound up with human destiny upon which they exercised a
decisive influence. According to Eznik 21 the Armenians be-
lieved that these heavenly objects caused births and deaths.
Good and ill luck were dependent upon the entrance of certain
stars into certain signs of the Zodiac. So they said: “ When
Saturn is in the ascendant, a king dies; when Leo (the lion) is
ascendant, a king is born. When the Taurus is ascendant, a
powerful and good person is born. With Aries, a rich person
is born, ( just as the ram has a thick fleece.’ With the Scorpion,
a wicked and sinful person comes to the world. Whoever is


SUN, MOON, AND STARS 53

born when Hayk (Mars?) is in the ascendant dies by iron, i.e.,
the sword.” Much of this star lore is still current among the
Mohammedans in a more complete form.

Eznik alludes again and again to the popular belief that
stars, constellations, and Zodiacal signs which bear names of
animals like Sirius (dog), Arcturus (bear), were originally
animals of those names that have been lifted up into the
heavens.

Something of the Armenian belief in the influence that
Zodiacal signs could exercise on the weather and crops is pre-
served by al-Blrunl 22 where we read: “ I heard a number
of Armenian learned men relate that on the morning of the
Fox-day there appears on the highest mountain, between the
Interior and the Exterior country, a white ram (Aries?) which
is not seen at any other time of the year except about this time
of this Day. Now the inhabitants of that country infer that the
year will be prosperous if the ram bleats 3 that it will be sterile
if it does not bleat.”



Fig. i. Relief

Found in the neighborhood of Ezzinjan


CHAPTER VII


NATURE WORSHIP AND NATURE MYTHS

II. FIRE

T HE worship of fire was possessed by Armenians as a ven-
erable heirloom long before they came into contact with
Zoroastrianism. It was so deeply rooted that the Christian
authors do not hesitate to call the heathen Armenians ash-
worshippers, a name which they apply also to the Persians
with less truth. We have seen that the old word “ Agni ”
was known to the Armenians in the name of Vahagn and that
their ideas of the fire-god were closely akin to those of the
Rgveda. Fire was, for them, the substance of the sun and of
the lightning. Fire gave heat and also light. Like the sun,
the light-giving fire had a “ mother,” most probably the
water-born and water-fed stalk or tree out of which fire was
obtained by friction or otherwise . 1 To this mother the fire
returned when extinguished. Even today to put out a candle
or a fire is not a simple matter, but requires some care and re-
spect. Fire must not be desecrated by the presence of a dead
body, by human breath, by spitting into it, or burning in it
such unclean things as hair and parings of the finger nail. An
impure fire must be rejected and a purer one kindled in
its place, usually from a flint. All this may be Zoroastrian
but it is in perfect accord with the older native views.

The people swear by the hearth-fire just as also by the sun.
Fire was and still is the most potent means of driving the evil
spirits away. The Eastern Armenian who will bathe in the
night scares away the malignant occupants of the lake or pool


FIRE


55


by casting a fire-brand into it, and the man who is harassed by
an obstinate demon has no more powerful means of getting rid
of him than to strike fire out of a flint. Through the sparks
that the latter apparently contains, it has become, along with
iron , 2 an important weapon against the powers of darkness.
Not only evil spirits but also diseases, often ascribed to de-
moniac influences, can not endure the sight of fire, but must flee
before this mighty deity. In Armenian there are two words
for fire. One is hur , 3 a cognate of the Greek Trup, and the
other krakj probably derived, like the other Armenian word
jragy “ candle,” “ light,” from the Persian cirag (also cirah,
carag). Hur was more common in ancient Armenian, but we
find also krak as far back as the Armenian literature reaches.
While Vahagn is unmistakably a male deity, we find that the
fire as a deity was female, like Hestia or Vesta. This was also
true of the Scythian fire-god whom Herodotus calls Hestia.
On the contrary the Vedic Agni and the Avestic A tar were
masculine.

The worship of fire took among the Armenians a two-fold
aspect. There was first the hearth-worship. This seems to
have been closely associated with ancestor spirits , 4 which natu-
rally flocked around the center and symbol of the home-life.
It is the lips of this earthen and sunken fireplace which the
young bride reverently kisses with the groom, as she enters
her new home for the first time. And it is around it that they
piously circle three times. A brand from this fire will
be taken when any member of the family goes forth to found
a new home. Abeghian, from whose excellent work on the
popular beliefs of the Armenians we have culled some of this
material, says that certain villages have also their communal
hearth, that of the founder of the village, etc., which receives
something like general reverence, and often, in cases of mar-
riage and baptism, is a substitute for a church when there is
none at hand. Ethnologists who hold that the development


56


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


of the family is later than that of the community would natu-
rally regard the communal fire as prior in order and impor-
tance.

A very marked remnant of hearth and ancestor worship
is found in special ceremonies like cleaning the house
thoroughly and burning candles and incense, which takes place
everywhere on Saturdays.

The second aspect of fire-worship in Armenia is the public
one. It is true that the Persian Atrushans (fire-temples or
enclosures) found little favor in both heathen and Christian
Armenia, and that fire, as such, does not seem to have attained
a place in the rank of the main deities. Nevertheless, there was
a public fire-worship, whether originally attached to a commu-
nal hearth or not. It went back sometimes to a Persian frobag
or farnbag (Arm. hurbak ) fire, and in fact we have several ref-
erences to a Persian or Persianized fire -altar in Bagavan, the
town of the gods . 5 Moreover, there can be little doubt that
Armenians joined the Persians in paying worship to the
famous seven fire-springs of Baku in their old province
of Phaitakaran. But usually the Armenian worship of the
fire possessed a native character.

The following testimonies seem to describe some phases of
this widely spread and deeply rooted national cult.

In the hagiography called the u Coming of the Rhipsimean
Virgins ” 6 wrongly ascribed to Moses of Chorene, we read
that on the top of Mount Palat (?) there was a house of Ara-
mazd and AstXik (Venus), and on a lower peak, to the south-
east, there was “ a house of fire, of insatiable fire, the god of
incessant combustion.” At the foot of the mountain, moreover,
there was a mighty spring. The place was called Buth. “ They
burnt the Sister Fire and the Brother Spring.”

Elsewhere we read, in like manner: “ Because they called
the fire sister, and the spring brother, they did not throw the
ashes away, but they wiped them with the tears of the
brother.” 7

[Prometheus]

FIRE


57


Lazare of Pharpe, a writer of the fifth century , 8 speaking
of an onslaught of the Christian Armenians on the sacred fire,
which the Persians were endeavoring to introduce into Ar-
menia, says: “ They took the fire and carried it into the water
as into the bosom of her brother, according to the saying of
the false teachers of the Persians.” The latter part of his
statement, however, is mistaken. So far as we know, the Per-
sians did not cast the sacred fire into the water, but allowed
the ashes to be heaped in the fire enclosure. When the floating
island (sea-monster) upon which Keresaspa had unwittingly
kindled a fire, sank and the fire fell into the water, this was
accounted to him a great sin. The above was rather a purely
Armenian rite. It would seem that it was a part of the Ar-
menian worship of the Sister Fire to extinguish her in the
bosom of her loving brother, the water, a rite which certainly
hides some nature myth, like the relation of the lightning
to the rain, or like the birth of the fire out of the stalk in the
heavenly sea. Whatever the real meaning of this procedure
was, the ashes of the sacred fire imparted to the water with
which they were “ wiped ” healing virtue. Even now in Ar-
menia, for example, in Agn and Diarbekir the sick are given
this potent medicine to drink which consists of the flaky ashes
of oak-fire mixed with water. W. Caland reports the same
custom of the ancient Letts in his article on the Pre-Christian
Death and Burial Rites of the Baltic People . 9 As the oak in
the European world is the tree sacred to the god of the
heavens and the storm, we may easily perceive what underlies
the ancient custom.

But it is not clear whether the Armenians (like many West-
ern nations) had several fire-festivals in the year. We have,
however, the survival of an indubitable fire-festival — which
originally aimed at influencing the activity of the rain-god —
in the annual bonfire kindled everywhere by Armenians at
Candlemas, or the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, on the


58


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


13th of February, in the courts of the churches. The fuel
often consists of stalks, straw, and thistles, which are kindled
from a candle of the altar. 10 The bonfire is usually repeated
on the streets, in the house-yards, or on the flat roofs. The
people divine the future crops through the direction of the
flames and smoke. They leap over it (as a lustration?) and
circle around it. Sometimes also they have music and a dance.
The ashes are often carried to the fields to promote their
fertility. It is perhaps not entirely without significance that
this festival falls within the month of Mehekan (consecrated
to Mihr), as the Armenian Mithra had distinctly become a
fire-god. 11 Another fire-festival, rather locally observed, will
be mentioned in the next chapter.



Fig. 2. Dragon-like Figure


CHAPTER VIII

NATURE WORSHIP AND NATURE MYTHS

III. WATER

I F FIRE were a female principle, water was masculine,
and as we have noticed, they were somehow very closely
associated as sister and brother in the Armenian fire-worship.
It is possible that this kinship was suggested by the trees and
luxuriant verdure growing on the banks of rivers and lakes.
As we know, reeds grew even in the heavenly sea.

Many rivers and springs were sacred, and endowed with
beneficent virtues. According to Tacitus , 1 the Armenians
offered horses as a sacrifice to the Euphrates, and divined by
its waves and foam. The sources of the Euphrates and Tigris
received and still receive worship . 2 Sacred cities were built
around the river Araxes and its tributaries. Even now there
are many sacred springs with healing power, usually called
“ the springs of light,” and the people always feel a certain
veneration towards water in motion, which they fear to pollute.
The people still drink of these ancient springs and burn candles
and incense before them, for they have placed them under the
patronage of Christian saints.

The Transfiguration Sunday, which comes in June, was con-
nected by the Armenian Church with an old water festival.
At this time people drench each other with water and the
ecclesiastical procession throws rose water at the congregation
during the Transfiguration Day rites. On this day the
churches are richly decorated with roses and the popular name
of the Festival is V artavar , “ Burning with Roses.” 3


6o


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


It is also reported that in various parts of Armenia, the
Vartavar is preceded by a night of bonfires. Therefore it
can be nothing else than the water festival which seems to
have once gone hand in hand with the midsummer (St. John’s,
St. Peter’s, etc.) fires in Europe, at which roses played a very
conspicuous part . 4 It is barely possible that the Armenian
name of this festival, “ Burning with Roses,” preserves some
allusion to the original but now missing fire, and even that
flowers were burnt in it or at least cast across the fire as in
Europe. In Europe the midsummer water festival was ob-
served also with bathings and visits to sacred springs. In parts
of Germany straw wheels set on fire were quenched in
the riverj and in Marseilles, the people drenched each other
with water. There can be little doubt that the water was used
in these various ways not only as a means of purification from
guilt and disease, but also and principally as a rain-charm.
Frazer, who, in his Golden Bough , has heaped together an
enormous mass of material on the various elements and aspects
of these festivals, has thereby complicated the task of working
out a unified and self-consistent interpretation.

The custom of throwing water at each other is reported
by al-Blruni 5 of the Persians, in connection with their New-
Year’s festival. As the Persian new year came in the spring,
there can be little doubt that the festival aimed at the increase
of the rain by sympathetic magic . 6 In fact, even now in certain
places of Armenia the tillers returning from their first day of
labour in the fields are sprinkled with water by those who lie
in wait for them on the way. So it may be safely assumed
that in Armenia also in ancient times the Navasard brought
with it the first water-festival of the year. In certain places
like the region of Shirak, flying doves form a part of the
Vartavar celebrations. Whether this has some reference to
an old AstXik (Ishtar) festival, is difficult to say. It is
quite possible that as in Europe, so also in ancient Armenia,


WATER 6 1

love-making and other more objectionable rites, formed an
important feature of these mid-summer celebrations.

The great centre of the Armenian Navasard and of the water
festival (Vartavar) was Bagavan, probably because both had
the same character. The fact that Bagavan was also a centre
of fire-worship emphasizes once more the close association of
these two elements which we have already pointed out.


CHAPTER IX


NATURE WORSHIP AND NATURE MYTHS

IV. TREES, PLANTS, AND MOUNTAINS

W E HAVE old testimony to tree and plant worship in
Armenia. There were first the poplars ( sausi ) of
Armenia, by which a legendary saus (whose name and exist-
ence were probably derived from the venerated tree itself)
divined. Then we have the words Haurut , Maurut , as names
of flowers ( Hyacinthus racemosus Dodonei). These, how-
ever, seem to be an echo of the Iranian Haurvatat and Ame-
retat (“ health ” and “ immortality ”), two Amesha-Spentas
who were also the genii of plants and water. The oak and
other trees are still held to be sacred, especially those near a
spring, and upon these one may see hanging pieces of clothing
from persons who wish to be cured of some disease. This
practice is often explained as a substitution of a part for the
whole, and it is very common also among the Semites in gen-
eral and the Mohammedans in particular . 1

Many mountains were sacred, while others, perhaps sacred
by themselves in very ancient times, became the sites of famous
temples. The towering Massis (Ararat) was called Azat
(Yazata?), “venerable.” It was a seat of dragons and fairies,
but the main reason of its sacredness must be sought in its im-
posing grandeur, its volcanic character, or even its association
with some deity like Marsyas-Masses, by the Phrygo-Arme-
nians . 2 This Phrygian god Marsyas-Masses was famous for
his skill with the flute but especially for his widely known
interest in rivers. He was the son of Hyagnis, probably a


TREES, PLANTS, AND MOUNTAINS 63

lightning god, and like the Norwegian Agne was hung from
a tree by Apollo, who skinned him alive (Apuleius). In fact
Marsyas was no more than a tribal variety of Hyagnis, and
Hyagnis can be nothing else but the Phrygian form of
Vahagn.

Mount Npat (Nt^xxr^s of Strabo), the source of the
mighty Tigris, must have enjoyed some veneration as a deity,
because the 26th day of each Armenian month was dedicated
to it. It has been maintained that Npat was considered by Zo-
roastrians the seat of Apam-Napat, an important Indo-Iranian
water deity.

Mt. Pashat or Palat was the seat of an Aramazd and Ast-
Xik temple and a centre of fire-worship. Another unidenti-
fied mountain in Sophene was called the Throne of Anahit.

One may safely assume that the Armenians thought in
an animistic way, and saw in these natural objects of worship
some god or spirit who in Christian times easily assumed the
name and character of a saint.


CHAPTER X


HEROES

T HE loss of the ancient songs of Armenia is especially
regrettable at this point, because they concerned them-
selves mostly with the purely national gods and heroes. The
first native writers of Armenian history, having no access to
the ancient Assyrian, Greek, and Latin authors, drew upon this
native source for their material. Yet the old legends were
modified or toned down in accordance with euhemeristic views
and accommodated to Biblical stories and Greek chronicles,
especially that of Eusebius of Caesarea. It is quite possible
that the change had already begun in pagan times, when
Iranian and Semitic gods made their conquest of Armenia.

I. HAYK

There can be little doubt that the epic songs mentioned
Hayk first of all. Hayk was a handsome giant with finely
proportioned limbs, curly hair, bright smiling eyes, and a
strong arm, who was ready to strike down all ambition,
divine or human, which raised its haughty head and dreamt
of absolute dominion. The bow and the triangular arrow
were his inseparable companions. Hayk was a true lover
of independence. He it was, who, like Moses of old, led
his people from the post-diluvian tyranny of Bel (Nimrod) in
the plain of Shinar to the cold but free mountains of Armenia,
where he subjugated the native population . 1 Bel at first plied
him with messages of fair promise if he would return. But the
hero met them with a proud and defiant answer. Soon after,


HEROES


65


as was expected, Cadmus, the grandson of Hayk, brought
tidings of an invasion of Armenia by the innumerable forces
of Bel. Hayk marched south with his small but brave army
to meet the tyrant on the shores of the sea (of Van) “ whose
briny waters teem with tiny fish.” 2 Here began the battle.
Hayk arranged his warriors in a triangle on a plateau
among mountains in the presence of the great multitude of
invaders. The first shock was so terrible and costly in men
that Bel, confused and frightened, began to withdraw. But
Hayk’s unerring triangular arrow, piercing his breast, issued
forth from his back. The overthrow of their chief was a signal
for the mighty Babylonian forces to disperse.

Hayk is the eponymous hero of the Armenians according
to their national name, Hay, used among themselves. From
the same name they have called their country Hayastan
or the Kingdom (Ashkharh = Iran. Khshathra) of the Hays.
Adjectives derived from Hayk describe both gigantic
strength and great beauty. Gregory of Narek calls even the
beauty of the Holy Virgin, Hayk-like! The word Hayk itself
was often used in the sense of a “ giant.”

Some have tried to give an astronomical interpretation to
this legend. Pointing out the fact that Hayk is also the Ar-
menian name for the constellation Orion, they have main-
tained that the triangular arrangement of Hayk’s army re-
flects the triangle which the star Adaher in Orion forms
with the two dogstars. However, any attempt to establish
a parallelism between the Giant Orion and Hayk as we know
him, is doomed to failure, for beyond a few minor or general
points of resemblance, the two heroes have nothing in com-
mon. Hayk seems to have been also the older Armenian name
of the Zodiacal sign Libra, and of the planet Mars , 3 while the
cycle of Sirius was for the Armenians the cycle of Hayk.

