Ananik

THE MYTHOLOGY OF ALL RACES
VOLUME VII
ARMENIAN
AFRICAN
VOLUME I. Greek and Roman

WILLIAM SHERWOOD Fox, Ph.D., Princeton University.
VOLUME
AXEL OLRIK, Ph.D.,
VOLUME
CANON JOHN
II.
Eddie
University of Copenhagen.
III.
Celtic, Slavic
A.
MACCULLOCH, D.D., Bridge of Allan, Scotland.

JAN MAcHAL, Ph.D., Bohemian University, Prague.
VOLUME IV.
UNO HOLMBERG,
Finno-Ugric, Siberian
Ph.D., University of Finland, Helsingfors.
VOLUME
V.
Semitic
R. CAMPBELL THOMPSON, M.A., F.S.A., F.R.G.S., Oxford.
VOLUME
VI.
Indian, Iranian
A. BERRIEDALE KEITH, D.C.L., Edinburgh University.

ALBERT J. CARNOY, Ph.D., University of Louvain.
VOLUME VII. Armenian, African

MARDIROS ANANIKIAN, B.D., Kennedy School of Missions, Hart
ford, Connecticut.
ALICE WERNER, L.L.A.
(St.
VOLUME
Andrews); School of Oriental Studies, London
VIII.
Chinese, Japanese
JOHN CALVIN FERGUSON, Ph.D.,
(Adviser
to the
President of the Republic of China)
MASAHARU ANESAKI,
Litt.D., University of Tokyo.

(Japanese Exchange Professor at Harvard University,
VOLUME IX. Oceanic

ROLAND BURRAGE DDCON, Ph.D., Harvard
VOLUME X.
University.
American (North of Mexico)
HARTLEY BURR ALEXANDER, Ph.D.,
VOLUME XI.
University of Nebraska.
American (Latin)
HARTLEY BURR ALEXANDER, Ph.D.,
University of NebrasJ
VOLUME XII. Egyptian, Indo-Chinese

W. MAX MiJLLER, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania.
SIR JAMES
GEORGE
SCOTT, K.C.I.E., London,..
VOLUME XIII.
Index
..
PLATE
Illumination
script
in
the
from an Armenian Gospel manu

School of
Library of the Kennedy
Missions, Hartford, Connecticut.
THE MYTHOLOGY
OF ALL RACES
IN THIRTEEN VOLUMES
CANON JOHN ARNOTT

GEORGE FOOT MOORE,
M A cCULLOCH,
A.M.,
D.D.,
ARMENIAN
LL.D.,
AFRICAN
BY
BY
MARDIROS
H.
ANANIKIAN
PROFESSOR OF THE
B.D.,
HISTORY AND LANGUAGES OF TURKEY,
KENNEDY SCHOOL OF MISSIONS, HART
FORD, CONNECTICUT.
S.T.M.,
LATE
D.D., EDITOR
CONSULTING EDITOR
ALICE
WERNER
SOMETIME SCHOLAR AND FELLOW

NEWNHAM COLLEGE. PROFESSOR OF
SWAHILI AND BANTU LANGUAGES, SCHOOL
OF ORIENTAL STUDIES, LONDON UNIVERSITY
L.L.A.,
VOLUME
VII
ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF AMERICA

MARSHALL JONES COMPANY BOSTON
M DCCCC XXV
-
COPYRIGHT, 1925
BY MARSHALL JONES COMPANY

Copyrighted
in
Great Britain
All rights reserved
Printed June, 1925
MB
Y-7
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BOUND BY THE BOSTON BOOKBINDING COMPANY
CONTENTS
ARMENIAN
AUTHOR
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT
CHIEF DEITIES
17
III.
IRANIAN DEITIES
20
IV.
SEMITIC DEITIES
36
CHAPTER
I.
II.
VAHAGN, THE "EIGHTH" GOD

VI. NATURE WORSHIP AND NATURE MYTHS
MOON, AND STARS
V.
VII.
42
I.
SUN,
NATURE WORSHIP AND NATURE MYTHS
II.
47
FIRE
VIII.
54
III.
WATER
59
IV.
TREES, PLANTS AND MOUNTAINS ....
X. HEROES
...
XI. THE WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS
....
ESCHATOLOGY
AND
XII. COSMOGONY, DEATH,
IX.
62
64
72
93
AFRICAN
AUTHOR
PREFACE
105
108
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER
I.
** II.
III.
IV.
HIGH GODS AND HEAVEN
123
MYTHS OF ORIGINS
MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF DEATH
THE ANCESTRAL SPIRITS
160
LEGENDS OF THE SPIRIT-WORLD

HEROES
VI.
V.
143.
179
195
213
CONTENTS
vi
PAGE
NATURE MYTHS
VIII. TALES OF DEMONS AND OGRES
IX. THE LITTLE PEOPLE
X. TOTEMISM AND ANIMAL STORIES
XL HARE AND JACKAL STORIES
CHAPTER
VII.
225
242
258
270
291
XII. TORTOISE STORIES