The best explanation of Hayk’s name and history seems to
lie in the probable identity of Hayk (Hayik, “ little Hay,”


66


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


just as Armenak means “ little Armenius ”) with the Phryg-
ian sky-god Hyas whom the Greeks called U17S. Both the
Greeks and the Assyrians 4 know him as an independent
Thraco-Phrygian deity. The Assyrians call him the god
of Moschi. 5 In a period when everything Thracian and Phryg-
ian was being assimilated by Dionysos or was sinking into
insignificance before his triumphant march through the
Thraco-Phrygian world, Hyas, from a tribal deity, became
an epithet of this god of vegetation and of wine. For us
Hyas is no one else but the Vayu of the Vedas and the
Avesta. So in the legend of Hayk we probably have the
story of the battle between an Indo-European weather-god
and the Mesopotamian Bel. It is very much more natural
to derive a national name like Hay from a national deity’s
name, according to the well-known analogies of Assur and
Khaldi, than to interpret it as pati, “ chief.” 6

II. ARMENAK

According to Moses of Chorene, Armenak is the name of
the son of Hayk. He chose for his abode the mountain Ara-
gads (now Alagez) and the adjacent country.

He is undoubtedly another eponymous hero of the Ar-
menian race. Armenius, father of Er, mentioned by Plato
in his Republic , 7 can be no other than this Armenak who,
according to Moses of Chorene and the so-called Sebeos-frag-
ments, is the great-grandfather of Ara (Er). The final
syllable is a diminutive, just as is the “ k ” in Hayk. Pop-
ular legend, which occupied itself a good deal with Hayk,
seems to have neglected Armenak almost completely. It is
quite possible that Armenak is the same as the Teutonic Ir-
min and the Vedic Aryaman, therefore originally a title of the
sky-god. The many exploits ascribed to Aram, the father of
Ara, may indeed, belong by right to Armenak. 8


HEROES


67


III. SHARA

Shara is said to be the son of Armais. As he was uncom-
monly voracious his father gave him the rich land of Shirak
to prey upon. He was also far-famed for his numerous
progeny. The old Armenian proverb used to say to
gluttons: “ If thou hast the throat (appetite) of Shara, we
have not the granaries of Shirak.” One may suspect that an
ogre is hiding behind this ancient figure. At all events his
name must have some affinity with the Arabic word Sharah ,
which means gluttony . 9


IV. ARAM

Aram, a son of Harma, seems to be a duplicate of Ar-
menak, although many scholars have identified him with
Arame, a later king of Urartu, and with Aram, an eponymous
hero of the Aramaic region. The Armenian national tradition
makes him a conqueror of Barsham “whom the Syrians deified
on account of his exploits,” of a certain Nychar Mades (Nychar
the Median), and of Paiapis Chalia, a Titan who ruled from
the Pontus Euxinus to the Ocean (Mediterranean). Through
this last victory Aram became the ruler of Pontus and Cappa-
docia upon which he imposed the Armenian language.

In this somewhat meagre and confused tale we have prob-
ably an Armenian god Aram or Armenius in war against the
Syrian god Ba’al Shamin, some Median god or hero called
Nychar , 10 and a western Titan called Paiapis ChaXia, who no
doubt represents in a corrupt form the Urartian deity Khaldi
with the Phrygian (?) title of Papaios. The legend about
the Pontic war probably originated in the desire to explain how
Armenians came to be found in Lesser Armenia, or it may be a
distant and distorted echo of the Phrygo-Armenian struggles
against the Hittite kingdoms of Asia Minor.


68


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


V. ARA, THE BEAUTIFUL

With Ara we are unmistakably on mythological ground.
Unfortunately this interesting hero has, like Hayk and
Aram, greatly suffered at the hands of our ancient Hellen-
izers. The present form of the myth, a quasi-classical ver-
sion of the original, is as follows: When Ninus, King of

Assyria, died or fled to Crete from his wicked and volup-
tuous queen Semiramis, the latter having heard of the manly
beauty of Ara, proposed to marry him or to hold him for a
while as her lover. But Ara scornfully rejected her ad-
vances for the sake of his beloved wife Nvard. Incensed by
this unexpected rebuff, the impetuous Semiramis came
against Ara with a large force, not so much to punish him
for his obstinacy as to capture him alive. Ara’s army was
routed and he fell dead during the bloody encounter. At
the end of the day, his lifeless body having been found
among the slain, Semiramis removed it to an upper
room of his palace hoping that her gods (the dog-spirits
called Aralezes ) would restore him to life by licking his
wounds. Although, according to the rationalizing Moses of
Chorene, Ara did not rise from the dead, the circumstances
which he mentions leave no doubt that the original myth
made him come back to life and continue his rule over
the Armenians in peace. For, according to this author , 11
when Ara’s body began to decay, Semiramis dressed up
one of her lovers as Ara and pretended that the gods had
fulfilled her wishes. She also erected a statue to the gods in
thankfulness for this favor and pacified Armenian minds by
persuading them that Ara was alive.

Another version of the Ara story is to be found at the
end of Plato’s Republic ? 2 where he tells us that a certain
Pamphylian hero called Er, son of Armenius, “ happening on
a time to die in battle, when the dead were on the tenth day


HEROES


69

carried off, already corrupted, was taken up sound} and
being carried home as he was about to be laid on the funeral
pile, he revived, and being revived, he told what he saw of the
other state.” The long eschatological dissertation which fol-
lows is probably Thracian or Phrygian, as these peoples were
especially noted for their speculations about the future life.

[Prometheus]

The Pamphylian Er’s parentage, as well as the Armenian
version of the same story, taken together, make it highly
probable that we have here an Armenian (or Phrygian),
rather than Pamphylian , 13 myth, although by some queer
chance it may have reached Greece from a Pamphylian
source. Semiramis may be a popular or learned addition to
the myth. But it is quite reasonable to assume that the orig-
inal story represented the battle as caused by a disappointed
woman or goddess. An essential element, preserved by Plato,
is the report about life beyond the grave. The Armenian
version reminds us strongly of that part of the Gilgamesh
epic in which Ishtar appears in the forest of Cedars guarded
by Khumbaba to allure Gilgamesh, a hero or demi-god, with
attributes of a sun-god, into the role of Tammuz. We know
how Gilgamesh refused her advances. Eabani, the companion
of Gilgamesh, seems to be a first (primaeval) man who was
turning his rugged face towards civilization through the love
of a woman. He takes part in the wanderings of Gilgamesh,
and fights with him against Ishtar and the heavenly bull sent
by Anu to avenge the insulted goddess. Apparently
wounded in this struggle Eabani dies. Thereupon Gilgamesh
wanders to the world of the dead in search of the plant of life.
On his return he meets with Eabani who has come back from
the region of the dead to inform him of the condition of the
departed and of the care with which the dead must be buried
in order to make life in Aralu {Hades') bear able f*

Possibly the original Ara story goes back to this Baby-
lonian epic but fuses Gilgamesh and Eabani into one hero.


70


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


Sayce suggests that Ara may be the Eri of the Vannic in-
scriptions and the latter may have been a sun-god . 16

VI. TIGRANES, THE DRAGON-FIGHTER

This story also must be interpreted mythologically, although
it is connected with two historical characters. It is a dragon
legend which does not contain the slightest fraction of histor-
ical fact, but was manifestly adapted to the story of Astyages
in the first book of Herodotus. For the sake of brevity we
shall not analyse it in detail, as its chief elements will be
brought out in the chapter on dragons. The rationalizing zeal
of the later Armenian authors has evidently made use of the
fact that Azdahak , “ dragon,” was also the name of a famous
Median king in the times of Cyrus the Great . 16

The legend was as follows: Tigranes (from Tigrish ,

“arrow,” the old Iranian name of the Babylonian Nabu),
King of Armenia, was a friend of Cyrus the Great. His im-
mediate neighbor on the east, Azdahak of Media, was in great
fear of both these young rulers. One night in a dream, he
saw himself in a strange land near a lofty ice-clad mountain
(the Massis). A tall, fair-eyed, red-cheeked woman, clothed
in purple and wrapped in an azure veil was sitting on the sum-
mit of the higher peak, caught with the pains of travail. Sud-
denly she gave birth to three full-grown sons, one of whom,
bridling a lion, rode westward. The second sat on a zebra, and
rode northward. But the third one, bridling a dragon,
marched against Azdahak of Media and made an onslaught
on the idols to which the old king (the dreamer himself) was
offering sacrifice and incense. There ensued between the Ar-
menian knight and Astyages a bloody fight with spears, which
ended in the overthrow of Azdahak. In the morning, warned
by his Magi of a grave and imminent danger from Tigranes,
Azdahak decides to marry Tigranuhi, the sister of Tigranes, in


HEROES


7i


order to use her as an instrument in the destruction of her
brother. His plan succeeds up to the point of disclosing his
intentions to Tigranuhi. Alarmed by these she immediately
puts her brother on his guard. Thereupon the indomitable
Tigranes brings about an encounter with Azdahak in which he
plunges his triangular spear-head into the tyrant’s bosom
pulling out with it a part of his lungs . 17 Tigranuhi had already
managed to come to her brother even before the battle.
After this signal victory, Tigranes compels Azdahak’s family
to move to Armenia and settle around Massis. These
are the children of the dragon, says the inveterate ration-
alizer, about whom the old songs tell fanciful stories, and
Anush, the mother of dragons, is no one but the first queen
of Azdahak . 18



Fig. 3. Bronze Figures


Found in Van usually explained as Semiramis in the form of a dove and
possibly representing the Goddess Sharis, the Urartion Ishtar.


CHAPTER XI


THE WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS

T HE ARMENIAN world of spirits and monsters teems
with elements both native and foreign. Most of the
names are of Persian origin, although we do not know how
much of this lore came directly from Iran. For we may safely
assert that the majority of these uncanny beings bear a general
Indo-European, one might even say, universal character. So
any attempt to explain them locally, as dim memories of an-
cient monsters or of conquered and exterminated races will in
the long run prove futile. One marked feature of this vital
and ever-living branch of mythology is the world-wide uni-
formity of the fundamental elements. Names, places, forms,
combinations may come and go, but the beliefs which underlie
the varying versions of the stories remain rigidly constant. On
this ground mythology and folklore join hands.

The chief actors in this lower, but very deeply rooted stra-
tum of religion and mythology are serpents and dragons, good
or evil ghosts and fairies, among whom we should include
the nymphs of the classical world, the elves and kobolds of the
Teutons, the vilas of the Slavs, the jinn and devs of Islam, etc . 1

At this undeveloped stage of comparative folklore it would
be rash to posit a common origin for all these multitudinous
beings. Yet they show, in their feats and characteristics, many
noteworthy interrelations and similarities all over the world.

Leaving aside the difficult question whether serpent-worship
precedes and underlies all other religion and mythology, we
have cumulative evidence, both ancient and modern, of a
world-wide belief that the serpent stands in the closest rela-



PLATE IV


Illuminations from an Armenian Gospel manu-
script in the Library of the Kennedy School of
Missions, Hartford, Connecticut.





WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS


73


tion to the ghost. The genii, the ancestral spirits, usually ap-
pear in the form of a serpent. As serpents they reside in and
protect, their old homes. Both the serpent and the ancestral
ghost have an interest in the fecundity of the family and the
fertility of the fields. They possess superior wisdom, healing
power, and dispose of wealth, etc. They do good to those
whom they love, harm to those whom they hate. Then
these serpents and dragons frequently appear as the physical
manifestation of other spirits than ghosts, and so we have a
large class of serpent-fairies in all ages and in many parts of
the world, like the serpent mother of the Scythian race , 2 and
like Melusine, the serpent-wife of Count Raymond of Poitiers
(Lusignan). Further, the ghosts, especially the evil ones, have
a great affinity with demons. Like demons they harass men
with sickness and other disasters. In fact, in the minds of many
people, they pass over entirely into the ranks of the demons.

Keeping, then, in mind the fact that, as far back and as far
out as our knowledge can reach, the peoples of the world have
established sharp distinctions between these various creatures
of superstitious imagination, let us run over some of the feats
and traits which are ascribed to all or most of them. This
will serve as an appropriate introduction to the ancient Arme-
nian material.

They all haunt houses as protectors or persecutors; live in
ruins, not because these are ruins, but because they are ancient
sites-, have a liking for difficult haunts like mountains,
caves, ravines, forests, stony places; live and roam freely
in bodies of water, such as springs, wells, rivers, lakes, seas;
possess subterranean palaces, realms and gardens, and dispose
of hidden treasures; although they usually externalize them-
selves as serpents, they have a marked liking for the human
shape, in which they often appear. They exhibit human habits,
needs, appetites, passions, and organizations. Thus they are
born, grow, and die (at least by a violent death). They are


74


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


hungry and thirsty and have a universal weakness for milk;
they often steal grain and go a-hunting. They love and hate,
marry and give in marriage. In this, they often prefer the
fair sons and daughters of men (especially noble-born ladies),
with whom they come to live or whom they carry off to their
subterranean abodes. The result of these unions is often —
not always — a weird, remarkable, sometimes also very
wicked, progeny. They steal human children, leaving change-
lings in their stead. They usually (but not always) appear
about midnight and disappear before the dawn, which is her-
alded by cockcrow. They cause insanity by entering the human
body. Flint, iron, fire, and lightning, and sometimes also
water , I. * 3 are very repugnant to them. They hold the key to
magical lore, and in all things have a superior knowledge,
usually combined with a very strange credulity. They may
claim worship and often sacrifices, animal as well as human.

Although these beings may be classified as corporeal and
incorporeal, and even one species may, at least in certain
countries, have a corporeal as well as incorporeal variety, it is
safe to assert that their corporeality itself is usually of a subtle,
airy kind and that the psychical aspect of their being is by far
the predominating one. This is true even of the serpent and
the dragon. Finally, in one way or another, all of these mys-
terious or monstrous beings have affinities with chthonic powers.

Largely owing to such common traits running through al-
most the whole of the material, it is difficult to subject the Ar-
menian data to a clean-cut classification.

I. SHAHAPET OF LOCALITIES

The Shahapet (Iranian Khshathrapati , Zd. Shoithrapaitiy
lord of the field or of the land) is nothing else than the very
widely known serpent-ghost (genius) of places, such as fields,

woods, mountains, houses, and, especially, graveyards. It ap-


WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS 75

pears both as man and as serpent. In connection with houses,
the Armenian Shahapet was probably some ancestral ghost
which appeared usually as a serpent. Its character was always
good except when angered. According to the Armenian trans-
lation of John Chrysostom, even the vinestocks and the olive-
trees had Shahapets. In Agathangelos Christ Himself was
called the Shahapet of graveyards, 4 evidently to contradict or
correct a strong belief in the serpent-keeper of the resting place
of the dead. We know that, in Hellenistic countries, grave-
stones once bore the image of serpents. We have no classical
testimony to the Shahapet of homesteads, but modern Arme-
nian folklore, and especially the corrupt forms Shvaz and
Shvod, show that the old Shahapet of Armenia was both a
keeper of the fields and a keeper of the house. The Shvaz
watches over the agricultural products and labours, and appears
to men once a year in the spring. The Shvod is a guardian of
the house. Even today people scare naughty little children
with his name. But the identity of these two is established by
a household ceremony which is of far-off kinship to the Ro-
man faternalia , itself an old festival of the dead or of ghosts,
which was celebrated from February 13 to 21. In this con-
nection Miss Harrison has some remarks “ on the reason for
the placating of ghosts when the activities of agriculture were
about to begin and the powers of the underground world were
needed to stimulate fertility.” 5 But the Armenians did not
placate them with humble worship and offerings: they rather
forced them to go to the fields and take part in the agricultural
labours. This ancient ceremony in its present form may be
described as follows: 6 On the last day of February the Ar-
menian peasants, armed with sticks, bags, old clothes, etc., strike
the walls of the houses and barns saying: “ Out' with the Shvod
and in with March! ” On the previous night a dish of water
was placed on the threshold, because, as we have seen, water
is supposed to help the departure of the spirits, an idea also


?6


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


underlying the use of water by the Slavic peoples in their
burial rites. Therefore, as soon as the dish is overturned,
they close the doors tightly and make the sign of the cross.
Evidently, this very old and quaint rite aims at driving the
household spirits to the fields, and the pouring out of the water
is regarded as a sign of their departure. According to the de-
scription in the Pshrank, the Shvods, who are loath to part
with their winter comforts, have been seen crying and asking,
“ What have we done to be driven away in this fashion? ”
Also they take away clean garments with them and return them
soon in a soiled condition, no doubt as a sign of their hard
labours in the fields.

The house-serpent brings good luck to the house, and some-
times also gold. So it must be treated very kindly and respect-
fully. If it departs in anger, there will be in that house endless
trouble and privation. Sometimes they appear in the middle
of the night as strangers seeking hospitality and it pays to be
kind and considerate to them, as otherwise they may depart in
anger, leaving behind nothing but sorrow and misfortune.

As there are communal hearths, so there are also district
serpents. The serpent-guardian of a district discriminates care-
fully between strangers and the inhabitants of the district,
hurting the former but leaving the latter in peace. 7

As the Armenian ghost differs little from other ghosts in its
manner of acting, we shall refer the reader for a fuller descrip-
tion to the minute account of it given in Abeghian’s Arme-
nischer V oiks glaube (chapters 2 and 6).

II. DRAGONS

The close kinship of the dragon with the serpent has always
been recognized. Not only have they usually been thought
to be somewhat alike in shape, but they have also many myth-
ical traits in common, such as the dragon’s blood, the serpent’s
or the dragon’s stone, 8 the serpent’s or the dragon’s egg, both


WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS 77

of the latter being talismans of great value with which we
meet all over the world and in all times. They are corporeal
beings, but they have a certain amount of the ghostly and the
demoniac in them. Both can be wicked, but in folklore and
mythology they are seldom as thoroughly so as in theology.
Of the two, the dragon is the more monstrous and demoniac in
character, especially associated in the people’s minds 9 with evil
spirits. He could enter the human body and possess it, caus-
ing the victim to whistle. But even he had redeeming qualities,
on account of which his name could be adopted by kings and
his emblem could wave over armies. In the popular belief of
Iran the dragon can not have been such a hopeless reprobate
as he appears in the Avestan Azi Dahaka.

Mount Massis, wrongly called Ararat by Europeans, was
the main home of the Armenian dragon. The volcanic char-
acter of this lofty peak, with its earthquakes, its black smoke
and lurid flames in time of eruption, may have suggested its
association with that dread monster. But the mountain was
sacred independently of dragons, and it was called Azat (i.e.,
Yazata (?), “venerable”).

The Armenian for dragon is Vishap, a word of Persian origin
meaning “with poisonous saliva.” It was an adjective that
once qualified Azi Dahaka, but attained an independent ex-
istence even in Iran. In the Armenian myths one may plaus-
ibly distinguish “ the chief dragon ” and the dragons, although
these would be bound together by family ties; for the dragon
breeds and multiplies its kind. The old songs told many a
wonderful and mysterious tale about the dragon and the brood
or children of the dragon that lived around the Massis. Most
of these stories have a close affinity with western fairy tales.
Some wicked dragon had carried away a fair princess called
Tigranuhi, seemingly with her own consent. Her brother,
King Tigranes, a legendary character, slew the dragon with his
spear in a single combat and delivered the abducted maiden. 10


78


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


Queen Sathenik, the Albanian wife of King Artaxias, fair
and fickle as she was, had been bewitched into a love affair
with a certain Argavan who was a chief in the tribe of the
dragons. Argavan induced Artaxias himself to partake of a
banquet given in his honour in “ the palace of the dragons,”
where he attempted some treacherous deed against his royal
guest. The nature of the plot is not stated, but the King must
have escaped with his life for he kept his faithless queen and
died a natural death . 11

The dragon (or the children of the dragons) used to steal
children and put in their stead a little evil spirit of their own
brood, who was always wicked of character. An outstanding
victim of this inveterate habit — common to the dragons and
Devs of Armenia and their European cousins, the fairies 12 —
was Artavasd, son of the above mentioned Artaxias, the friend
of Hannibal in exile and the builder of Artaxata. History
tells us that Artavasd, during his short life, was perfectly true
to the type of his uncanny ancestry, and when he suddenly
disappeared by falling down a precipice of the venerable Mas-
sis, it was reported that spirits of the mountain or the dragons
themselves had caught him up and carried him off.

More important than all these tales, Vahagn, the Armenian
god of fire (lightning), won the title of “dragon-reaper” by
fighting against dragons like Indra of old. Although the
details of these encounters have not come down to us, the
dragons in them must have been allied to Vrtra, the spirit of
drought.

The epic songs mentioned also Anush, as the wife of
the dragon and the mother of the children of the dragon.
She lived in the famous ravine in the higher peak of the
Massis.

The records as they stand, permit us to conjecture that be-
sides the dragon as such, there was also a race of dragon-
men, born of the intermarriage of the dragon with human

[Prometheus]

WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS 79

wives. But we cannot be very certain of this, although there
would be nothing strange in it, as the history of human beliefs
teems with the “ serpent fathers ” of remarkable men, and
the character of the Iranian Azi Dahaka himself easily lends
itself to these things. The children of the dragon also,
whether mixed beings or not, dwelt around the Massis and
were regarded as uncanny people with a strong bent towards,
and much skill in, witchcraft. 13

However it may be about the children of the dragon, it is
incontestable that the dragons themselves were a very real
terror for the ancient Armenians. We are told that they lived
in a wide ravine left by an earthquake on the side of the higher
peak of the Massis. According to Moses, Eznik, and Vahram
Vardapet, 14 they had houses and palaces on high mountains, in
one of which, situated on the Massis, King Artaxias had en-
joyed the dangerous banquet we have mentioned.

These dragons were both corporeal and personal beings
with a good supply of keen intelligence and magical power.
They boasted a gigantic size and a terrible voice (EXishe).
But the people were neither clear nor unanimous about
their real shape. They were usually imagined as great ser-
pents and as sea-monsters, and such enormous beasts of the
land or sea were called dragons, perhaps figuratively. We find
no allusion to their wings, but Eznik says that the Lord pulls
the dragon up “ through so-called oxen ” in order to save men
from his poisonous breath. 15 The dragons appeared in any
form they chose, but preferably as men and as serpents, like
the jinn of the Arabs. They played antics to obtain their live-
lihood. They loved to suck the milk of the finest cows. 16
With their beasts of burden or in the guise of mules and
camels they were wont to carry away the best products of the
soil. So the keepers of the threshing floor, after the harvest,
often shouted ,“ Hold fast! Hold fast!” ( Kal ! Kal /)

probably to induce them to leave the grain by treating them as


8o


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


guarding genii . 17 But they carefully avoided saying “Take!
Take! ” ( Ar ! Ar!).

The dragons also went hunting just as did the Kaches with
whom we shall presently meet. They were sometimes seen
running in pursuit of the game (Vahram Vardapet) and they
laid traps or nets in the fields for birds. All these things point
to the belief that their fashion of living was like that of men
in a primitive stage of development, a trait which we find also
in western and especially Celtic fairies.

It would seem that the dragons as well as their incorporeal
cousins the Kaches claimed and kept under custody those mor-
tals who had originally belonged to their stock. Thus Arta-
vasd was bound and held captive in a cave of the Massis for
fear that he might break loose and dominate or destroy the
world . 18 Alexander the Great, whose parentage from a ser-
pent or dragon-father was a favorite theme of the eastern
story-mongers, was, according to the mediaeval Armenians,
confined by the dragons in a bottle and kept in their mountain
palace at Rome. King Erwand also, whose name, according
to Alishan, means serpent, was held captive by the dragons
in rivers and mist. He must have been a changeling, or rather
born of a serpent-father. For he was a worshipper of Devs
and, according to Moses, the son of a royal princess from an
unknown father. He was proverbially ugly and wicked and
possessed an evil eye under the gaze of which rocks crumbled
to pieces . 19

Like most peoples of the world, Armenians have always
associated violent meteorological phenomena with the dragon.
This association was very strong in their mind. In a curious
passage in which EXishe (fifth century) compares the wrath
of Yezdigerd I to a storm, the dragon is in the very centre
of the picture. We need not doubt that this dragon was
related to the foregoing, although ancient testimony on this
subject leaves much to be desired. Eznik’s account of the


WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS 81


ascension of the dragon “ through so-called oxen ” into the
sky, is in perfect accord with the mediaeval Armenian accounts
of the “ pulling up of the dragon.” This process was always
accompanied by thunder, lightning, and heavy showers. Vana-
kan Vardapet says: “ They assert that the Vishap (the dragon)
is being pulled up. The winds blow from different directions
and meet each other. This is a whirlwind. If they do not
overcome each other, they whirl round each other and go
upward. The fools who see this, imagine it to be the dragon
or something else.” 20 Another mediaeval author says: “ The
whirlwind is a wind that goes upward. Wherever there are
abysses or crevasses in the earth, the wind has entered the veins
of the earth and then having found an opening, rushes up
together in a condensed cloud with a great tumult, uprooting
the pine-trees, snatching away rocks and lifting them up noisily
to drop them down again. This is what they call pulling up
the dragon.” 21

Whether the dragon was merely a personification of the
whirlwind, the water spout, and the storm cloud is a hard
question which we are not ready to meet with an affirmative
answer, like Abeghian 22 who follows in this an older school.
Such a simple explanation tries to cover too many diverse phe-
nomena at once and forgets the fundamental fact that the
untutored mind of man sees many spirits at work in nature,
but rarely, if ever, personifies Nature itself. To him those
spirits are very real, numerous, somewhat impersonal and ver-
satile, playing antics now on the earth, now in the skies, and
now under the ground. In the case of the dragon causing
storms, to the Armenian mind the storm seems to be a second-
ary concomitant of the lifting up of the dragon which threat-
ens to destroy the earth. 23 Yet, that the original, or at least
the most outstanding dragon-fight was one between the thunder
or lightning-god and the dragon that withholds the waters is
an important point which must not be lost sight of. 24


82


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


We must not forget to mention the worship that the dragon
enjoyed. Eznik says that Satan, making the dragon appear
appallingly large, constrained men to worship him. This wor-
ship was no doubt similar in character to the veneration paid to
evil spirits in many lands and perhaps not entirely distin-
guished from serpent-worship. According to the same writer,
at least in Sassanian times even Zrvantists (magians?) indulged
in a triennial worship of the devil on the ground that he is
evil by will not by nature, and that he may do good or even be
converted . 25 But there was nothing regular or prescribed
about this act, which was simply dictated by fear. As the black
hen and the black cock 26 make their appearance often in
general as well as Armenian folk-lore as an acceptable sacri-
fice to evil spirits, we may reasonably suppose that they had
some role in the marks of veneration paid to the dragon in
ancient times. But we have also more definite testimony in
early martyrological writing ( History of St. Hripsimeans )
about dragon worship. The author, after speaking of the cult
of fire and water (above quoted) adds: “And two dragons,
devilish and black, had fixed their dwelling in the cave of the
rock, to which young virgins and innocent youths were sacri-
ficed. The devils, gladdened by these sacrifices and altars,
by the sacred fire and spring, produced a wonderful sight with
flashes, shakings and leapings. And the deep valley
(below) was full of venomous snakes and scorpions.”

Finally the myth about the dragon’s blood was also known
to the Armenians. The so-called “ treaty ” between Con-
stantine and Tiridates, which is an old but spurious document,
says that Constantine presented his Armenian ally with a
spear which had been dipped in the dragon’s blood. King
Arshag, son of Valarshag, also had a spear dipped in the blood
of “ reptiles ” with which he could pierce thick stones . 27 Such
arms were supposed to inflict incurable wounds.


WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS 83


III. KACHES

The Kaches form a natural link between the Armenian
dragon and the Armenian Devs of the present day. In fact
they are probably identical with the popular (not theological)
Devs. They are nothing more or less than the European
fairies, kobolds, etc. Their name means “ the brave ones,”
which is an old euphemism (like the present day Armenian ex-
pression “ our betters,” or like the Scots “ gude folk ”) used
of the spirit world and designed to placate powerful, irrespon-
sible beings of whose intentions one could never be sure.
From the following statements of their habits and feats one
may clearly see how the people connected or confused them
with the dragons. Our sources are the ancient and mediaeval
writers. Unlike the dragon the Kaches were apparently incor-
poreal beings, spirits, good in themselves, according to the
learned David the Philosopher, but often used by God to exe-
cute penalties. Like the Devs, they lingered preferably
in stony places with which they were usually associated and
Mount Massis was one of their favorite haunts. Yet they
could be found almost everywhere. The country was full of
localities bearing their name and betraying their presence, like
the Stone of the Kaches, the Town of the Kaches, the
Village of the Kaches, the Field of the Kaches ( Katchavar ,
<c where the Kaches coursed ”), etc. 28

Like the dragons, they had palaces on high sites. According
to an old song it was these spirits who carried the wicked Arta-
vazd up the Massis, where he still remains an impatient
prisoner. They hold also Alexander the Great in Rome, and
King Erwand in rivers and darkness, i.e., mists. 29 They waged
wars, which is a frequent feature of serpent and fairy commu-
nities, and they went hunting. 30 They stole the grain from
the threshing floor and the wine from the wine press. They
often found pleasure in beating, dragging, torturing men, just


84


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


as their brothers and sisters in the West used to pinch their
victims black and blue. Men were driven out of their wits
through their baleful influence. Votaries of the magical art
in mediaeval Armenia were wont, somewhat like Faust and his
numerous tribe, to gallop off, astride of big earthen jars , 31 to
far-off places, and walking on water, they arrived in foreign
countries where they laid tables before the gluttonous Kaches
and received instructions from them. Last of all, the medi-
aeval Kaches (and probably also their ancestors) were very
musical. The people often heard their singing, although we
do not know whether their performance was so enthralling as
that ascribed to the fairies in the West and to the Greek sirens.
However, their modern representatives seem to prefer human
music to their own. According to Djvanshir, a historian of
the Iberians of Transcaucasia, the wicked Armenian King
Erwand built a temple to the Kaches at Dsung, near Akhalka-
Xak in Iberia (Georgia).

IV. JAVERZAHARSES (NYMPHS)

These are not mentioned in the older writers, so it is not
quite clear whether they are a later importation from other
countries or not. They probably are female Kaches, and folk-
lore knows the latter as their husbands. Alishan, without
quoting any authority, says that they wandered in prairies,
among pines, and on the banks of rivers. They were invisible
beings, endowed with a certain unacquired and imperishable
knowledge. They could neither learn anything new nor for-
get what they knew. They had rational minds which were
incapable of development. They loved weddings, singing,
tambourines, and rejoicings, so much so, that some of the later
ecclesiastical writers confused them as a kind of evil spirits
against whose power of temptation divine help must be in-
voked. In spite of their name (“ perpetual brides ”) they


WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS 85

were held to be mortal. 32 The common people believed that
these spirits were especially interested in the welfare, toilette,
marriage, and childbirth of maidens. There are those who
have supposed that Moses of Chorene was thinking of these
charming spirits when he wrote the following cryptic words:
“ The rivers having quietly gathered on their borders along
the knees (?) of the mountains and the fringes of the fields,
the youths wandered as though at the side of maidens.”

V. TORCH (OR TORX)

Torch is in name and character related to the Duergar
(Zwerge, dwarfs) of Northern Europe and to the Telchins
of Greece or rather of Rhodes. 33 This family of strange
names belongs evidently to the Indo-European language, and
designated a class of demons of gigantic or dwarfish size,
which were believed to possess great skill in all manner of arts
and crafts. They were especially famous as blacksmiths. In
antiquity several mythical works were ascribed to the Greek
Telchins, such as the scythe of Cronos and the trident of Posei-
don. They were mischievous, spiteful genii who from time
immemorial became somewhat confused with the Cyclops. The
Telchins were called children of the sea and were found only
in a small number.

The Torch, who can hardly be said to be a later importa-
tion from Greece, and probably belongs to a genuine Phrygo-
Armenian myth, resembles both the Telchins and the Cyclops.
In fact he is a kind of Armenian Polyphemos. He was said to
be of the race of Pascham (?) and boasted an ugly face, a
gigantic and coarse frame, a flat nose, and deep-sunk and cruel
eyes. His home was sought in the west of Armenia most
probably in the neighbourhood of the Black Sea. The old epic
songs could not extol enough his great physical power and
his daring. The feats ascribed to him were more wonderful


86


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


than those of Samson, Herakles, or even Rustem Sakjik (of
Segistan), whose strength was equal to that of one hundred
and twenty elephants . 34

With his bare hands the Armenian Torch could crush a
solid piece of hard granite. He could smooth it down into a
slab and engrave upon it pictures of eagles and other objects
with his finger-nails. He was, therefore, known as a great
artisan and even artist.

Once he met with his foes, on the shores of the Black Sea,
when he was sore angered by something which they had evi-
dently done to him. At his appearance they took to the sea
and succeeded in laying eight leagues between themselves and
the terrible giant. But he, nothing daunted by this distance, be-
gan to hurl rocks as large as hills at them. Several of the
ships were engulfed in the abyss made by these crude pro-
jectiles and others were driven off many leagues by the mighty
waves the rocks had started rolling . 36

VI. THE DEVS

Ahriman, the chief of the Devs, was known in Armenia
only as a Zoroastrian figure. The Armenians themselves prob-
ably called their ruler of the powers of evil, Char , “ the evil
one” Just as Zoroastrianism recognized : zemeka , “winter,”
as an arch demon, so the Armenians regarded snow, ice,
hail, storms, lightning, darkness, dragons and other beasts,
as the creatures of the Char or the Devs . 36 Although they
knew little of a rigid dualism in the moral world or of a con-
stant warfare between the powers of light and the powers of
darkness, they had, besides all the spirits that we have de-
scribed and others with whom we have not yet met, a very
large number of Devs. These are called also ais (a cognate
of the Sanscrit asu and Teutonic as or aes\ which Eznik ex-
plains as “ breath.” Therefore a good part of the Devs were


WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS 87

pictured as beings of “ air.” They had, like the Mohammedan
angels, a subtile body. They were male and female, and
lived in marital relations not only with each other, but
often also with human beings. 37 They were born and perhaps
died. Nor did they live in a state of irresponsible anarchy,
but they were, so to speak, organized under the absolute rule
of a monarch. In dreams they often assumed the form of
wild beasts 38 in order to frighten men. But they appeared
also in waking hours both as human beings and as serpents. 39

Stony places, no doubt also ruins, were their favorite haunts,
and from such the most daring men would shrink. Once when
an Armenian noble was challenging a Persian viceroy of royal
blood to ride forward on a stony ground, the Prince retorted:
“ Go thou forward, seeing that the Devs alone can course in
stony places.” 40

Yet according to a later magical text, there can be nothing
in which a Dev may not reside and work. Swoons and in-
sanity, yawning and stretching, sneezing, and itching around
the throat or ear or on the tongue, were unmistakable signs
of their detested presence. But men were not entirely helpless
against the Devs. Whoever would frequently cut the air or
strike suspicious spots with a stick or sword, or even keep these
terrible weapons near him while sleeping, could feel quite
secure from their endless molestations. 41 Of course, 'we must
distinguish between the popular Dev, who is a comparatively
foolish and often harmless giant, and the theological Dev,
who is a pernicious and ever harmful spirit laying snares on
the path of man. To the latter belonged, no doubt, the Druzes
(the Avestic Drujes), perfidious, lying, and lewd female
spirits. Their Avestic mode of self-propagation, by tempting
men in their dreams, 42 is not entirely unknown to the Arme-
nians. They probably formed a class by themselves like the
Pariks 43 (Zoroastrian Pairikas, enchantresses), who also were
pernicious female spirits, although the common people did not


88


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


quite know whether they were Devs or monsters. 44 These,
too, were mostly to be sought and found in ruins. 45

VII. ALS

The most gruesome tribe of this demoniac world was that
of the Als. It came to the Armenians either through the
Syrians or through the Persians, who also believe in them
and hold them to be demons of child-birth. 46 A1 is the Baby-
lonian Alu , one of the four general names for evil spirits.
But the Armenian and Persian A1 corresponds somewhat to the
Jewish Lilith and Greek Lamia.