XIII.
309
SPIDER STORIES
XIV. STORIES OF WITCHCRAFT AND WEREWOLVES

XV. RECENT AND IMPORTED MYTHS
APPENDIX
NOTES, ARMENIAN
NOTES, AFRICAN
321
.
334
348
361
377
398
BIBLIOGRAPHY, ARMENIAN
433
BIBLIOGRAPHY, AFRICAN
441
ILLUSTRATIONS
FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
PLATE
I
from an Armenian Gospel

Coloured
Illumination
script
Manu
Frontispiece
Relief from Bayarid
18
III
Bronze Head of Anahit
26
IV
Illuminations from
II
script
an Armenian Gospel
Manu
Coloured
72
88
Thepta
VI Al
VII
89
no
Somali
VIII Types of the Wasanye
IX
i.
The Baobab
2.
Galla Huts at
"
Hunting Tribe
"Helot
Kurawa
Kurawa
at
124
124
Some Bantu Types

1.
A Woman
2.
Zulu Girls
132
of the Basuto
XI The Woman Who Found
the
Way
to
Mulungu
Coloured
140
XII The Footprints of the First Man

XIII The Cattle-Troughs of Luganzu
XIV Type
XV
XVI
in
Ruanda
of Zanzibar Swahili
Abarea
i.
Carved Post
2.
Giryama Shrine
XVII The Ghost-Baby

XVIII Spirit Hut
XIX
i.
2.
XX A
XXI A
146
154
162
170
182
for the Spirits
Coloured
182
190
198
206
View on Lake Kivu
The Virunga Volcanoes
Bowman
116
of the Southern
206
Bambala
Swahili Player on the Zomari

vii
214
222
ILLUSTRATIONS
viii
FACING PAGE
PLATE
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
Zulu
i.
"
230
Lightning-Doctors"
Majaje the Rain-Maker
238
2. The "New Yam" Ceremony

Masks Used in Initiation Ceremonies
Dance of Yaos
238
244
250
XXVI
Group of Ituri Pygmies

Coloured
XXVII The Dwarfs with the Big Heads
XXVIII Harry Kambwiri with his Wife Lucy
XXIX The Story of Che Mlanda Coloured
XXX I. Bushman Idea of a Ghost
2. The Story of the Mantis
XXXI
XXXII
XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV
XXXVI
XXXVII
i.
Bwana Ahmadi
2.
i.
278
286
290
290
Group of Akamba
TheNyanga
298
.
House Abandoned
i.
Sacred Friction-Drum
2.
New Moon Dance
after a
Death
314
314
>
340
Mambrui
348
Ruined House at Lamu

Bantu Types, Basuto
2
XXXVIII
1.
2.
XXXIX
Woman Grinding
A Family Stripping
322
330
against Witchcraft
Ancient Pillar at
306
306
View on the Calabar River

Women of the Bankutu Tribe
Charms
258
266
298
2.
i.
348
356
Maize
Bantu Types, Safwa Tribe
372
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

PAGE
FIGURE
......
Relief
Dragon-like Figure
58
Bronze Figures
71
S3
MAP
FACING PAGE
Armenia
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
BY
MARDIROS
H.
ANANIKIAN
B.D., 8.T.M.
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
AUTHOR S PREFACE
ancient religion of Armenia was derived from three
main sources: National, Iranian, and Asianic. The Asianic element, including the Semitic, does not seem to have ex
THE
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.
scholar of
ment
It is for the
to
Indo-European religion
well-informed
pronounce a judge
as to the value of the material brought together in this
The
study.
lexical, folk-loristic,
Armenians has much yet
and
literary heritage of the
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
to disclose.
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,

the latest modern study of the Armenian Pantheon.
we owe
As for Alishan, he was a poet and an erudite, but had hardly

any scientific training. So his Ancient Faith of Armenia is a
AUTHOR S PREFACE
naive production abounding in more or less inaccessible ma

terial of high value and in sometimes suggestive but more often
Manug Abeghian will rightly claim the

strange speculations.
to
Armenian folk-lore a systematic form,
merit of having given
while A. Aharonian
thesis
on the same subject
is
not devoid
Unfortunately Stackelberg
article, written in
Russian, was accessible to the author only in an Armenian
resume.
Sandalgian s Histoire Documentore de VArmenle y
of interest.
which appeared
in
1917 but came to the author s notice only

chapters on ancient Armenian
recently, contains important
religion
and mythology.
The
part that interprets Urartian
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
The main divergences have been noted.
this book.
Grateful thanks are due to the editors as well as the publish
ers for their forbearance with the author s idiosyncrasies and
inscriptions through ancient
Also a hearty acknowledgement must be made here

revered teacher and colleague, Prof. Duncan B. Mac-
limitations.
to
my
donald of the Hartford Theological Seminary, to Prof. Lewis

Hodous of the Kennedy School of Missions, and to Dr. John
W. Chapman
suggestions.
folk-lorist,
of the Case Memorial Library for many fertile

Prof. Macdonald, himself an ardent and able
and Prof. Hodous,
carefully read this work and
a student of Chinese religions,
made many
helpful suggestions.
M. H. ANANIKIAN
HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT,
April 23, 1922.
PUBLISHER
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
before the Armenians came to occupy the lofty pla
teau, south of the Caucasus, now known by their name,
had been the home of peoples about whom we possess only
LONG
it
scanty information.
It matters little for
our present purpose,
whether the older inhabitants consisted of different ethnic
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
The Urartians formed a group of civilized states
syrians did.
types, having
many
national
mostly centreing around the present

they left wonderful constructions and
we
tions,
city of
Van.
Although
many cuneiform inscrip

depend largely on the Assyrian records for our in
formation concerning their political history.

It would seem that the Urartians belonged to the same nonAryan and non-Semitic stock of peoples as the so-called Hittites
who
before
held sway in the Western Asiatic peninsula long

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
(640-600).
Armenian conquerors
INTRODUCTION
of the Armenians into Asia Minor, according

to the classical authorities, forms a part of the great exodus
The coming
from Thrace.
By more than one
ancient
and
intelligent
they are declared to have been closely related to

the Phrygians whom they resembled both in language and
writer,
costume, and with
cording to
whom
Herodotus.
they stood in Xerxes army, ac

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
cities, driving most
of the older inhabitants northward, reducing the remainder to
the mountain fastnesses and the fortified
serfdom, taxing them heavily, employing them in their in

and external wars, and gradually but quite effectively
ternal
imposing upon them their own name, language, religion, and

very natural that such a relation
should culminate in a certain amount of fusion between the
cruder civilization.
It is
what took place, but the slow process be

came complete only in the middle ages when the Turkish
two
This
races.
is
(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

But in 190 B.C., under
sky, it passed into Macedonian hands.
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
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
tion of
Rome.
in
Armenia under the suzerainty and protec

first king of this house was Tiridates I,
The
formerly the head of the Magi of his country, who may have
done much in Armenia for the establishment of Zoroastrianism.
was under Tiridates
II, a scion of this royal house, that,

of
fourth
the
century of our era, Christianity,
beginning
often persecuted, achieved its
in
the
and
country,
long present
It
in the
fuller conquest.
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
CHAPTER
THE
URARTIANS believed
in a
supreme being, the god
of heaven, whose name was Khaldi.

If not the whole,
of the population called itself Khaldian,
a name which survived the final downfall of the Urartian*fate
at least a large part
Armenia where evidently

the old inhabitants were driven by the Armenian conquerors.
In their ancient non- Aryan pantheon, alongside of Khaldi stood
in a province situated northwest of
Theispas, a weather-god or thunderer of a very wide repute

in Western Asia, and Artinis, the sun-god.
These three male
came to form
deities
the fact that in
a triad,
under Babylonian
From
one Babylonian triad composed of Sin (the
moon), Shamas (the sun) and

Sin
influence.
Ramman
(a weather-god).
the lord of the heavens, scholars have concluded that
is
Khaldi
may have been
Whether
also
(or
become)
moon-god.
be the case or not, the Urartian pantheon contains

Besides these no less
a secondary moon-god called Shelartish.
than forty-six secondary, mostly local, deities are named
in
an
this
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
But in the course of time, Ishtar

of Babylon, with her singularly pervasive and migratory char
1
acter, found her way into Urartu, under the name of Sharis.
One may safely assume that at least in the later stage of its
occupies a supreme position.
political existence,
long before the arrival of the Armenians
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
I2
on the scene, Urartu had made some acquaintance with the

For
Indo-Iranians and their Aryan manners and beliefs.
the
B.C.,
Medes had begun

and a
their national career long before
935
the Scythians had established themselves

2
an Eastern dependency of Urartu.
little later
Manna,
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
in
Armenians came to
Their respect for
live.
it is
attested
by the
fact that the ancient Urartian capital, Thuspa (the present

Van), was spared, and that another (later) capital, Armavira
North, became a sacred city for them, where according

to the national legend even royal princes engaged in the art of
in the
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

in later times a crude but mystic faith and
were related, had
a simple pantheon.
3
Ramsay,
chief deity
on the Phrygians assumes that the

the Thracian influx brought into Asia-
in his article
whom
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 earthgoddess with the moon seems to have been a common phenome
non
Dionysos or Sabazios represented the

of nature, without any marked reference
in the nearer East.
principle of fertility

human
to the
The
13
He was a
race.
corn that sustains
life,
god of moisture and vegetation.

and the wine and beer that gladden
These things sprang from the

the heart, were his gifts.
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
4
ductive activity. 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
In this sacramental
pieces and consumed by his devotees.
meal, the god no doubt became incarnate in his votaries and
blessed the land with fertility.
We
have no clear traces of such repulsive rites in what

has been handed down to us from the old religion of the Ar
Whatever they
spite of their proverbial piety.
have preserved seems to belong to another stratum of the
menians in
Phrygo-Thracian
A careful
faith.
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
religious
words such
day-light,"
and Di-kh
European
"
Tiwaz),
"
etc.),
the
(or Tir),
gods."
When
forward,"
as
(pi.
of
Indo-
Tiu (Dyaus = Zeus =

Deiva = Deus,
of Di,
i.e.
the ancient Armenians shouted, Ti

they must have meant this ancient Dyaus
"
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
14
who was
Pitar
also a war-god,
and not Tiur, their much
very learned but peaceful scribe of the gods.

of Varuna appears
among them
in the
Even
the
later
name
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
supplanted the heathen Di-kh y

an
was
Gods,"
originally
epithet of the father of the gods
and men, just like the Istwo of Teutonic mythology, of which
in
Christian times
"
it
may well be a cognate.