Probably the Als were known to the ancient Armenians,
but it is a noteworthy fact that we do not hear about them until
mediaeval times. They appear as half-animal and half-
human beings, shaggy and bristly. They are male and female
and have a “ mother.” 47 They were often called beasts, nev-
ertheless they were usually mentioned with Devs and Kaches.
According to Gregory of Datev 48 they lived in watery, damp
and sandy places, but they did not despise corners in houses
and stables. A prayer against the Als describes them as im-
pure spirits with fiery eyes, holding a pair of iron scissors in
their hands, wandering or sitting in sandy places. Another
unnamed author describes an A1 as a man sitting on the sand.
He has snake-like hair, finger-nails of brass, teeth of iron
and the tusk of a boar. They have a king living in abysses,
whom they serve, and who is chained and sprinkled up to the
neck with (molten?) lead and shrieks continually.

[Prometheus]

The Als were formerly disease-demons who somehow came
to restrict their baleful activities to unborn children and their
mothers. They attack the latter in child-birth, scorching her
ears, pulling out her liver and strangling her along with
the unborn babe. They also steal unborn children of seven
months, at which time these are supposed in the East to be fully



PLATE V

Thepta, a variety of Al. From Alishan’s Ancient
Faith of Armenia.








PLATE VI


Al, the dread of women in childbirth.
Alishan’s Ancient Faith of Armenia.


From



WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS 89

formed and mature, in order to take them “ deaf and dumb ”
(as a tribute? ) to their dread king. 49 In other passages they are
said to blight and blind the unborn child, to suck its brain and
blood, to eat its flesh, and to cause miscarriage, as well as to
prevent the flow of the mother’s milk. In all countries women
in child-bed are thought to be greatly exposed to the influence
and activity of evil spirits. Therefore, in Armenia, they are
surrounded during travail with iron weapons and instruments
with which the air of their room and the waters of some neigh-
bouring brook (where these spirits are supposed to reside) are
frequently beaten. 60 If, after giving birth to the child, the
mother faints, this is construed as a sign of the Al’s presence.
In such cases the people sometimes resort to an extreme means
of saving the mother, which consists in exposing the child on
a flat roof as a peace-offering to the evil spirits. 51 Identical
or at least very closely connected with the A 1 is Thepla, who
by sitting upon a woman in child-bed causes the child to become
black and faint and to die. 52

VIII. NHANGS

These monster spirits, at least in Armenian mythology,
stand close to the dragons. The word means in Persian,
“ crocodile,” and the language has usually held to this matter-
of-fact sense, although in the Persian folk-tale of Hatim Tal,
the Nhang appears in the semi-mythical character of a sea-
monster, which is extremely large and which is afraid of the
crab. The Armenian translators of the Bible use the word in
the sense of “ crocodile ” and “ hippopotamus.” However,
the Nhangs of Armenian mythology, which has confused an
unfamiliar river monster with mythical beings, were per-
sonal 53 and incorporeal. They were evil spirits which had
fixed their abode in certain places and assiduously applied
themselves to working harm. They sometimes appeared as


90


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


women (mermaids? ) in the rivers. At other times they became
seals ( phok ) and, catching the swimmer by the feet, dragged
him to the bottom of the stream, where, perhaps, they had
dwellings like the fairies . 04 In a geography (still in MS.) as-
cribed to Moses, the Nhangs are said to have been observed
in the river Aragani (Murad Chay?) and in the Euphrates.
After using an animal called charchasham for their lust, vam-
pire-like they sucked its blood and left it dead. The same
author reports that, according to some, the Nhang was a beast,
and according to others, a Dev. John Chrysostom (in the
Armenian translations) describes the daughter of Herodias
as more bloodthirsty than “ the Nhangs of the sea .” 56

IX. ARLEZ (ALSO ARALEZ, JARALEZ)

Ancient Armenians believed that when a brave man fell in
battle or by the hand of a treacherous foe, spirits called “ Ar-
lez ” descended to restore him to life by licking his wounds.
In the Ara myth, these spirits are called the gods of Semira-
mis; also in a true and realistic story of the fourth century
about the murder of Mushegh Mamigonian, the commander of
the Armenian king’s forces . 66 “ His family could not believe
in his death . . . others expected him to rise; so they sewed
the head upon the body and they placed him upon a tower,
saying, ‘ Because he was a brave man, the Arlez will descend
and raise him.’” Presumably their name is Armenian, and
means “ lappers of brave men,” or “ lappers of Ara,” 57 or even
“ ever-lappers.” They were invisible spirits, but they were de-
rived from dogs . 58 No one ever saw them. Evidently the
dogs from which they were supposed to have descended were
ordinary dogs, with blood and flesh, for Eznik wonders how
beings of a higher spiritual order could be related to bodily
creatures. The Arlez were imagined to exist in animal form
as dogs . 69


WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS 91


X. OTHER SPIRITS AND CHIMERAS

The Armenians believed also in the existence of chimeras
by the name of Hambaris or Hambarus , Jushkapariks (Vush-
kapariks), Pais, and sea-bulls, all of which are manifestly of
Persian provenience. Yet the nature and habits of these beings
are hidden in confusion and mystery.

The Hambarus are born and die. They appear to men as-
suming perhaps different forms like the Devs and Pasviks.
They are probably feminine beings with a body, living on land
and particularly in desert places or ruins. Von Stackelberg
thinks that the word Hambarima means in Persian, “ house-
spirits.” This is possibly justified by the shorter form, Anbar ,
which may convey the sense of the falling of a house or wall \
so the original Hambaru may be interpreted as a ghostly inhabi-
tant of a deserted place. The word may also mean “ beautiful ”
or even “ a hyena.” An old Armenian dictionary defines it as
Chartho\ (?) if it lives on land, and as “ crocodile,” if it lives
in water. But the oldest authorities, like the Armenian version
of the Bible and Eznik, consider the Hambarus as mythologi-
cal beings. Threatening Babylon with utter destruction Isaiah
(Armenian version, xiii. 21-22) says, “There shall the wild
beasts rest and their houses shall be filled with shrieks. There
shall the Hambarus take their abode and the Devs shall dance
there. The Jushkapariks shall dwell therein and the porcu-
pines shall give birth to their little ones in their palaces.”
Hambaru here and elsewhere is used to render the o-eiprjv
(siren) of the Septuagint. 60

Another chimerical being was the Jushkaparik or Vushka-
parik, the Ass-Pairika, an indubitably Persian conception about
which the Persian sources leave us in the lurch. Its name
would indicate a half-demoniac and half-animal being, or a
Pairika (a female Dev with amorous propensities) that ap-
peared in the form of an ass and lived in ruins. However


92


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


Eznik and the ancient translators of the Bible use the word
through a hardly justifiable approximation to translate
’ OvoKevTavpos , the ass-bull of the Septuagint (Isaiah xiii.
22, xxxiv. ii, 14). According to Vahram Vardapet (quoted
by Alishan) the Jushkaparik was imagined, in the middle ages,
as a being that was half-man and half-ass, with a mouth of
brass. Thus it came nearer the conception of a centaur, which
word it served to translate in Moses of Khoren’s history.
Sometimes also to make the confusion more confounded, it is
found in the sense of a siren and as a synonym of Hambaru.

We are completely in the dark in regard to the Pais which
boasted human parenthood (presumably human mothers).
There were those in Eznik’s time who asserted that they had
seen the Pais with their own eyes. The old Armenians spoke
also of the Man-Pai. 61 The Pais seem to be a variety of the
Pariks.

The case is not so hopeless with the sea-bull, a chimerical
monster which propagated its kind through the cow, somewhat
after the manner of the sea-horses of Sinbad the Sailor’s first
voyage. Men asserted that in their village the sea-bull as-
saulted cows and that they often heard his roaring. We can
well imagine that immediately after birth, the brood of the
monster betook themselves to the water, like the sea-colts of
the Arabian Nights’ story which we have just mentioned. 62
But this sea-bull may also recall the one which Poseidon sent
to Minos for a sacrifice and which was by the wise king un-
wisely diverted from its original purpose and conveyed to his
herds, or the one which, on the request of Theseus, Poseidon
sent to destroy Theseus’ innocent son, Hippolytus.

Another such chimeric monster, but surely not the last of
the long list, was the elephant-goat (phlachal) . 63


CHAPTER XII


COSMOGONY, DEATH, AND ESCHATOLOGY

N OTHING certain of the old Armenian cosmogony has
survived and we may well doubt they had any, seeing
that a definite cosmogony is not an integral part of Indo-Euro-
pean mythology. The early Christian writers, as Agathangelos
and Eznik, often explain how God established the earth on
“ nothing,” which they call the Syrian view. They maintain
this against those who, according to the more general Semitic
(Biblical etc.) view, teach that the earth was founded on a
watery abyss. Only in modern Armenian folklore do we hear
about the primaeval ox or bull upon whose horns the world was
set and which causes earthquakes by shaking his head whenever
he feels any irritation . 1 Agathangelos conceives the heavens as
a solid cube hanging on nothing, and the earth “ compactly
formed and provided with a thick bottom, standing on noth-
ing.” For all the Armenian authors the earth stands firm and
is practically the whole of the world. The star-spangled
heaven upon which transparent spheres were sometimes sup-
posed to be revolving, was of little consequence.

Whether the early Armenians had a distinct cosmogony or
not we find that in the Zoroastrian stage of their religion,
they held the world and all that is therein to be the work of
Aramazd, who, by Agathangelos, is plainly called the creator
of heaven and earth. The invisible world for them was
thickly populated with occult powers, gods, angels ( Hreshtak ,
from the Persian firishtak , “ messenger ”), spirits, demons and
demoniac monsters of many kinds. Human life, its events
and end, were predestined either by divine decrees ( Hraman ,


94


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


Pers. Farman) which were unchangeable and unerring, or
through their mysterious connection with stars, constellations,
and the zodiacal signs. We do not know positively, but it
is very likely, that the stars were thought to be the fravashi
(double, the external soul or self) of human beings. In
modern folklore whenever a shooting star drops, a human
being dies. In a word, the old Armenians were thorough-
going fatalists. This view of life was so deeply rooted, and
proved so pernicious in its effects, that the early Christian
writers strenuously endeavored to destroy it by arguments
both theological and practical.

Man was composed of a body (inarmin') and a soul ( hogi
or shunch, “breath,” ^v\v)- Uru, the Iranian urva, may
have originally been used also in the sense of soul, but it finally
came to mean a phantom or a ghostly appearance. Ghosts were
called urvakan , i.e., ghostly creatures. That these spirits re-
ceived a certain kind of worship is undeniably attested by the
old word urvapast, “ ghost-worshippers,” applied by Agathan-
gelos to the heathen Armenians. The linguistic evidence shows
that originally the soul was nothing more than “ breath,” al-
though this conception was gradually modified into something
more personal and substantial. It was never called a “ shade,”
but in Christian times it was closely associated with light, a
view which has a Zoroastrian tinge. Death was the separation
or rather extraction of the soul — a more or less subtile mate-
rial, from the body, through the mouth. This has always been
conceived as a painful process, perhaps owing to the belief that
the soul is spread through the whole body. The “ soul-
taking ” angel and the “ writer ” 2 are nowadays the princi-
pal actors in this last and greatest tragedy of human life. After
death the soul remains in the neighbourhood of the corpse until
burial has taken place. The lifeless body usually inspires awe
and fear. It is quickly washed and shrouded, and before and
after this, candles and incense burn in the death-room, perhaps


COSMOGONY, DEATH, ESCHATOLOGY 95

not so much to show the way to the disembodied and confused
soul (Abeghian) as to protect the dead against evil influences.
They may also be a remnant of ancestor-worship, as the Sat-
urday afternoon candles and incense are. Death in a home
necessitates the renewal of the fire, as the presence of the dead
body pollutes the old one. In ancient times the weeping over
the dead had a particularly violent character. All the kinsmen
hastened to gather around the deceased man. The dirge-
mothers, a class of hired women, raised the dirge and sang his
praises. The nearest relatives wept bitterly, tore their hair, cut
their faces and arms, bared and beat their chests, shrieked and
reproached the departed friend for the distress that he had
caused by his decease.' It is very probable that they cut also
their long flowing hair as a sign of mourning, just as the monks,
who, technically speaking, are spiritual mourners ( abe\a ,
from the Syriac abhila ), did, at the very beginning of their tak-
ing the ecclesiastical orders. The dead were carried to their
graves upon a bier. We have no mention whatever of crema-
tion among the Armenians. On the open grave of kings and
other grandees a large number of servants and women com-
mitted suicide, as happened at the death of Artaxias, to the
great displeasure of his ungrateful son, Artavasd. The forti-
fied city of Ani in DaranaXi contained the mausoleums of the
Armenian kings. These were once opened by the Scythians,
who either expected to find great treasures in them or intended
by this barbarous method to force a battle with the retreating
natives. 3

The hankering of the spirits for their ancient home and their
“ wander-lust ” are well known to the Armenians. The many
prayers and wishes for the “ rest ” of the departed soul, as well
as the multitudinous funeral meals and food-offerings to the
dead, show the great anxiety with which they endeavored to
keep the soul in the grave. The gravestones were often made
in the form of horses and lambs, which perhaps symbolized


96


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


the customary sacrifices for the dead, and even now they often
have holes upon them to receive food and drink offerings.
Even the rice-soup in which the ptaras (ancestral souls) of the
ancient Indians (Hindus) delighted is recalled by the present
of rice which in some localities friends bring to the bereaved
house on the day following the burial.

Like the Letts, Thracians, Greeks, and many other peoples,
the Armenians also passed from a wild sorrow to a wilder joy
in their funeral rites. This is proved by the boisterous revels
of ancient times around the open grave, when men and women,
facing each other, danced and clapped hands, to a music which
was produced by horns, harps, and a violin . 4 There was and
is still a regular funeral feast in many places . 5

It is very difficult to give a clear and consistent description
of the Armenian beliefs in regard to life after death. There
can be no doubt that they believed in immortality. But origi-
nally, just as in Greece and other lands, no attempt was made
to harmonize divergent and even contradictory views, and con-
tact with Zoroastrianism introduced new elements of confusion.
The ordinary Armenian word for grave is gerezman , which
is nothing else but the Avestic garo-mnana , “ house of praise,”
i.e., the heavenly paradise as the place of eternal light, and as
the happy abode of Ahura Mazda . 6 The use of this important
word by the Armenians for the grave may be simply a euphe-
mism, but it may also be expressive of an older belief in
happiness enjoyed or torture suffered by the soul in the grave,
very much like the foretaste of paradise or hell which is al-
lotted to the Mohammedan dead, according to their deserts.
If this be the case, the departed soul’s main residence is the
grave itself in the neighbourhood of the body. This body it-
self is greatly exposed to the attack of evil spirits.

There are also marked traces of a belief in a Hades. The
Iranian Spenta Armaiti (later Spentaramet), “ the genius of
the earth,” occurs in Armenian in the corrupt form of Santara-


COSMOGONY, DEATH, ESCHATOLOGY 97

met and only in the sense of Hades or Hell. The Santaramet-
akans are the dwellers in Santaramet, i.e. the evil spirits. Even
the Avesta betrays its knowledge of some such older and pop-
ular usage when it speaks of the “ darkness of Spenta Ar-
maiti.” 7 The earth contained Hades, and the spirit of the
earth is naturally the ruler of it. Nor is this a singular phe-
nomenon, for the earth goddesses and the vegetation gods in
Western Asia and in the Graeco-Roman world have this indis-
pensable relation to the underworld. Demeter the Black of
Arcadia, or her daughter and duplicate, Persephone, forms the
reverse side of Demeter, the beautiful and generous. Sabazios
(Dionysos) in the Thracian world was also an underworld ruler
(as Zalmoxis?). The Armenian language possesses also the
word ouydn as the name of the ruler of Hades. This is
clearly Aidonoeus, or Hades. But it is difficult to ascertain
whether it is an Armenized form or a cognate of these Greek
names.

Another word which the Armenian Old Testament con-
stantly uses in the sense of Hades is Dzokh , from the Persian
Duzakh , used for Hell. However, as the Christian expression
gayank , “ station,” came into use for the place where, according
to the ancient Fathers of the church, the souls gather and wait
in a semi-conscious condition for the day of judgment, both
Santaramet and Dzokh became designations of Hell, if indeed
this had not already happened in heathen times.

There is some uncertainty in regard to the location of Hades.
It may be sought inside the earth at the bottom of or, perhaps,
below the grave. But, on the other hand, a saying of Eznik
about the wicked who have turned their faces towards the West,
although directly alluding to the location of the Christian Hell
and devils, may very well be understood also of the pagan
Hades. For we know that Hell is a further development of
Hades, and that the Babylonians, the Greeks, and the Egyp-
tians all sought Hades, sometimes in the earth, but more usu-

[Prometheus]

98


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


ally in the West. For all of them the setting sun shone upon
the world of the dead. And we have already seen how a bit
of modern Armenian folklore calls the setting sun, “ the por-
tion of the dead.” * The life led in the grave or in Hades,
however sad and shadowy, was held to be very much like the
present. The dead needed food, servants, etc., as the food
offerings as well as the compulsory or voluntary suicides at the
graves of kings clearly show.

The Armenian accounts of the end of the world are based
directly upon the Persian. First of all, the people knew and
told a popular Persian story about Azdahak Byrasp (Azda-
hak with the 10,000 horses). According to this version Azda-
hak Byrasp was the ancestor of the first ruler of the Persians.
He was a communist and a lover of publicity. For him noth-
ing belonged to any one in particular and everything must be
done in public. So he began his career with a perfidious but
ostentatious goodness. Later he gave himself to astrology and
he was taught magic by a familiar (?) evil spirit, who kissed
his shoulders, thus producing dragons on them, or changing
Azdahak himself into a dragon. Now Azdahak developed an
inordinate appetite for human flesh and for spreading the lie.
Finally Hruden (Thraetona, Feridun) conquered and bound
him with chains of brass. While he was conducting him to
Mount Damavand, Hruden fell asleep and allowed Azdahak
to drag him up the mountain. When he awoke he led Azda-
hak into a cave before which he stood as a barrier preventing
the monster from coming out to destroy the world . 9




But both among the Armenians and among their northern
neighbours, there arose local versions of this Zoroastrian myth,
in which the traditional Azdahak yielded his place to native
heroes of wickedness and the traditional mountain was changed
into Massis and Alburz. In old Armenia the dreaded monster
was Artavazd, the changeling son of King Artaxias. At the
burial of his father, when a multitude of servants and wives


COSMOGONY, DEATH, ESCHATOLOGY 99

and concubines committed suicide (or were slain?) on the
grave, the ungrateful and unfeeling son complained and said:
“Lo! Thou hast gone and taken the whole Kingdom with
thee. Shall I now rule over ruins? ” Angered by this re-
proach, Artaxias made answer from the grave and said:

When thou goest a-hunting

Up the venerable Massis

May the Kaches seize thee

And take thee up the venerable Massis.

There mayst thou abide and never see the light.

In fact, shortly after his accession to the throne, when he
went out to hunt wild boars and wild asses, he became dizzy
and falling with his horse down a precipice, disappeared. The
people told about him that he was chained in a cave of Massis
with iron fetters which were constantly gnawed at by two dogs.
When they are broken he will come out to rule over the world
or to destroy it. But the noise of the blacksmith’s hammer on
the anvil strengthens those chains; therefore, even in Christian
times, on Sundays and festival days, the blacksmiths struck
their hammers on the anvil a few times, hoping thereby to pre-
vent Artavazd from unexpectedly breaking loose upon the
world.

It is also worth noting that the story about the serpents
standing upon the shoulders of Azdahak and teaching him
divination was told in Greek Mythology, of the blind Melam-
pos and possibly of Cassandra and her clairvoyant sister, while
the Armenians of the fourth century of our era asserted it of
the wicked King Pap, whose fame for magic had reached even
the Greek world.

Any story about a catastrophic end of the world may reason-
ably be followed by the description of a last judgment and of
a new heaven and a new earth. But unfortunately the old
records completely break down on this point. The old Arme-


IOO


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


nian knows the Persian word ristaxez , “ resurrection,” as a
proper name (Aristakes) . Modern Armenian folk-lore has a
vivid picture of the cinvat - bridge which it calls the hair-
bridge . 10 There is the word “ kingdom ” for the heavenly
paradise which is called also drakht (from the Persian dirakht,
“ tree ”). The picture lacked neither fire nor Devs for the tor-
ments of the evil doers, while Santaramet and Dzokh, once
meaning Hades, had also acquired the meaning of Hell. But
out of these broken and uncertain hints we cannot produce
a connected picture of the Armenian conception of the events
which would take place when the world came to an end.
Christian eschatology, thanks to its great resemblance to the
Zoroastrian, must have absorbed the native stories on this
subject. However, as a branch of the Thracian race, the Ar-
menians must have had a strong belief in immortality and
brought with them a clear and elaborate account of the future
world such as we find in Plato’s myth of Er . 11



I


BIBLIOGRAPHY



ARMENIAN

I. ABBREVIATIONS


ABAW . . . Abhandlungen Koniglich-Preussische Akademie der
Wissenschaften zu Berlin.


ARW
EBr 11
ERE
OLZ
SBE .

SWAW

schaften.

TICO . . . . Transactions of the International Congress of Orien-
talists, London, 1893.

VKR .... Verhandlungen des zweiten internat.
allgemein. Religionsgeschichte, Basel, 1905


Archiv fur Religionswissenschaft.

Encyclopedia Britannica, nth ed.

Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics.

Orientalische Litteraturzeitung.

Sacred Books of the East.

Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie der Wissen-


Kongresses fur


II. ENCYCLOPEDIAS

Daremberg, V., and Saglio, E., Dlctlonnaire des antiquites grecques
et romaineSy Paris, 188 7ff .

Encyclopedia Britannica, Cambridge, nth ed., 1910-n.

Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. J. Hastings, Edin-
burgh, i9o8ff.

Ersch, J. S. and J. G. Gruber, Allgemeine Encyklofadie der Wis-
senschaften und Kunste, Leipzig, 1818—50.

Grande Encyclopedie, La, Paris, 1885-1901.

Pauly, A. F. von, Realency clofadie der classischen Altertumswissen-
schaft y New ed. by G. Wissowa, Stuttgart, 1904!?.

Roscher, W. H., Ausfuhrliches Lexicon der griechische und
romische Mythologie , Leipzig, 1 884-1902.

III. SOURCES

For the Indo-European period down to Christian times the most

important native sources are:

Agathangelos, 5th cent., ed. Venice, 1865.


436


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


Anania of Shirag, 7th cent., ed. Patkanean, Petrograd, 1877.
Eznik, 5th cent., ed. Venice, 1826.

EXishe (Elis^us), 5th cent., ed. Venice.

Faustus of Byzantium, 5th cent., ed. Venice, 1869, also in V.
Langlois, Collection des historiens anciens et modernes de PAr-
menie , Paris, 1857—9.

Moses of Choren, 5th cent., History and Geography of Armenia. ,
ed. Venice, 1 865.

Ohan Mantaguni, 5th cent., ed. Venice.

The ancient Armenian version of the Old Testament is useful
for names. We also gather short but valuable notices from Xeno-
phon’s Anabasis, Strabo’s Geography , and the works of Dio Cassius,
Pliny, and Tacitus. Alishan has gathered in his Ancient Faith of
Armenia (in Armen.), Venice, 1895, a good deal of very valuable
material from edited and unedited works of the mediaeval writers.
The Armenian language itself is one of the richest sources of infor-
mation, along with the church ritual and scientifically collected
folk-lore. Among the latter we may name Abeghian, Armenischer
V olksglaube, Pshrank, Crumbs from the Granaries of Shirak, and
parts of Srvantzdian’s Manana (see under IV. Literature).

[Prometheus]

===================
=====================


from after african mythology

-==============================


ARMENIAN


I. VAHAGN (See Chap. V, p. 42).

T HE conclusion that Vahagn was Agni, i.e., a fire-god in its
different aspects, is difficult to escape. But what does his name
mean? Windischmann, followed by Lagarde and Hiibschmann, iden-
tified him with the Iranian Verethraghna, a genius of victory, on the
basis of the slight resemblance between the two names and of the
fact that Vahagn grants courage to his worshippers. Moreover, both
Vahagn and Verethraghna were identified by ancient Hellenizers with
Herakles.

Windischmann’s view is untenable, not only because Verethraghna
is represented in Armenia by other more unmistakable names, but
also because the Vahagn myths have nothing in common with the
Avestic Verethraghna, although as we have seen, both gods were
identical in pre-Vedic and pre-Avestic times. Windischmann’s view on
this matter has so completely dominated Western scholars that no
one has bestowed any thought on the Vahagn myths which we have
just examined. It is true that the Avestic Verethraghna was also
born in an ocean. But he does not fight against dragons nor is he
closely associated with fire. (The dragon fighters of Iran are Atar,
the fire, Tishtrya, the rain-star which conquers Apaosha, the Iranian
genius of drought, Thrastona, and Keresaspa.) Although, as has
been noticed by Avestic scholars like Lehmann, Jackson, and Carnoy,
the only tangible traits of Verethraghna remind us of Indra, the
individuality of his figure and of his activities is not so sharply defined
as those of Vahagn or of Indra.

Moreover, it is very difficult to derive the name of Vahagn from
Verethraghna. How did the strong “ r’s ” of “ Verethra ” become
entirely lost in a language that revels in r’s, while the very weak aghn
survived? Granting even that this is what happened, what is the
place of Vahagn among such forms of Verethraghna’s name as Vrtan
(perhaps also Vardan ), V ahram, and Vram, which occur in Armenia?

For these reasons, as well as his manifest connection with the fire,
it seems best to consider Vahagn’s name as a compound of V ah and
Agni. By some Sanscrit scholars this has been interpreted as Fire-
bringer. The sacrificial Agni is called in the Vedas havya-vah or


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


34

havya-vahana (Macdonell, p. 97). But V ah must have meant some-
thing else than “ a bringer ” to the old Armenians. It is interesting
to note that all the names and adjectives derived from Vahagn use
only the first syllable as if it were a divine name by itself. His temple
was called the Vahevahyan temple. His priests were known as Va-
hunis or Vahnunis. Men claiming descent from Vahagn were often
called Vahe, Vahan, and Van — a corruption of Vahan. Wackernagel
(quoted by Gelzer) suggests that at his rites or mysteries, the en-
thused worshipper must have shouted “ Vahe’vah,” as at weddings
Greeks shouted ifjLevrjio<; ! for v/xrjv. The resemblance would perhaps
have been more striking if he had cited the case of aapoi for cra/?a£tos
in the Dionysia.

If there is anything in the classical testimonies bearing upon the
kinship of the Armenians with the Thracian races, and in particular
with the Phrygians, one might set the ancient Phrygian satyr or rather
god Hyagnis beside Vahagn. (See on Hyagnis, La Grande Encyclo-
fedie and Pauly-Wissoiva, s.v.) At first glance the similarity
between the two names is just as striking as that between the Vedic and
Avestic Indra, or the Vedic Nasatya and the Avestic Naonhaithya.
What is more, just as “ Vahagn,” “ Hyagnis ” (the supposed father
and perhaps the duplicate of Marsyas) also is a compound word, for
both Agnis and vrjs occur alone. Agnis stands for Hyagnis in the
Mosaic of Monnus ( Pauly-Wissowa, loc. cit .) and vr)s or vas is
confessedly a Phrygian god. Both Aristophanes and the Assyrians
knew him as such. It would seem that at the stage of development
in which we meet with Hyagnis and Marsyas in Phrygian mythology,
they had become divested of their original character in favor of
the all-victorious Sabazios or Dionysos, becoming mere flute-players
and musical inventors who adorned his procession. But the original
relation of Hyagnis to the fire can be legitimately inferred from his
transparent name, and Marsyas’ interest in the fertilizing rivers is a
commonplace of classical mythology and geography. It is not unlikely
that some representation of Hyagnis with reeds as his symbol gave
rise to the misapprehension that he was an inventor of the flute and
other allied musical instruments. For the Greek the flute was Phrygian
and every reed suggested a flute. The V ah of Vahagn and the vrj’s
of Hyagnis are identical with vr ) s used as a name or title of Diony-
sos. When we consider the fact that the Greek v was bilabial, then
we can easily see how a v could change into a v. But we may
observe the same phenomenon between other cognate languages; for
example, the Greek i<rirepa appears as vesfera in Latin. One may
even say that between the different members of the Thracian family
h and v interchanged freely. So the Phrygian word for bread given by


APPENDIX


365

Herodotus as /Sckos is hatz in Armenian. The Greeks usually, and
not without some foundation, associated this word {fys, “ Hyas,”
with their veiv, “ to rain.” In fact V ah and Hyas must be brought
together with Vayu, the air and weather god of the Vedas (and of
the Avesta) and the other self of Indra. According to Darmesteter,
the Avestic Vayu fights on the side of Mithra against the Devas by
means of the tempest. We may even compare the Zoroastrian Vae
i vah (“the good Vayu”) with the Armenian Vahevah mentioned
above, and conclude that the resemblance is not fortuitous. On the
other hand the Armenian word aud , “ air,” “ weather,” adequately
represents the Vedic and Avestic V ata , which, according to Macdonell,
is Vayu in its physical aspect.

The inevitable inference is that Vahagn-Hyagnis was originally a
lightning god with special reference to weather and to rain, very much
like the water-born Agni or the Apam Napat as well as the Lithuanian
Sventa Ugnele (Holy Fire) who bears the title of Visiya , “ the fruit
bringer” or “increase giver” ( ARW i. 368), which is a clear refer-
ence to his relation to the rain.

A. von Gutschmid finds that the Armenian legend about St. Athe-
nogene, who took the place of Vahagn in Ashtishat, has a peculiar
relation to game and hunting. From this he has inferred that among
other things Vahagn was the patron of game and hunting. This
theory finds a partial confirmation in Adiabene, southeast of Arme-
nia, where Herakles was adored and invoked as the god of the hunters.
(Gutschmid, iii. 414.) This Herakles may be Vahagn, but more
probably it is Verethraghna, whose worship also has spread westward.

Moses tells us that Vahagn was worshipped in Iberia also and
sacrifices were offered before his large statue. (i. 31.) A euhe-
merized but very interesting form of the Agni myth is found
in the Heimskringla, or chronicles of the kings of Norway, by
Snorro Sturleson (see English translation by Sam. Laing, London,
1844, i. 33 f.). Agne (fire) is the son of King Dag (day), who was
slain in his ship in the evening. Agne overcomes the Finnish chief
Froste (cold) in a battle and captures his son Loge (Luke, Lewk?)
and his daughter Skialf (“shivering”). The latter, whom Agne
had married, contrived to avenge the death of her father in the
following manner: Agne, on her own instance, gave a burial
feast in honor of her father, and having drunk copiously, fell asleep.
Thereupon she attached a noose to the golden ornament about his neck,
the tent was pulled down, and Agne was dragged out, hauled up,
and hanged close to the branches of a tree. He was buried in
Agnefit.

According to this naturalistic myth, fire is related to the day and


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


366

therefore to the sun. It conquers the cold and is conquered in turn
by it, and being extinguished, it returns to the tree (its mother?).
This is another echo of the ancient fire-myths.

II. WITCHCRAFT AND MAGIC (See Chap. VI, p. 48)-

The ancient Armenians were much given to witchcraft and
divination. John Mantaguni (5th century) mentions no less than
twenty-five forms of magical practices. Eznik’s short notices on
bringing down the moon remind us of the same practice among the
Thessalians, so often spoken of by Latin writers, such as Apuleius,
Horace, Petronius, etc. Horace says:

Non defuisse masculae libidinis
Ariminensem Foliam
Et otiosa credidit Neapolis
Et omne vicinum oppidum
Quae sidera excantata voce Thessala
Lunamque coelo deripit.

This was a most difficult feat performed by the witch, either as
an expression of anger or as an exhibition of great skill.

Bringing down the moon is found in Chinese encyclopedias as
a favorite trick of Taoist doctors. The following quotations
were furnished by Prof. Hodous of the Kennedy School of Missions,
Hartford, Conn.:

According to the Hsiian Shih Chi, written during the T’ang dynasty,
“ In the T’ang dynasty in the reign of T’ai Ho (827—836 a.d.)
a certain scholar named Chow possessed a Taoist trick. At the mid-
autumn festival he met with his guests. At the time the moon was
very bright. He said to his guests when they were seated, c I am
able to cut off the moon and place it into my sleeve.’ In order to do
this he commanded them to empty the room. He took several hundred
chopsticks, tied them with a string, and mounted them saying, ‘ I
am about to climb up and take the moon.’ Suddenly they noticed
that heaven and earth were darkened. Then he opened the room and
said, ‘ The moon is in the dress of Mr. N. N.’ Then with his
hand he raised the dress. Out of a fold of the dress there came out
a moon over an inch in diameter. Suddenly the whole house was very
bright and the cold penetrated the muscles and bones.”

The Yu Yang Tsa Tsu, written towards the end of the eighth
century, records another instance: “ In the beginning of the reign of


APPENDIX


367


Ch’ang K’ing (821-825 a.d.) a hermit called Yang was in Tch’eu
Chow (Hunan). It was his custom to seek out those who were search-
ing after the Tao. There was a local scholar called T’ang. The
natives called him a man a hundred years old. Yang went to him
and he persuaded him to stop a night. When night came he called
a girl saying: ‘ Bring the last quarter of the moon.’ The girl pasted
a piece of paper like the moon on the wall. T’ang arose and bowed
to it saying: ‘Tonight there is a guest here, you should give him
light.’ When he finished speaking the whole house was as bright
as if he had hung up candles.”

It is suggested that the magicians performed this wonder by means
of mirrors.

Armenian magical texts of a later date tell us that the sorcerers
climbed up a ladder of hair to tie the moon to the mountain top and
the sun to its mother!


III. ADDITIONAL NOTE ON SEMIRAMIS. By W. J. Chapman
(See Chap. X, p. 68).

In the Noldeke Festschrift, Lehmann-Haupt has shown that the
Assyrian queen Sammuramat (fl.c. 800 B.c.), probably a Babylonian
by birth, is the historical figure about whom the legendary story of
Semiramis has gathered. But this does not account for the fact
that the Semiramis of legend has characteristics which unmistakably
belong to the goddess Istar, and that in the story, as Ctesias tells it, she
is connected with north Syria, the seat, in Graeco-Roman times,
of the worship of the Syrian (= Assyrian) goddess. Yet a third
factor in the legend (cf. A. Ungnad, OLZ [1911], 388), seems
to be a reminiscence of the very ancient Babylonian queen Azag-Bau,
who is said to have founded the dynasty of Kis.