The Perkunas of the Lithuanians and
the Teutonic Fjorgynn, one as a god of heaven and of weather, and the other
as a
goddess of the earth, are
still
preserved in the Armenian
8
erkm "heaven," and erkir (erkinr?)
The word and goddess, iordy erd y earth," seems to survive in
the Armenian ard,
Another ancient Armenian word for Mother-earth is
probably to be found in armat, which now means
But in its adjectival form armti-kh,
cereals," it betrays a
more original meaning which may shed some light upon the
much disputed Vedic aramati and Avestic armaiti. The
as
word ho\m
wind," may have originally meant
of
The
and
Avestic
vat
a
Himmel.
Vedic
(Teut.
cognate
Votan?) is represented in Armenian by aud
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
words
"earth."
"
"land,"
"field."
"root."
"
"
"
sky,"
"
"
air,"
"
Armenak, the better-known eponymous hero of the Armenians,

who thus becomes identical with the ancient Dyaus-Tiwaz. To
these
the
may
be added others
Vahagn myths we
see
whom we
how,
shall
as in India
meet later. And in

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
15
fire was, as in Europe, often extin

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-
sacred
fire.
sacred
guished in water.
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
Phrygian
10
In fact, according to Tomaschek

nians probably belonged.
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

that belonged to Dionysos and by such Greek myths
"
Bull
"
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
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
their religious life.
of Iranian.
When Xenophon met
the Armenians on his fa
mous
retreat, Persian was understood by them, and they were

But
sacrificing horses to the sun (or, perhaps to Mithra).
we
remnants of Armenian paganism no religious

and no systematic theology, or cult of a purely ZoroIt would seem that the reformed faith of Iran
type.
find in the
literature
astrian
penetrated Armenia very slowly and as a formless mass of

popular beliefs which sometimes entered into mesalliances in
their
and
new home. 12
spirits
In fact the names of the Zoroastrian gods

found in Armenia bear a post-classic and pre-
Sassanian stamp.
Finally the contact with Syria and with Hellenistic culture
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
16
in
Macedonian times and
(95-54
B.C.),
especially
under Tigranes the Great
brought into the religion of the country a new
Statues of Syrian and Greek gods and goddesses

were acquired in some way or other and set up in Armenian
element.
Thus
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,
temples.
a small group of Semitic deities
one might say of vandalistic syncretism that

was tending to make of Armenian religion an outlandish
Their only excuse was that all their neighbours
motley.
identifications,
were following a similar course.
It
is,
wonder
Armenia
therefore, no
that the Sassanians during their short possession of
middle of the third century seriously undertook to

convert the land to the purer worship of the sacred fire.
ever, all was not lost in those days of syncretism and con
in the
How
fusion.
Most of the
ancient traits can be easily recovered,
common people saved

a great amount of old and almost unadulterated material.
This is, in short, both the historical development and the back
while the tenacious conservatism of the
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,
nian elements.
is
mainly a conglomerate of native and Ira
CHAPTER
II
CHIEF DEITIES
the celebrated Greek traveller of the
STRABO,
of our era,
in his notice of the
(or Eriza), says that
honour
all
the
Medes and
century
Erez
at
the Armenians
things sacred to the Persians, but above everything
Armenians honour
An
"both
first
Anahit worship
Anahit."
reorganization of the national

pantheon must have been attempted about the beginning of
the Christian era.
Agathangelos tells us plainly that King
official
(or
priestly)
Khosrau, on his return from successful incursions into Sascommanded to seek the seven great altars of
sanian lands,
"
Armenia, and honoured
(with all sorts of sacrifices and

the
sanctuaries
of his ancestors, the Arsacids."
pomp)
These sanctuaries were the principal temples of the seven
ritual
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
chief deities
desses were all patrons
of the seven planets.

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
(genii)
called Arusyak,
moon may have been adjudged
"
the
little
to Anahit or
The
bride."
Nane.
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.
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
Armenia enjoyed
also
its
full share of nature
worship ex
for mountains, rivers, springs, trees, etc.

pressed in veneration
Of the main deities Aramazd was the most powerful and
Anahit the most popular j with Vahagn they formed a triad.