The Semiramis of Herodotus (i. 184) is clearly the historical
Sammuramat; in Ctesias, the supernatural birth of the great queen
and her disappearance from the earth in the form of a dove (Assyr.
lummu) is just as unmistakably mythological; yet a third version
of the story, that of Deinon (Aelian, vii. 1, i), according to which
Semiramis is a hetaera , who having won the affections of King Ninus,
asks leave to rule for five days, and when once she is in possession of
the government puts the king to death, is pure folklore. Yet Deinon’s
account reminds us of Azag-Bau, for Babylonian tradition made the
latter “ a female liquor-seller ” — in so far corresponding to the
Greek hetaera , and in the omen-tablets we read: “ When a child is
bisexual, that is an omen of Azag-Bau, who ruled over the land.”


3 68


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


This idea underlies the version adopted by Ctesias: “ Ein Mannweib,
die Semiramis, hatte das Reich gegrundet; ein weibischer Mann (the
legendary Sardanapalus) brachte es ins Verderben ” (Duncker, Gesch.
des ALtertums , iii. p. 353).

The mutual relationship of the three chief variants of the story
would be explained, if we suppose that Sammuramat was originally
an epithet of the goddess Istar, or possibly of the primeval queen
Azag-Bau; compare the Gilgamesh Epic, vi. 13, where Istar says to
the hero: “Thou shalt enter into our dwelling amid the sweet odors
(sammati) of cedar-wood.” Semiramis would then mean “ fond of
sweet odors.” There is, however, another etymology, which is also
of ancient date, summu ramat , “ fond of the dove,” the dove being
the sacred bird of Ishtar (Diodorus, ii. 4). See Alfred Jeremias,
lzdubar-N imrod, pp. 68-70.

W. J. CHAPMAN

The Armenians ascribed the Urartian works in Van, especially a
mighty dam, to Semiramis’ building activities. She is supposed to have
chosen that city as her summer residence. The saga reported that she
died in Armenia. As she was pursued by her armed enemies, she
fled afoot, but being exceedingly thirsty she stooped to drink water
(from a source) when she was overtaken by her enemies. How she
died is not clear, but the sagas spoke of the enchanting of the sea,
and of the beads (?) of Shamiram in the sea. There was also a stone
called Shamiram, which, according to Moses, was prior to the rock
of the weeping Niobe. Those who are acquainted with the classical
form of the Semiramis legend will easily perceive how the Armenians
have appropriated the details about her building palaces and water-
canals in Media and her death in India.

See also on Semiramis, Lenormant, La Legende de Semiramis,
Brussels [1873]; Sayce, “The Legend of Semiramis,” Hist. Rev.,
1888; Art. “Semiramis” in EBr 9th and nth ed; Frazer, GB 2 ,
iii, 16 1 ff. ; Uhlrich Wilcken, Hermes, xxviii [1893], 16 1 ff., 187 if.;
F. Hommel, Gesch. Bab. u. Assyr., Berlin [1885], pp. 630-632;
C. F. Lehmann-Haupt in Noldeke Festschrift. For the Assyrian
text see Walter Andrae, Die Stehlenreihen in Assur, Leipzig [1913],
p. 11, and compare Lehmann-Haupt, Die historische Semiramis und
ihre Zeit, Tubingen [1910].


APPENDIX


369


IV. THE CYCLOPS (See Chap. XI, p. 85).

The Cyclops, and especially Polyphemos, are to be found every-
where in Europe and Asia (see e.g. W. C. Grimm, “ Die
Sage von Polyphem,” ABAW, 1857, p. I ff. ; J. and W. Grimm,
Kinder und Hausmarchen , No. 1 3° 5 W. R* S. Ralston, Russian
Folk Tales , London, 1873, ch. iii; Herodotus, on the Arimaspians,
iv. 27; G. Krek, Einleitung in die Slavische Litter aturges chi chte 2 ;
Graz, 1887, pp. 665-759; G. Polivka, “ Nachtrage zur Polyphem-
sage,” ARW i. [1898] 305 f.). The black giant whom Sinbad the
Sailor, Odysseus-like, blinded on his third voyage, is well known to
readers of the Arabian Nights. Polyphemos appears also in Russian
folk-lore, with the name of Licko, with the sheep under which his
tormentor escapes, and with his cry, “ No man has done it,” while
he is bewailing his lost eye. It is perfectly evident that certain im-
portant details, such as the one single round eye and the burning of
it, have disappeared from the rationalizing and short Armenian ac-
count. The modern descendants of the Cyclops in Armenia are one-
eyed beings, who are either gigantic devils or a monstrous race living
in caves. Each individual weighs a hundred times more than a human
being. In the day-time they sit on their roofs in wait for travellers,
animals, birds, jinn, monsters, whom they may devour. When nothing
comes they procure a whole village for their dinner. For other
versions of the Cyclops story, see J. A. MacCulloch, The Childhood of
Fiction, London, 1905, Chap. 10.


V. THE AL (See Chap. XI, p. 88).

A magical text of uncertain date says: “ St. Peter, St. Paul and
Silas while they were travelling, saw on the roadside a man sitting
on the sand. His hair was like snakes, his eyebrows were of brass,
his eyes were of glass, his face was as white as snow, his teeth were
of iron, and he had a tusk like a wild boar. They asked him: ‘ What
art thou, impure, accursed and awful beast, etc.? . . .’ He answered:
‘ I am the wicked Al. I sit upon the child-bearing mother, I scorch her
ears and pull out her liver (?) and I strangle both mother and child.
Our food is the flesh of little children and the liver (?) of mothers
with child. We steal the unborn infants of eight months from
the mother and we carry them, deaf and dumb, to our King. The
abyss, the corners of the houses and of stables are our habitation.’ ”
Another magical text says: St. Sisi (Sisoe) and St Sisiane (Sisinnios),
St. Noviel and the angel St. Padsiel had gone a-hunting with the


370


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


permission of Christ. They heard the cry of an infant and going
in its direction, they surprised the A l in its evil work. They caught
him and bound him to the Al-stone. Thereupon came the mother
of the A l and they said: “ What does it mean that you enter the
womb of mothers, eat the flesh and drink the blood of infants and
change the light of their eyes into darkness, etc.”

Mher

Mher was the son of the Hero David. While avenging his father,
he sees before him an open door which he enters with his fiery horse
and the door closes behind him. Ever since that day Mher lives in
that cave. The underground river Gail (Lukos) flows under the
cave with a terrible rumbling. Once a year (either on the festival
of Roses, originally a fire and water festival, or in the night of the
ascension identified with the night of destinies) Mher’s door is opened.
Anyone near-by enters and is led by Mher to his great treasures, where
the poor man forgetting himself allows the door to be closed upon him.
Some day Mher will come out of the cave, mounted on his fiery horse,
to punish the enemies of his people. That will be the dies irae for
which the Armenians of the Van region wait with impatience.

[Prometheus]

VI. THE FINGER-CUTTERS OF ALBANIA

Moses of Kalankata, in his history of Albania (in Armenian,
pp. 39-42), describes a sect of “finger-cutters” which has un-
mistakable affinities with devil-worship and witchcraft. Vatcha-
kan, the King of Albania in the last quarter of the 5th Century,
was a zealous persecutor of all heresies and of heathen practices.
He was especially endeavoring to uproot the “finger-cutters,” when
a boy came to him with the report that while he was crossing the pine-
woods on the bank of the River Cyr, he saw that a multitude of
people had stretched a boy on the ground, and having bound him to
four pegs by his thumbs and large toes, they flayed him alive. As
they descried the stranger, they pursued him in order to use him also
as a victim; but he fled from them, and leaping into the river swam
to an islet where he climbed a tree, and, unseen by his pursuers, he
observed the whole procedure, but more particularly those who partici-
pated in this bloody rite. These he denounced to the King by name.
They were arrested by his command and put to torture, but no con-
fession could be extorted from them. As they were all being led to
the place of execution, the King singled out a young man among


APPENDIX


37i

them, and through the promise of life and freedom, finally induced
him to confess what took place at the secret gatherings.

The following is the testimony given by this young man: “The
devil comes in the form of a man and commands the people to stand
in three groups. One of these ( ? ) must hold the victim without
wounding or slaying him. The whole skin is taken off along with
the thumb of the right hand and carried over across the chest to the
little finger of the left hand, which is also cut off and taken along.
The same process is repeated on the feet, while the victim is alive.
Thereupon he is put to death; the skin is freed from the body,
prepared and laid in a basket. When the time of the evil worship
arrives, they make (set up?) a folding chair of iron (sic!) with
feet which closely resemble the feet of that man (or the feet of
man?). They place a precious garment on the chair. The devil
comes, puts on this garment and sits on the chair and having taken the
skin of the human sacrifice along with the fingers, he is seen (becomes
visible?). If they are unable to bring him the customary tribute
[of a human skin], he commands them to peel off the bark of a tree.
They also sacrifice before him cattle and sheep, of whose flesh he
partakes in the company of his wicked ministers. [Further] they
saddle a horse which they keep ready for him. This he rides and
gallops off until the horse comes to a stop. There the devil vanishes.
This he does once a year.”

The King commanded the young man to repeat this ghastly cere-
mony on the prisoners themselves before the royal army. Many of
them were thus flayed and murdered in the presence of their own fam-
ilies. There were slain on that day many foisoners. For it was a prac-
tice of the members of that sect that each (?) one should, on the devil’s
command, poison some one [during the year?]. If he was unable
to find a victim, the devil harassed him so persistently that he finally
gave the poison to a member of his own family. Those that were
slothful in these religious duties or denounced any one [of the devil
worshippers to the authorities] were visited by the devil with blindness
and leprosy.

[Prometheus]

ARMENIAN


The complete titles and descriptions of the works cited in the Notes
will be found in the Bibliography.

Introduction

I. Herodotus, vii, 73. This view is confirmed by other evidence.
The Armenian language, like Thracian, is a Satem language. The
old Armenians were addicted to beer-drinking just like their Western
brothers. The old Armenian ideal of human beauty was the large
proportioned, bright (blue?) eyed, fair complexioned man. We shall
later see that the Armenian religion also bears some important testi-
mony to their original identity with the Thracians.

Chapter. I

1. It is barely possible that, as Jensen maintained in his Hittiter
und Armenier , the Armenian word shand , “lightning,” is a reminis-
cence of the Cicilian or Hittite sanda , sandan (see Frazer, GB 3 ,
part 4, Adonis, Attis, and Osiris , i. 124 f.). Sanda, who was identi-
fied with Hercules, was a god of fertility, and may well have been
a tribal variety of Tushup, the Hittite weather god.

2. We have now very clear evidence of the presence of Indo-
Iranians among the Kassus of the lower part of the Zagros range,
the Mittanis of Northern Mesopotamia, and the Hittites of Asia
Minor, before and after the 15th century B.c.

3. ERE ix, 900.

4. American Indians had a similar rite according to Longfellow’s
Hiawatha, XIII. In the spring naked women rose on a certain night
and walked around the fields, to make them fertile. The same thing
is reported of some parts of Germany (Frazer, i. 138—139).

5. See L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States , Oxford,
1896—1909, vol. 5; artts. “Dionysos” and “ Sabazios ” in Roscher,
Pauly- Wissowa, and Daremberg-Saglio; G. Davis, The Asiatic
Dionysus, London, 1914.

6. The most unmistakable one of these is Hyagnis (see Chap.
V and Appendix I). Hyas seems to be identical with Hayk, and


380


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


Marsyas-Masses with the name of the sacred mountain Massis (Ararat).
The Dio of Dionysus is often explained as “ god,” and may be found
in the Armenian word Di-kh, “ gods.”

7. Codex La Cava calls Istvo, “ Ostius,” “ Hostius.” See A. V.
Rydberg, Teutonic Mythology , tr. R. B. Anderson, London, 1889.
As for Astvads , Agathangelos (5th cent.) defines it as “one who
brings about,” an explanation which seems to have struck the philo-
sophical fancy of the ancient Armenian Fathers. Others have related
it to Hastvads, “ creature ” or “ creation, “ from the Persian hast,
“ exists.” Another old writer saw in it the Cimmerian word for
“ unction.” The Persian yazd, the Avestic astvat, “ incarnate,” the
Hindu Asdvada (Brahma?), the Celtic Duez, and the Teutonic
Tiwaz (Ziu) (both of which are in reality cognates of the Greek
Zeus), were drawn into the task of shedding light on the mysterious
Astvads. Patrubani, a Hungarian Armenian who teaches in the Uni-
versity of Budapest, undertakes to explain it from the Vedic va'itu,
“ habitation,” Gk. aorv, “ city,” which by the addition of “ 9,”
Indo-Germanic “ ig ” (to honor), would mean “that which the city
worships.” Prof. Nar of Moscow identifies Astvads with Sabazios,
a view which the present writer held for a while independently
of Nar.

8. The loss of an initial f before r or l is not an uncommon phe-
nomenon in Armenian (see C. Brugmann and D. Delbriich, Grundriss
der vergleichenden Grammatik der Indogerman. Sfrachen , 2 Strass-
burg, 1886—1900, i. 503, and A. Meillet, Grammaire armenienne.
The intervening e presents no difficulty. The Latin fericulum is
probably represented in Armenian by erkiu'h, “ fear.”

9. The Slavic character of things Thraco-Phrygian has lately been
attracting some attention (see G. Calderon, “ Slavonic Elements in
Greek Religion,” Classical Review [1913]. The Letto-Slavic char-
acter of the Armenian language has been known for the last four
decades through the researches of Hiibschmann. Here it may be
noted that something of this had already been observed in the folk-
lore of the Armenians (see Chalatianz, Intro.).

10. Die alten Thraker, Vienna, 1893—4 (SW AW) , ii. 60.

11. Gladys M. N. Davis, in a recent work called The Asiatic
Dionysos, London, 1914, has revived an older theory that would
identify Dionysos with the Vedic Soma. This book has been very
severely criticised, but its main contention is worthy of further
investigation.

12. See also A. Meillet, “ Sur les termes religieux iraniens en
Armenien,” in Revue des etudes armeniennes, i, fasc. 3, 1921 ; M. H.
Ananikian, “ Armenia,” in ERE.


NOTES


38i


Chapter II

1. EXishe (5th cent.), speaking of the Sassanian Mihr, reports
that the Persians considered him as the helper of “ the seven gods,”
which means Auramazda with the six Amesha Spentas. Dolens and
Khatch (pp. 201-203) maintain this view, and also aptly point to the
Phoenician pantheon with seven Cabirs, and Eshmun the eighth.
Even in India Aditi had seven, then with the addition of the sun,
eight children.

2. Farther west, especially in Persianized Lydia, Anahita was
represented with a crescent on her head.

3. Agathangelos, p. 34.

4. See detailed description in Sandalgian’s Histoire documentaire,
p. 794.

5. A thorough comparative study of the Armenian church rites
is still a desideratum. When we have eliminated what is Byzantine
or Syrian, we may safely assume that the rest is native and may have
preserved bits of the pagan worship. Among these rites may be
mentioned the abjuration of the devil in Lent, the Easter celebrations,
the Transfiguration roses and rose-water, the blessing of the grapes
at the Assumption of the Virgin, the blessing of the four corners of
the earth, etc.


Chapter III


1. Agathangelos, p. 590.

2. Seeing that Anahit was in later times identified with Artemis
and Nane, with Athene and Mihr and with Hephaistos, one may well
ask whether this fathering of Aramazd upon them was not a bit of
Hellenizing. Yet the Avesta does not leave us without a parallel in
this matter.

3. Agathangelos, pp. 52, 61.

4. Ibid., pp. 52, 61, 106.

5. Ibid., p. 623.

6. It is noteworthy that his Christian successor is a hurler of the
lightning.

7. See artts. “ Calendar (Armenian) ” and “ Calendar (Persian) ”
in ERE iii. 70 f., 128 f.

8. Al-Blruni, Chron., pp. 202— 203.

9. This is an important instance of the Adonis gardens in the East,
overlooked by Frazer. Readers of his Adonis , Attis, and Osiris know
how widely the custom had spread in the West.

10. See Chap. 8.


382


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


11. Gregory the Illuminator substituted the festival of St. John
Baptist for that of the Navasard, but as that festival did not attain
more than a local popularity (in Tarauntis) the later Fathers seem
to have united it with the great festival of the Assumption of the
Virgin, at which the blessing of the grapes takes place. These
Christian associations gradually cost the old festival many of its
original traits.

12. Al-Blruni, Chron., p. 199.

13. Moses, ii. 66; Agathangelos, p. 623. Gelzer and others have
made of his title of V anatur , “ hospitable,” a separate deity. However
corrupt the text of Agathangelos may be, it certainly does not justify
this inference. Further, V anatur is used in the Book of Maccabees
to translate Zeus Xenios. For a fuller discussion of this subject see
art. “ Armenia (Zoroastrian) ” in ERE i. 795.

14. Al-Blruni, Chron., p. 200.

15. Quoted by Alishan, p. 260. It is perhaps on this basis that
Gelzer gives her the title of “ mother of gods.” This title finds no
support in ancient records.

16. Agathangelos, p. 5 90. This cannot be Zoroastrian.

17. Moses, ii. 12.

18. Ibid., ii. 53.

19. Agathangelos, p. 612.

20. Moses, i. 31.

21. Kund in Persian may mean “brave.” But the word does not
occur in Armenian in this sense.

22. The Iberians also had a chief deity called Azmaz (a corruption
of Aramazd), whose statue, described as “the thunderer ” or “a
hurler of lightning,” was set up outside of their capital, Mdskhit. A
mighty river flowed between the temple and the city. As the statue
was visible from all parts of the city, in the morning everyone stood
on his house-roof to worship it. But those who wished to sacrifice,
had to cross the river in order to do so at the temple. (Alishan,
P- 3 H-)

23. Whenever she may have come to Persia, her patronage over
the rivers and springs need not be regarded as a purely Iranian addition
to her attributes. The original Ishtar is a water goddess, and therefore
a goddesss of vegetation, as well as a goddess of love and maternity.
Water and vegetation underlie and symbolize all life whether animal
or human. Cf. Mythology of all Races , Boston, 1 9 1 7, vi. 278 f.