This pre-eminence of the three gods forced the rest of the
less enviable position of
pantheon into the

We know very
secondary
deities.
of the cultus of ancient Armenia, but

in
we may perhaps say
general that it was not as much of a
mixture as the pantheon.
We
little
have two Armenian words for
"temple,"
Mehyan,
probably derived from Mithra-Mihr, and Tajar, which also

meant a dining-hall. The plural of Eaglny "altar," also
meant
"
or
temple
temples."
Temples contained large
towards
all comers.
and
exercised
treasures,
hospitality
3
Agathangelos 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
Also he
cious stones, splendid garments, and beautiful ornaments.
a
fifth
of
his
and
the
to
gave
booty
priests.
great presents
In Bayazid (the ancient Bagravand) an old Armenian re
lief was found with an altar upon which a strange animal
clothed in a long tunic. One
beardless, and carries a heavy club. The other has a beard,
stands,
is
and on each
side a
man
Their head-gear, Phrygian

Both have their hands raised
Probably the word for

Persian Spenta
"
holy,"
in
differs
character,
in the attitude
sacrifice
was
Gr. o-TreVSw
"
of worship.
s pand
to
in
detail.
4
(Lithu. sventa,
pour a libation
")
the place of sacrifice was called Sândaran y

the place of holy
and
the
things
priestly family that exercised supervision over
"
"j
the
sacrificial rites
was known
as the Spandunis.
They held
PLATE
II
and a
Relief found in Bayarid.
priestess (?)
the Phrygian hood, in the act of worship
with
priest
The tail of
a lamb as a sacrifice.
and of
offering
animal indicates a variety now extinct.

seems to have disappeared.
figure of the deity
Alishan s Ancient Faith of Armenia.
the
The
From
CHIEF DEITIES
a high rank
among
Spandanotz means
slay."
No
Armenian
nobility.
a slaughterhouse
other Armenian word has
"
"
Even to-day
and Spananel,
come down
"
to
to us in
seeing that Kurm is of Syriac or Asianic

Besides the Spandunis there were also the Vahunis
the sense of
origin.
the
19
5
"
priest,"
attached to the temples of Vahagn, probably as priests.

Vahunis also were among the noble families.
The
The
priesthood was held in such high esteem that Armenian

often
set up one or more of their sons as priests in cele
kings
brated temples.
The burial place for priests of importance
seems to have been Bagavan
("the
Whatever learning the country could

possession of the sacerdotal classes.
town of the gods").

was mainly in the
boast
CHAPTER
III
IRANIAN DEITIES
I.
ARAMAZD
was the chief deity of the Armenians when
WHOEVER
they conquered Urartu,
position
in later times that important
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
Yet
existed in Armenia.
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
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
father.
it must be confessed
from Zoroastrianism, and
was rather glory
monotheism,
that this
reflected
that the supremacy of
amazd seems never
to
have risen
that could degrade other gods
in
Armenia
to a
Ar
monotheism
and goddesses into mere angels
(Ameshas and Yazatas). Aramazd is represented as the cre

and earth by Agathangelos in the same manner
as by Xerxes who says in one of his
inscriptions: "Auramazda
ator of heaven
is
who has created this

The Armenian Aramazd was called
a great god, greater than all gods,
heaven and
"
"
great
this
earth."
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 art,
reminiscence of
He
"
"
"
manly,"
*
brave,"
which
is
good Armenian
Arya."
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
(Armen. ardary
Aramazd was above
"
right
especially of
"
Iran., arda, Sansk. rita).

the giver of prosperity and more
in the land.
Herein
abundance and fatness
righteous,"
all
"
ancient character of a sky-god comes into prominence.

"bringer of all (good) things," was a beloved title
his
Amenaber,
He made
the fields fertile and the gardens and the

The idea of an
vineyards fruitful, no doubt through rain.
Earth goddess had become dim in the Armenian mind. But
of
his.
extremely possible that in this connection, something like

the Thracian or Phrygian belief in Dionysos lingered among
it is
the people in connection with Aramazd, for, besides his avowed

interest in the fertility of the country, his name was some
6
Yet
times used to translate that of the Greek Dionysos.
even the Persian Ahura-mazda had something to do with the
plants
(Ys. xliv. 4), and as Prof. Jackson says, he was a
"generous"
It
that
was
Aramazd presided
tivals.
dar,
spirit.
in virtue of his being the source of all

at the
abundance
Navasard (New Year
s)
fes
These, according to the later (eleventh century) calen
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.
al-Biruni,
makes
according
this a festival
to
In spite of the fact that
the later Persian
commemorating the
(Semitic?) view,
creation of the world,
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
22
be reasonably sure that both in Armenia and in Persia,

was an agricultural celebration connected with commemo
one
it
may
dead (see also chapter on Shahapet) and aiming

8
In fact al-Biruni
at the increase of the rain and the harvests.
informs us that in Navasard the Persians sowed "around a
ration of the
plate seven kinds of grain in seven columns and from their

growth they drew conclusions regarding the corn of that
9
Also they poured water upon themselves and others,
year."
a custom which
still
prevails
among Armenians
at the spring
10
sowing and at the festival of the Transfiguration in June.

This was originally an act of sympathetic magic to insure rain.
Navasard
(Armen. Hrotik), the

and perhaps
connection with Fravarti
month consecrated
to the ancestral souls in Persia
significant, for these souls are in the
old
also in
Armenia, is very
Aryan
religion specially interested in the fertility of the land.
(Christian) Navasard in August found the second

of wheat on the threshing floor or safely garnered,
The later
crop
the trees laden with mellowing fruit and the vintage in prog
11
In many localities the Navasard took the character
ress.
of a fete champetre celebrated near the sanctuaries, to which

the country people flocked with their sacrifices and gifts, their
rude music and
towns and great
amazd
rustic dances.
cities
But
it
was also observed
where the more famous temples of Ar-
attracted great throngs of pilgrims.
tion of this festival
is
in the
made by Moses
(II,
with Bagavan, the town of the gods.
special
men
66) in connection
Gregory Magistros
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
(eleventh century) says that
Year
"
And
The
morning, sighed:
would
the
that I might see the smoke of the chimneys,

morning of the New Year s day,
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 als chapter on the Nauroz (Navasard) begins: "And he
Biruni
divided the cup
among
had Nauroz every day!
companions and
his
"
said,
that
we
12
On these joyful days, Aramazd, the supremely generous

and hospitable lord of Armenia, became more generous and
13
No doubt the flesh of sacrifices offered to him
hospitable.
was freely distributed among the poor, and the wayworn
traveller always
found a ready welcome
rejoicing pilgrims.
The temples
at the table
of the
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
of them, by consuming and distributing large
quantities of dry fruit on the first of January, just as the
14
Persians celebrated Nauroz, by distributing sugar.
the
memory
No
information has reached us about the birth or parentage
His name appears sometimes

form. But we do not hear that
of the Armenian Aramazd.

as
Ormizd
in its adjectival
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.
No
Moreover, Aramazd was a
wedded
jealous
wife, to vex him with endless persecutions. Not even SpentaArmaiti (the genius of the earth), or archangels, and angels,
bachelor god.
whom
some of
mazda
Hera
stood at his side as his
figure both as daughters
in the extant
Avesta (Ys. 454
intimate connection with this
Armenian
in a martyrological writing of the

his wife.
though
15
it is
Yet
this
and consorts of Ahura-
etc.),
appear in such an
chief deity.
Once only
middle ages Anahit
view finds no support
is
called
in ancient authorities,
perfectly possible on a priori grounds.
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
24
Our
uncertainty in this matter leaves us no alternative but
to speculate
vaguely
existence of gods
or create them?
as to
who
Here
how Aramazd brought about the

Did he beget
are affiliated to him.
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
It contained the tombs
Daranali, near the present Erzinjan.
16
and mausolea of the Armenian kings, who, as Gelzer sug
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
gests, slept
some of whom were of royal descent. 18

This sanctuary and famous statue were destroyed by Gregory
number of
priests,
the Illuminator during his campaign against the pagan temples.

Another temple or altar of Aramazd was found in Bagavan
19
(town of the gods) in the district of Bagrevand, and still

another on Mount Palat or Pashat along with the temple of
Moses of Khoren incidentally remarks 20 that there
AstXik.
21
Aramazd, one of which is Kund ("bald

Aramazd. These could not have been four distinct deities,
but rather four local conceptions of the same deity, repre
are four kinds of
")
sented by characteristic statues.
II.
22
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
the
supreme. She was
the one born of gold,"
the great queen or

the golden-mother."
"
"
"
glory,"
"
lady,"
IRANIAN DEITIES
Anahit
if at all
is
25
the Ardvi Sura Anahita of the Avesta, whose name,
would mean
"moist, mighty, undefiled,"

a puzzling but not altogether unbefitting appellation for the
But there is a
yazata of the earth-born springs and rivers.
Iranian,
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
If so, then whatever her popular character may
have been, she could not find a place in the Avesta without be
"
Nahunta."
ing divested of her objectionable traits or predilections. And

what happened. But even in the Avestic portrai
this is really
ture of her
it is
easy to distinguish the original.
This Zoroas-
golden goddess of the springs and rivers with the high,

pomegranate-like breasts had a special relation to the fecundity
trian
human
She was interested in child-birth and nur

under whose protection children were placed
with incantation and solemn rites. Persian maids prayed to her
of the
race.
ture, like Ishtar,
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
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
confirmed by the fact that to
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
heart of the
with springs and rivers.
She
is
simply a woman, the fair
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
26
daughter of Aramazd, a sister of the Persian Mihr and of the

As in the Anahit Yashts of the Avesta,
cosmopolitan Nane.
so also in Armenia,
often called
"
born
"
"
is
golden
"
in
or
her fairest epithet. She was

the golden mother
prob
"
"
gold
her
statue was of solid gold.
because
usually
ably
In the light of what has just been said we are not surprised
to find that this goddess exhibited
hood
in
two
distinct types of
woman
Most of
Agathangelos, who would
Armenia, according to our extant sources.
the early Christian writers, specially

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
24
life.
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.
On
the other hand no less an authority than the geographer

Strabo (63 B.C.-25A.D.) reports that the great sanctuary of
Erez (or Eriza), in Akilisene (a district called also

Anahitian
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
Anahit
at
25
of the noble families gave themselves up to prostitu

tion for a considerable time, before they were married.
Nor
ters
was
this
an obstacle to their being afterwards sought in

26
marriage.
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

in secret
nians of the preceding century, that they continued
"
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
2r
the worship of the old deities in the form of fornication."