24. Agathangelos, p. 52.

25. Dio. Cass., 36, 48; Pliny, HN v. 83.

26. Strabo, xi. 532C. Cumont thinks that this was a modification
of ancient exogamy (see art. “ Anahita ” in ERE i. 414, and his Les


NOTES


383


religions orientates dans le -paganisme romain, Paris, 1907, p. 287).
Yet it is difficult to see wherein this sacred prostitution differs from
the usual worship paid to Ishtar and Ma. As Ramsay explains it
in his art. “ Phrygians ” ( ERE ix. 900 f.) this is an act which is sup-
posed to have a magical influence on the fertility of the land and
perhaps also on the fecundity of these young women. Cf. arts. “ Ash-
tart ” ( ERE ii. 1 1 5 f . ) and “ Hierodouloi (Semitic and Egyptian) ”
(ERE vi. 672 f.).

27. Faustus, iii. 13.

28. Alishan, p. 263.

29. Moses, p. 294.

30. Justina was a Christian virgin of Antioch whom a certain
magician called Cyprian tried to corrupt by magical arts, first in
favor of a friend, then for himself. His utter failure led to his
conversion, and both he and Justina were martyred together.

31. We have already seen (p. 11) that Ishtar as Sharis had
secured a place in the Urartian pantheon.

32. Agathangelos, pp. 51, 61.

33. Moses, ii. 60.

34. Ibid y ii. 12.

35. Faustus, v. 25.

36. Agathangelos, p. 591.

37. Cicero, De imferio Pomfeeii , p. 23.

38. Agathangelos, p. 59; Weber, p. 31.

39. Farther west Anahit required bulls, and was called Taurobolos.

40. HN xxxiii. 4; see Gelzer, p. 46.

41. Pliny, loc. cit.

42. Moses, ii. 16.

43. Eraz y “ dream,” is identical with the Persian word raz ,
“ secret,” “ occult,” and perhaps also with the Slavic raj , “ the other
world,” or “ paradise.” Muyn is now unintelligible and the fiovVos
of the Greek is evidently a mere reproduction of the cryptic muyn.

44. Moses, ii. 12.

45. Tiur’s name occurs also as Tre in the list of the Armenian
months. In compound names and words it assumes the Persian
form of Tir. We find a “ Ti ” in the old exclamation “ (By) Ti
or Tir, forward! ” and it may be also in such compound forms as
Ti-air y Ti-mann, a “ lord,” and Ti-kin, “ a Ti-woman,” i.e., “ lady,”
“ queen.” Ti-air may be compared with Tirair, a proper name of
uncertain derivation. However, owing to the absence of the “ r ”
in Ti, one may well connect it with the older Tiv, a cognate of
Indo-European Dyaus, Zeus, Tiwaz, etc., or one may consider it
as a dialectical variety of the Armenian di } “god” See also p. 13.


3§4


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


46. Eznik, pp. 150, 153, etc. Synonymous or parallel with this,
we find also the word bakht , “ fortuna.”

47. Pshrank, p. 271. See for a fuller account Abeghian, p. 6 if.

48. Perhaps because, like the temple of Nabu in Borsippa, it
contained a place symbolizing the heavenly archive in which the
divine decrees were deposited.

49. Agathangelos.

50. “ The Writer ” was confused with the angel of death in
Christian times. He is now called “the little brother of death.”
It is curious to note that the Teutonic Wotan, usually identified
with Mercury, was also the conductor of souls to Hades.

51. Nabu, the city-god of Borsippa, once had precedence over
Marduk himself in the Babylonian Pantheon. But when Marduk,
the city god of Babylon, rose in importance with the political rise of
his city, Nabu became the scribe of the gods and their messenger,
as well as the patron of the priests. On the Babylonian New Year’s
Day (in the spring) he wrote on tablets, the destiny of men, when
this was decided on the world mountain.

52. Farvardin Yasht y xxvii. 126.

53. Moulton, p. 435. Even the Arabs knew this deity under the
name of c UTarid, which also means Mercury, and has the epithet
of “ writer.”

54. There lies before us no witness to the fact that the Armenians
ever called the planet Mercury, Tiur, but it is probable. The Persians
themselves say that Mercury was called Tir , “ arrow,” on account of
its swiftness.

55. See G. Rawlinson’s Herodotus , app. Bk. i, under Nebo.

56. Jensen derives Tir from the Babylonian Dpir = Dipsar,
“ scribe.” However, he overlooks the fact that the East has known
and used the word Dpir in an uncorrupted form to this day. Tir
may even be regarded as one element in the mysterious Hermes
Tresmegisthos, which is usually translated as “ Thrice greatest.” It
seems to be much more natural to say: Hermes, the greatest Tir.
However, we have here against us the great army of classical scholars
and a hoary tradition.

57. Eznik, pp. 122, 138; also EXishe, ii. 44. F. Cumont, in his
Mysteries of Mithra , wrongly ascribes these myths to the Armenians
themselves, whereas the Armenian authors are only reporting Zrvan-
tian ideas.

58. Greek Agathangelos; Moses, ii. 18.

59. Agathangelos, p. 593. One of the gates of the city of Van
is to this day called by Mihr’s name (Meher).

60. These human sacrifices may also be explained by Mihr’s prob-


NOTES


385


able relation to Vahagn. Vahagn is the fierce storm god, who, as in
Vedic and Teutonic religions, had supplanted the god of the bright
heaven. Vahagn may have once required human sacrifices in Arme-
nia, as his Teutonic brother Wotan did.

61. Eznik, pp. 15, 16.

Chapter IV

1. Moses, ii. 14.

2. Ibid., ii. 14.

3. Ibid., i. 14.

4. Anania of Shirag, ed. St. Petersburg, p. 48.

5. Ibid., ii. 14; Greek Agathangelos. Josephus calls the Nana
of Elam, Artemis.

6. Moses, ii. 14; Greek Agathangelos.

7. Apollodorus, iii. 14, 3.

Chapter V

1. Ibid., i. 31: Agathangelos, pp. 106, 607.

2. Agathangelos, p. 1 06.

3. Ibid., p. 606.

4. The Armenian word for “ reed ” is eXeg. The Phrygian
cognate of eXeg is probably at the root of the Greek eXeyeiov,
“ elegy,” which originally had nothing to do with elegiac poetry, but
meant a doleful melody accompanied by the flute. The relation of
the reed to the flute is well known to those who are familiar with the
Greek myths of Pan. Armenian also possesses the word eXer in
the sense of “ dirge ” (see F. B. Jevons, History of Greek Literature,
New York, 1886, p. Ill), but eXer has nothing to do with “elegy.”

5. Alishan, p. 87.

6. The district of GoXthn seems to have clung to the old pagan-
ism more tenaciously than any other in Armenia.

7. All these facts are recognized and clearly expressed by Olden-
berg, p. 105 f. ; Lehmann, in P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Lehrbuch
ii. 27; Macdonell, § 35; Moore, i. 254 f.

8. There is a great temptation to connect Aravan, the son of
Vahagn (Moses, i, 31), with this Vedic priest, as some have already
connected the Bhrgu of the Vedas with Brig = Phrygians. Atharvan
could easily pass to Aravan through Ahrvan. However, the name is
also Avestic.

9. Chalatianz, p. xiii. Even in Egyptian mythology the Sun-god
is sometimes born out of an egg, but he is born also out of the lotus-
stalk, for he is said to have spent his childhood in the lotus flower.
Cf. Mythology of All Races, Boston, 1918, xii. 25, 50.


386


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


10. Macdonell, pp. 89, 98.

11. Abeghian, p. 83 f. It is a very strange and significant coinci-
dence that in the Veda also the sea-born Agni is related to the light-
ning ( Rig-veda-Sanhita : a collection of ancient Hindu Hymns ,
tr. H. H. Wilson, London, 1850-88, vi. 119, note), and that Agni
gives rain ( Ibid., p. 387). Cf. also Oldenberg, p. 167 f. ; Macdonell,
§ 35, where the sea is identified with the heavenly sea.

12. Oldenberg, p. 120.

13. We would suggest that this is the origin of the use of baresman
both in India and in Iran at the worship of the fire and of the bares-
man at the Magian worship of the sun. The grass or stalk cushion
upon which the sacrifice is laid and the bunch of green stalks or twigs
held before the face were perhaps supposed to be an effective charm 1 ,
meant to work favorably upon the sun and the fire.

14. Sandalgian’s theory that Vahagn came to Armenia straight from
Vedic India has no sound foundation.

15. See Appendix, I, Vahagn.

Chapter VI

1. Moses, ii. 19.

2. Ibid., ii. 77. The modern Armenian use of the word “sun”
in the sense of “ life,” is due perhaps to the fact that the sun brings the
day, and days make up the sum of human life.

3. Abeghian, p. 41.

4. Agathangelos, p. 125.

5. Xenophon, Anab., iv. 5. 35.

6. Discourses, Venice, i860, p. 198— 9.

7. Ed. Patkanean, p. 66.

8. Yasht, vii. 4; Al-Biruni, Chron., p. 2 1 9.

9. Eznik, p. 180.

10. Abeghian, p. 49.

11. Dadistan-i Dinik , lxix. 2; Sikand-Gumanik Vi jar, iv. 46.

12. Eznik, p. 217. See also Appendix II, Witchcraft and Magic.

13. Abeghian, pp. 41-49; Tcheraz, in TYCO ii. 823 f.

14. Alishan, in one of his popular poems, calls the Milky Way the
manger from which the dragon may break loose. This is the echo
of some myth which we have not been able to locate. A modern
Armenian legend says that the Milky Way was formed by two brothers
who worked together in the fields and then divided the crop on the
threshing-floor. One of them was married and the other single. In
the night the married one would rise and carry sheaves from his stack
to his brother’s, saying, “ My brother is single and needs some con-


NOTES


387


solation.” The other would do the same, saying, “ My brother is
married and needs help.” Thus going to and fro they scattered the
straw.

15. Abeghian, pp. 41—45.

16. Pshrank, p. 198.

17. Alishan, p. 89.

18. Abeghian, p. 45; Pshrank, p. 198.

19. Quoted by Alishan, p. 98.

20. It is well known how later Zoroastrianism degraded the genii
of all the planets in demoniac powers.

21. Eznik, p. 153 f.

22. Al-Biruni, Chron., p. 21 1.

[Prometheus]

Chapter VII

1. Here it is worth while to notice how Kuhn in his exhaustive
study of fire-myths, called Die Herabkunft des Feuers , 2 Gutersloh
1886, summarizes his conclusion. He says (p. 35): “The myths
which have just been compared show the same belief among the
Indians, Greeks, and Italians in regard to the fact that the earthly
fire has been brought to mankind as a heavenly spark in (the form of)
the lightning by a semi-divine being who was originally (and) gener-
ally imagined as a winged being, as a bird. The people must have
thought that the spark is produced in the clouds by twirling, just in
the same manner as they saw the fire gotten out of the primeval
instrument, through a circling friction.”

2. Possibly the fear with which iron is supposed to inspire evil
spirits is also due to the fact of its containing and producing sparks
like the flint. A curious passage of the 1st Book of Jalal ad-Dinar-
Rumi’s Mathnavi makes much of the fire which iron and stone contain,
and which may not be extinguished by water.

3. Aspirated “ p ” became “ h ” in Armenian, as “ pater,” Armen.
hayr. The Phrygian word for fire is said by Plato to have resembled
the Greek irvp

4. In many places these ancestral spirits have become just spirits,
undefined and general.

5. There were in Armenia at least three towns of the gods: Baga-
yarij in Derzanes, Bagavan in Bagrevand, and Bagaron on the river
Akhurean. See H. Hiibschmann, Die Altarmen. Ortsnamen, pp.
410-1 1.

6. Alishan, Hayafatum , p. 79.

7. “ Story of the Picture of the Holy Virgin,” in Moses of Chorene.

8. Lazare of Pharpe (5th cent.), p. 203.


388


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


g. ARW xvii. [1914] 479. Similar customs are reported also
of the Belgians. See Frazer, GB 3 , part 7, Balder the Beautiful y
London, i. 194 f.

10. Many of the German sacred fire-festivals were also taken under
the patronage of the church and started from a candle (Kuhn, Die
Herabkunft des Feuers 2 , p. 41 f.).

11. See Frazer, GB 3 , pt. 7, Balder the Beautiful, i. 1 3 1 ,
for a very interesting and fuller account of the Armenian New Fires
at Candlemas. In fact the whole Chapter V constitutes the richest
material on new fires and the best treatment of this subject. Notice
that securing fruitfulness, for the fields, trees, animals!, etc., is the
chief motive of the fires, but next comes the desire to prevent disease.
These fires were intended to exert some favorable influence on the
fire-god in general and on the lightning (rain) god in particular.
The February fires in England, which were kindled on Candlemas,
if productive of bad weather, heralded thereby the coming of the
rainy season, i.e. the spring. For in this sense alone it is possible to
understand the old English verses:

“ If Candlemas be dry and fair
The half o’ winter’s to come and mair;

If Candlemas be wet and foul
The half o’ winter’s gane at Yule.”

See also artt. “ Feu ” in La Grande Encyclofe'die ; “ Fire ” in EB 9 ;
“ Candlemas ” in ERE iii. 189 f.

Chapter VIII

1. Annals , vi. 37.

2. Lehmann, “ Religionsgesch. aus Kaukasien und Armenien,” in
ARW , iii. [1900] 4 f.

3. There are those who have explained Vartavar from the Sanscrit
as meaning “ sprinkling with water,” and it can possibly mean also
“ increasing the waters.” However befitting, this Sanscrit etymology
is far-fetched.

4. For the numerous references on this subject, see the General
Index of Frazer’s Golden Bough , under “ Fire,” “ Water,” etc. It
would be worth while to inquire also whether the Roman Rosalia
(Rosales esces ) and the Slavic and Macedonian Rousalia are in any
way related to the Armenian Vartavar. See G. F. Abbott, Macedo-
nian Folk-lore, Cambridge, 1903, pp. 40 ff. These western festivals,
however, come much earlier.

5. Al-Blruni, Chron ., pp. 199, 203.

6. The Armenians had other methods of fire-making.


NOTES


389


Chapter IX

1. Abeghian, p. 5 9 f . ; Lehmann, “ Religionsgeschichte aus Kau-
kasien und Armenien,” in ARW y iii. [1900] 10 f.

2. The name Massis for this snow-capped giant of Armenia seems
to have been unknown to the old Urartians. It may be an Armenian
importation, if not a later Northern echo of the Massios, which was
in Assyrian times the name of the great mountain in the plain of
Diarbekir. According to Nicholas of Damascus (see Josephus, Ant.
Jud ., I. iii. 6) this mountain was known also by the name of Baris ,
which Sandalgian compares with the Sacred mountain Hara-berexaiti
of the Avesta.


Chapter X

1. Here, of course, the valuable tale of the epics has vanished before
the Biblical conception of the spread of mankind, but a dim memory
of the events that led to the separation of the Armenians from their
mighty brethren of Thrace or Phrygia, as well as something of the
story of the conquest of Urartu by the Armenians, seems to be reflected
in the biblicised form of the legend.

2. Moses, i. IO, II.

3. Alishan, p. 126.

4. Dr. Chapman calls my attention to the passages in Sayce’s and
Sandalgian’s works on the Urartian inscriptions, where they find
the name Huas or c Uas. Sandalgian also explains it as Hayk. ( In-
scriptions Cuneiformes Urartiques , 1900, p. 437.) See also the
appendix on Vahagn in this work.

5. A. H. Sayce, The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Van , p. 719.

6. This is the prevailing view among modern scholars. The word
that was current in this sense in historical times was axat (from
yaxata?), “ venerable.” Patrubani sees in Hayk the Sanskrit pana and
the Vedic payn y “ keeper Armen, hay-im , “ I look.”

7. Republic, x. 134.

8. Patrubani explains Armenus as Arya-Manah , “ Aryan (noble? )-
minded.” The Vedic Aryaman seems to mean “ friend,” “ comrade.”

9. This is not impossible in itself as we find a host of Arabic words
and even broken plurals in pre-Muhammedan Armenian.

10. Nychar is perhaps the Assyrian Nakru, “ enemy ” or a thinned-
down and very corrupt echo of the name of Hanaqiruka of Mata,
mentioned in an inscription of Shamshi-Rammon of Assyria, 825-812
B.c. (Harper, Ass. and Bab. Liter. , p. 48).

11. Moses, i. 15. See also additional note on Semiramis, Appendix

III.


390


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


12. Re-public , x. 134.

13. Pamphylians were dressed up like the Phrygians, but they were
a mixed race.

14. See art. “ Gilgamesh ” in EBr 11 ; also F. Jeremiah’s account of
the myth in Chantepie de la Saussaye, Lehrbuch 3 , i. 33 1 f. Frazer in
GB 3 part iv, Adonis , Attis, and Osiris, ch. 5, gives an interesting
account of kings, who, through self-cremation on a funeral pyre,
sought to become deified. He tells also of a person who, having died,
was brought back to life through the plant of life shown by a serpent
(as in the well-known myth of Polyidus and Glaucus, cf. Hyginus,
Fab. 136, and for Folk-tale parallels, J. Bolte and G. Polivka,
Anmerkungen zm den Kinder- und Haus-Marchen der Briider Grimm,
Leipzig, 1913, i. 126 f.). Further, we learn through Herodotus
(iv. 95.) that Zalmoxis, the Sabazios of the Getae in Thrace, taught
about the life beyond the grave, and demonstrated his teaching by
disappearing and appearing again.