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
Vanakan Vardapet
also assert similar things about Anahit.
shame of the Sidonians, which the Chal

says,
deans (Syrians or Mesopotamians) called Kaukabhta, the
28
Greeks, Aphrodite, and the Armenians, Anahit."
29
In a letter to Sahag Ardsruni, ascribed to Moses of Khoren,
we read that in the district of Antzevatz there was a famous
"
Astarte
is
the
Here
Stone of the Blacksmiths.
stood a statue of Anahit and
here the blacksmiths (no doubt invisible ones) made a dread

The devils (i.e.
ful din with their hammers and anvils.
idols) dispensed out of a melting pot bundles of false
medi
which served the fulfilling of evil desires, "like the

bundle of St. Cyprian intended for the destruction of the Vir
cine
30
This place was changed later into a sanctuary

gin Justina."
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
On
the other hand
it is quite
possible that she played
well-known role of a mother of sobriety
Hera or rather Ishtar, 31 the veiled bride and protector of
favor.
in married life the

like
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
of King Tiridates:
The
"
32
puts in the
great lady (or queen) Anahit,
the glory and life-giver of our nation,

especially the King of the Greeks (sic!
whom
),
who
all
is
mouth
who
is
kings honour,
the mother of
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
28
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
and schematic arrangements are

not safe in such instances, one may say in general that Aramazd 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
though clear-cut
distinctions
growth of vegetation, gives more especially young ones to ani

mals and children to man, whom she maternally tends in their
Aramazd is the
early age as well as in their strong manhood.
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
As a merciful and
children could not be her sole concern.
mighty mother she was sought in

of
cases of severe illness
and
Agathangelos mentions the

perhaps
83
care with which she tends the people. In Moses
we find that
in other kinds
distress.
nobleman to Erez to
propitiate the tender-hearted goddess. But unlike Ishtar and
the Persian Anahita, the Armenian Anahit shows no war-like
King
Artaxias, in his last sickness, sent a
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
3*
There was also in Sophene a mountain called the

35
Throne of Anahit, and a statue of Anahit at the stone of the
Blacksmiths. The temple at Erez was undoubtedly the rich
Armavir.
sanctuary in the country and a favorite centre of pilgrim

It was taken and razed to the ground by Gregory the
age.
est
Illuminator.
36
It
was for the safety of
when Lucullus entered
its
treasures that the

87
the Anahitian province.

of which was held,
one
Anahit had two annual festivals,
according to Alishan, on the 1 5th of Navasard, very soon after
natives feared
IRANIAN DEITIES
29
New Year s celebration.
Also the nineteenth day of every

month was consecrated to her. A regular pilgrimage to her
the
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
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 the goddess,
of Armenia bore a crescent on her head.
We
in the
have already seen that the statues representing Anahit
main
namely
Artaxata, were
sanctuaries,
in Erez, Ashtishat,
and prob
solid gold.
ably also in
According to
40
who describes the one at Erez, this was an unprece
Pliny
dented thing in antiquity. Not under Lucullus, but under
Antonius did the Roman soldiers plunder this famous statue.
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
41
This statue
punity in spite of the rumours to the contrary.
may have been identical with the (Ephesian) Artemis which,
42
according to Moses, 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
The place was
capital), was the best known temple of Tiur.
Weipo/iovcro?), which probably
Tiur had also another
of
dreams."
interpreter
44
temple in the sacred city of Armavir.
He was no less a personage than the scribe of Aramazd,
called
means
Erazamuyn (Greek
"
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
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
30
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
45
life.
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
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
the
"
seem
"
in an annual rendering of decrees, re

the
assembly of the Babylonian gods on the worldsembling
mountain during the Zagmuk (New Year) festival. They
to
have believed
As
located this event on a spring night.
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

Then the flowers and shrubs, the hills and
cease to flow.
stones, begin to salute
and address one another, and each one
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
declares
its
specific virtue.
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
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.
veil covers these things
is
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
47
recited."
IRANIAN DEITIES
31
Whether Tiur
originally concerned himself with all these

was
the scribe of Aramazd.
he
or
Being learned
not,
things
and
skill.
he patronized and imparted both learning and
skilful,
His temple,
mazd, was
also a
48
called the archive
of the scribe of Ara
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.