15. Sayce, Cuneiform Inscriptions of Van , p. 566. We may also
point to the verbal resemblance between Er-Ara and the Bavarian Er,
which seems to have been either a title of Tiu = Dyaus, or the name
of an ancient god corresponding to Tiu.

16. For the real Tigranes of this time we may refer the reader to
Xenophon, Cyropaedia, iii. I. Azdahak of Media is known to Greek
authors as Astyages, the maternal grandfather of Cyrus the Great.

17. According to classical authors the historical Astyages was not
killed by Tigranes, but dethroned and taken captive by Cyrus.

18. According to Herodotus (i. 74) the name of the first queen
of Astyages was Aryenis. .Anush is a Persian word which may be
interpreted as “ pleasant.” But it may also be a shortened form from
anushiya, “ devoted.” This latter sense is supported by such compound
names in Armenian as connect anush with names of gods, e.g. Hayka-
nush, Hranush, Vartanush, etc.

Chapter XI

1. See art. “ Fairy ” in ERE v. 678 f. See also Kirk, Secret Com-
monwealth of Elves, etc. Its analysis largely supports ours which was
made independently on the basis of more extensive material.

2. Herodotus, iv. 9. The Greek view of the origin of the Scythians
was that they were born from the union of Herakles with a woman
who was human above the waist and serpent below.

3. Goldziher, “ Wasser als Damonenabruhrendes Mittel,” in
ARW, xiii. [1910] 274 f. This may have reference to water in its
relation to the birth of fire or to the lightning.


NOTES


391

4. Agathangelos, p. 57. Cf. the cross of the archangel Michael
in graveyards of Roman Catholic churches, e.g., French.

5. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion , Cambridge, 1903,

P- 54 °-

6. This description is based on the account given by Alishan and
in Pshrank. Some confusion has arisen in regard to the true nature
of this old rite, owing to the fact that Shvod was thought to be Shuoat,
the Syriac name of a month corresponding to February. But it is
certain that originally Shvod was the name of a class of spirits.

7. For a comparative study of serpent-worship and serpent-lore
see art. “ Serpent ” in ERE xi.

8. According to Frazer, GB 3 , part 7, Balder the Beautiful,
London, 1913, ix. 15, the serpent’s stone is identical with the serpent’s
egg. This, however, is not quite certain. Nor should this egg be
confused with that in which a fairy’s or dragon’s external soul is
often hidden {ibid., ii. lo6f.).

9. Later magical texts use the word “ dragon ” in the sense of
evil spirit.

10. For parallels see J. A. MacCulloch, The Childhood of Fiction:
A Study of Folk-Tales and Primitive Thought, London, 1905,
chap. 14, “The Dragon Sacrifice,” and E. S. Hartland, The Legend
of Perseus, London, 1894-96.

11. Chalatianz (p. 12) speaking of modern Armenian folk-tales
about the dragons’ reciprocated love for highborn matrons and maids,
mentions also the fact that there are many parallels in Slav, Ruma-
nian, and Wallachian folk-tales, and that it is the sons or brothers of
these infatuated women who persecute the monster, often against the
enamoured woman’s will.

12. See art. “ Changeling ” in ERE iii. 3 5 8 f .

13. We know that the Persian Azi Dahaka, a corporeal creature
and helper of Ahriman, had a human representative or could person-
ify himself as a man.

14. Quoted by Alishan, p. 194.

15. This pulling up of the dragon out of a lake by means of
oxen appears also in Celtic (Welsh) folklore.

16. In England the Lambton Worm required nine cows’ milk daily.
Luther, in his Table-Talk, describes a diabolical child — a “Kill-
crop,” which exhausted six nurses. The house-serpent also is often
fed on milk, while in other instances the serpent is said to be disin-
clined to milk.

17. House-fairies (the Brownie of Scottish folk-lore) thrash as
much grain in a night as twenty men can do. See Kirk, Secret Com-
monwealth, Introd. by A. Lang, p. 24.


392


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


1 8. There is a contradiction here. In the original Persian story
the world-destroyer is the dragon himself, chained by the hero
Thraetona.

19. These rocks were exposed in the morning to his eyes in order
to neutralize their baleful influence during the day. The evil eye
is blue. Before it, mountains, even the whole world may flame up.
(Pshrank, p. 180.)

20. For whirlwinds in connection with jinn, fairies, demons, and
witches see “ Fairy” in ERE v. 688a.

21. Alishan, p. 66. In more recent collections of folklore, God,
angels, and even the prophet Elijah, have taken the place of the
ancient weather god and his helpers. The usual weapons are iron
chains and the lightning. Sometimes it is a cloud-monster that is
being driven hard and smitten with the lightning so that he shrieks.
At other times it is the dragon hung in suspense in the sky that is
trying to break his chains in order to reach and destroy the world.
Angels pull him up and fasten his chains. The thunder-roll is
the noise of the chains and of the affray in general. According to
another and probably older account, the dragon that lives in the sea or
on land, must not l'ive beyond a thousand years. For then he would
grow out of all proportion and swallow up everything. Therefore,
just before he has reached that age, angels hasten to pull him up into
the sky. There he is often represented as being consumed by the
sun, while his tail drops down on earth to give birth to other dragons.
A magical text of more recent date speaks of the Serpent who remains
in hiding for one hundred years, then is taken into the skies, like a
dragon, where he acquires twelve heads and four bridles (Lkam,
Arabic). The lightning is often a sword, arrow or fiery whip which
the Lord is hurling at the devil, who is fleeing, and who naturally and
gradually has taken the place of the ancient dragon, as the Muhamme-
dan Shaytan crowded out the eclipse dragon.

22. Abeghian, p. 78.

23. Here, however, the meteorological dragon seems to have
become fused with the eschatological dragon. Whether these two
were originally identical or can be traced to different sources is an
important question which need not be discussed here. See Frazer,
GB 3 part 7, Balder the Beautiful , London, 1913, i. 105 f.

24. Abbott in his Macedonian Folk-lore (chap, xiv.) gives a very
interesting account of the dragon beliefs there, which have a close
affinity both with the Indian Vrtra and the Armenian Vishap. The
Macedonian dragon is a giant and a monster, terrible, voracious and
somewhat stupid, but not altogether detestable. He is invariably
driven away by a bride who boldly asserts herself to be “ the Light-


NOTES


393


ning’s child, the Thunder’s grandchild and a hurler of thunderbolts!”
Here Indra and Vrtra are unmistakable.

25. The relation of such doctrines to the faith of the Yezidis is
unmistakable (J. Menant, Les Yezidis , p. 83; Parry, Six Months in
a Syrian Monastery , p. 358 f.

26. In Greek and Latin mythology the powers of Hades accept
only black gifts and sacrifices, such as black sheep, heifers, beans, etc.

27. Among other things this would recall the arrows of Herakles
which had been dipped in the bile of the Lernean Hydra.

28. Alishan, p. 1 9 1 ; Abeghian, p. I04f.

29. Vahram Vartabed, quoted in Alishan, p. 194.

30. Perhaps the fairies’ dart, which killed people and cattle in
Scotland and elsewhere, is a dim reminiscence of this hunting habit
of the fairies.

31. Modern Armenian folk-lore also knows of witches with a tail
who fly to foreign lands astride upon such jars.

32. Cf. the Muslim “ Brides of the Treasuries,” fairy guardians
of hidden treasure. Western fairies also are often imagined as
mortal and as seeking to attain immortality through intermarriage
with human beings. However in other instances it is they who try to
free human children “ from dying flesh and dull mortality” by im-
mersing them in fairy wells. In Pshrank (p. 194), a man stumbles
into a wedding of these fairies, near the ruins of a water-mill. After
an oath upon the Holy Eucharist, he is allowed to taste of their wine
of immortality and to take a wife from their number.

33. I owe this identification to Dr. J. W. Chapman. For the
Telchins, see Blinkenberg, “ Rhodische Urvolker,” in Hermes , 1
[1915] pt. 2, pp. 271 flF. and the authors named by him. In an article
in the Hushartzan (Memorial Volume) of the Mechitarists of Vienna,
Nicolaos Adontz finds in Torch the Hittite god Tarqu.

34. Moses of Choren makes Torch the head of the noble house
called “AngeX Tun,” interpreting the word AngeX as “ugly.” The
expression means rather “ The Vulture’s House,” and Torch’s connec-
tion with that house is an unfounded conjecture of Moses’ own or of
his legendary sources.

35. See Appendix IV, The Cyclops.

36. Eznik, p. 191, EXishe, p. 65.

37. An nth cent, writer reports that a woman died leaving a hus-
band and some children. While the man was perplexed as to how to
take care of the orphans, a very beautiful woman appeared unex-
pectedly and lived with him, taking good care of him and the children.
But after a while for some reason she disappeared. She was rec-
ognized as a female Dev. Modern Armenians are still catching


394


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


mermaids by sticking a needle into their clothes. These can be
married or held in servitude and they will stay as long as the needle
remains.

38. Eznik, p. 178.

39. Faustus, v. 2.

40. Moses, iii. 55.

41. Eznik, p. 178 f.

42. Vendidad, xviii. 45-52.

43. Under the influence of later Persian romantic conceptions of
the Peris or Houris, the modern Armenian Parik has also become a
most charming fairy.

44. Eznik, p. 97 f.

45. See on the modern Armenian Devs, Chalatianz, p. xiii f. ;

Lalayantz, “ Traditions et superstitions de l’Armenie,” Revue des tra-
ditions populaires , x. [1895] 1 93 ^> F. Macler, art. “Armenia

(Christian),” in ERE i. 802; Pshrank, p. 170. Macler’s is a good
summary of the two preceding studies. The present-day Armenian
Dev is a very large being with an immense head on his shoulders, and
with eyes as large as earthen bowls. Some of them have only one eye
(Pshrank, p. 170).

46. Goldziher, ARW x. [1907] 44.

47. This “mother of the Als ” resembles the Teutonic devil’s
grandmother.

48. Quoted by Alishan, p. 222.

49. To steal unborn children is a trait of the nocturnal demon
Kikimora of the Slavs also, but rather a rare notion among other
peoples. The tribute mentioned in the text resembles the Scottish
tradition of the similar tribute paid by the fairies to the devil, usually
a human victim (see J. A. MacCulloch, artt. “ Changeling,”
“Fairy,” in ERE iii. 360, v. 678).

50. Modern Parsis burn a fire or light in the room, probably for
the same purpose. (See J. J. Modi, art. “Birth (Parsi) ” in ERE
ii. 661, though the writer fails to give the reason underlying this
practice.)

51. The spirits of Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday eve, of which
Abeghian (p. 120 f.) and, following him, Lalayantz ( Revue des
traditions -populates, x. [1895] 3), speak, are Christian inventions.
Wednesday and Friday, as fast days, and Sunday as a holy day, are
supposed to avenge themselves on those who do not respect their
sanctity.

52. The Als are known also to modern Armenian folklore (Abe-
ghian, p. 108 f.). But sometimes the Devs assume their functions
(see Pshrank, p. 170), and they not only steal the mother’s liver, but

[Prometheus]

NOTES


395

also bring the child, probably born, to their chief, substituting for
him a changeling. See also Appendix V, The Al.

53. As this seems to be a self-contradiction, it is perhaps better to
take it as a refutation by Eznik of those who said that the Nhang was
a personal being.

54. In a similar manner the Teutonic Nixies showed themselves
in the form of bulls and horses, and lured men maliciously into the
abyss. (S. Reinach, Orpheus } Eng. trans., London, 1909, p. 133).

55. Alishan, p. 62 f.

56. Faustus, v. 36.

57. See p. 68.

58. Eznik, p. 98 f. It is difficult to tell whether these beneficent
spirits belonged to the original stock of Armenian beliefs or whether
they were a survival of the Urartian or even Babylonian spirit world.
Plato does not mention them in his brief and philosophical “ Er ”
myth, although how the dead hero’s body was taken up whole (intact),
without some process of healing, is hard to see. The myth about a
slain hero’s return to life is, however, rather foreign to Greek
thought, and this trait may not have reached him at all. G. H.
Basmajian, an Armenian Assyriologist, in his short C omparative Study
of our Aralez and the Babylonian Marduk (Venice, 1898), points
out that Marduk had four dogs, Ukkumu, “ the snatcher,” Akkulu,
“ the eater,” Iksuda, “ the snatcher,” and Iltepu, “ the satisfier,”
and that he himself is said in a cuneiform fragment from Koyunjuk,
now in the British Museum (K. 8961), “to recall the dead to life,”
and (line 10) “to give life to the dead bodies.” Yet this view,
which had already been held by Emine and V. Langlois {C ollection
des historiens anciens et modernes de V Armeniey Paris, 1867—9, i. 26,
note 1), cannot be said to be the last word on this interesting but
obscure point. Marduk’s dogs do not lick wounds, nor is Marduk
himself specially famous for restoring dead heroes to life. Licking
wounds to heal them is the most important feature of these gods or
dog spirits. (For a parallel see p. 204 of the African section of this
volume.) Prof. Sayce saw some connexion between the Arall
mountain and the Armenian Aralez, while another scholar has sug-
gested Aralu or Hades as a possible explanation. Basmajian comes
perhaps nearer to the solution. Sandalgian ( Histoire documentaire
de P Armenie y ii. 599) quotes the letter of Sargon speaking of
golden keys found in the temple of Khaldis in Mutzatzir, in the form
of goddesses wearing the tiara, carrying the dented harp and the circle
and treading upon dogs which made faces. But the same author (pp.
754-759) says that arales meant for the ancient Armenians inhabitants
of Arali (Summerian Hades), but later generations, having forgotten


396


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


the original sense of the word, developed the myth of the Aralezes,
from the last syllable which conveyed to them the meaning of lapping.

59. Alishan, p. 177 f.

60. See also Isaiah, xxxiv. 13, Jeremiah, 1 . 39, in the old Armenian
version.

61. Alishan, p. 185.

62. The sea-bull resembles the Celtic Water-bull, the Tarbh
Uisge of the West Highlands, which had no ears and could assume
other shapes. It dwelt in lochs and was friendly to man, occasion-
ally emerging to mate with ordinary cows. The similar Tarroo
Ushtey of the Isle of Man begets monsters. Both have a curious
resemblance to the Bunyip, a mythical water monster of the Australian
blacks. See J. A. MacCulloch, The Religion of the Ancient Celts ,
Edinburgh, 19 1 1, p. 189; Mythology of All Races, Boston, 1916,
ix. 280.

63. Besides many of the above mentioned spirits, modern Arme-
nians know at least two others, the Hotots and the Old Hags of the
Swamps. The Hotots are like devils, but they are not devils. In the
winter and in the spring they live in rivers and swamps. When they
appear they are all covered with mire. They do not deceive men as
the devils do, but they allure them by all sorts of dances, jests, and
grimaces. When the unsuspecting victim follows them for the
sake of being amused, — and who can resist the temptation? — they
pull and push him into their miry abode. The Old Hags of the
marshes also live in pools and swamps. They are terrible to see.
They are enormous, thick, and naked, with heads as big as bath-house
domes, with breasts as large as lambs hanging down. Horses, oxen,
buffaloes, men, children and other living beings are drawn into their
watery abode and drowned by them. (Pshrank, pp. I7l - I72.)
See also Appendix VI, “ The Finger Cutters of Albania.”


Chapter XII

1. See E. W. Lane, Arabian Nights, i., notes on the first chapter,
or his Arabian Society in the Middle Ages , ed. by S. Lane-Poole,
London, 1883, p. 106 f. ; also the extravagant cosmogony in the first
chapter of ath-Tha‘labi’s Qisas al-anbiya.

2. See chap, i i i . , part 3, on Tyr; also Abeghian, p. 1 6 f., and
Pshrank, p. 168.

3. Herodotus (iv. 127) tells us that the Scythians challenged Darius
who was invading their country and anxiously seeking an encounter


NOTES


397

with the retreating barbarians, to violate the graves of their kings, if
he wished to force them to fight.

4. The temptation is very great to read in this light the well-known
report of Herodotus (v. 4) that the Thracians mourned at a birth but
were very joyful at a death. The father of historians and folk-lorists,
whose bias to see in everything Thracian some sign of belief in im-
mortality was strong, may be describing a Thracian funeral only
imperfectly, i.e., through the very noisy funeral-feast. The funeral-
feast is and was a widely spread custom. See artt. “ Death and Dis-
posal of the Dead,” ERE, iv. 41 1 fiF., “ Feasting,” lb., v. 801 If.; and
W. Caland, Die vorchristlichen baltlschen T otengebrauche , ARW iii.

5. For more details on burial customs among the Armenians, see
Abeghian, p. i6f; Pshrank, p. 256, and “Funeral Rites” in EBr lx ,
»• 329 -

6. A. V. W. Jackson, Die lranische Religion , in Geiger and
Kuhn, Grundriss, ii. 685.

7. V endidad , iii. 35. Darkness was also the distinguishing feature
of the house of Lie.

8. Pshrank, p. 198.

9. For the more Avestic form of this myth, see A. V. W. Jackson,
Die lranische Religion, in Geiger and Kuhn, Grundriss, ii. 663L
See also Mythology of All Races, Boston, 1917, vi. 320. That a dread,
alarming dragon, who flies above the entire realm of air, and terrifies
Jove and the other gods, as well as the powers of Hades, will bring
the world to an end, is known also to Apuleius. (Bk. iv. 33, 35.)

10. Pshrank, p. 234; Abeghian, p. 20.

11. J. A. Stewart, The Myths of Plato, London, 1905 (the myth
of Er, Refub., 613E to 62 1 D, with parallel trans., pp. 1 34— 1 5 I ;
observations on the myth of Er, pp. 1 52-1 72).