This is indirectly attested
It was a kind of Delphic oracle.
who
had
that
fact
the
Tiur,
nothing to do with light, was
by
49
Hellenic times, as well as by the

great fame for interpretation of dreams which Tiur s temple
Here it was that the people and the grandees of
enjoyed.
identified with
Apollo
in
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
the god Tiur."

quence, was explained as
Besides all these it is more than probable that Tiur was the
god who conducted the souls of the dead into the nether world.
"
very common Armenian imprecation,

50
or "The writer for him!
carry him!
The
"
"
close resemblance to the Babylonian

spects, goes far to
Nabu
"
May
the writer
as well as
in
many
Tiur
other re
confirm this view.
In spite of his being identified with Apollo and Hermes,

51
Tiur stands closer to the Babylonian Nabu
than to either of
these Greek deities.
In fact, Hermes himself must have de
veloped on the pattern of Nabu.
The
learning and of wisdom, and taught the
latter
was a god of
art of writing.
He
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
32
knew
and
incantations.
so he could impart
the meaning of oracles and
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.

did he then penetrate Armenia?
By what
devious
way
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
attest, was consecrated to this deity (perhaps
also the thirteenth day of each month).
find among the
Iranians as well as among the
Armenians, a host of
menian calendars
We
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
to
as the
name of
a holy man. It is from Iran that

wake of the Persian armies; and civilization
Armenia, Cappadocia, and Scythia, where we find also Tir s
Tir migrated
name
our
Teiro on Indo-Scythian coins of the
as
era.
in the
first
century of
53
We
have very good reasons to maintain that the

description
of the Armenian Tiur fits also the Iranian
and
that they
Tir,
both were identical with Nabu.
As Nabu in
so
Babylonia,
also
Tir
in Iran
was the genius presiding over the planet
Mer
5*
writer."
cury and bore the title of Dabir,
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
which he dedicated to him and called by a name

containing
s name, as a
component part. This name was ren
dered in Greek by Berossus (or
Abydenus?) as Tep^Seoi/ and
city
the deity
The latter form,

Mercury."
55
Rawlinson, occurs as early as the time of Alexander.
AipiSoms,
"given
to
says
The
IRANIAN DEITIES
33
writing-wedge was the commonest symbol of

56
could
and
easily give rise to the Persian designation.
Nabu,
That the arrow seems to have been the underlying idea of the
arrow-like
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.

derived from Tigrisy old Persian for
Tigranes
is,
no doubt,
"
MIHR (MITHRA)
IV.
Our knowledge
arrow."
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
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
57
ter.
Originally Mihr may have formed in Armenia a triad
with Aramazd and Anahit like that of Artaxerxes Mnemon s
If so he soon had to yield that place to the
inscriptions.
national
him.
god Vahagn.
The Armenian Mithra
If he was a
presents a puzzle.
war
of
a
of
and
and
contracts, a creature
air,
god
genius
light
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
58
This
he was identified with Hephaistos in syncretistic times.
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-
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
34
But
nian calendar.
must not be overlooked that
it
over the
all
Indo-European world February was one of the months

which the New Fires were kindled.
The
in
Mihr with
connection of
plained as the result of
fire in Armenia may be ex

an early identification with the native
Vahagn, who, as we shall see, was a sun, lightning, and firegod. This conjecture acquires more plausibility when we re
Mihr did
member
that
and that
finally
by right and
Of
not
make much headway
Vahagn occupied
Armenia
in
in the triad the place which,
tradition, belonged to Mihr.
Mithraic mysteries in Armenia
we hear
There
nothing.
were many theophorous names compounded with

such as Mihran, Mihrdat. The Armenian word
his
name,
"
"
temple,"
We
seems also to be derived from
know
that at the
Mithrakana
his
Mehyan"
name.
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
We
find in the region of Sassun (ancient Tarauntis) a

legendary hero, called Meher, who gathers around himself a
vassal.
good many
folk-tales
logical legends.
cave called
He
and becomes involved even
still
in eschato-
lives with his horse as a captive in a
Zympzymps which
can be entered in the Ascension
There he turns the wheel of fortune, and thence he

night.
will appear at the end of the world.
The most important temple dedicated to Mihr was in the
town of the gods) in Derjan, Upper
where
were kept. This sanctuary also
treasures
Armenia,
great
was despoiled and destroyed by Gregory the Illuminator. It
village of Bagayarij (the
is
reported that in that locality
Mihr
and about these Agathangelos
required
human
also darkly hints.
59
sacrifices,
This
is,
for in Armenia offerings

however, very
of men appear only in connection with dragon (i.e. devil) wor
On the basis of the association of Mihr with eschatoship.
difficult to explain,
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.
V.
60
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 Mace.
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
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.
that of a
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 Mace. xiv. 33

29) discard her name and use for Dionysos
Mace.
ii.
Ormzdakan
we
known to the
"
god,"
i.e.
Aramazd, whose peculiar
have already noticed.

ancient religion of
interest in vegetation
Spenta Armaiti was better
Armenia
as Santaramet, the
goddess of
the under-world.
The worship
of the earth
and heathen
is
known
to
Eznik
61
as a
magian
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
SEMITIC DEITIES
deities
were introduced into the Armenian pan
SEMITIC
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
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
easy to say
splendor of the more highly civilized Syrian empire of the Seleucids and its religion. He must have seen also some under
lying identity between the Syrian deities and their Armenian
Armenia itself no real fusion took

The extant
place between the native and foreign gods.
records show that out of all the Syrian gods and goddesses
brothers.
However,
in
who migrated
north, only AstXik (Astarte- Aphrodite) ob

tained a wide popularity. On the contrary, the others became
little
more than
ing encountered
is
local deities,
and that not without
fierce opposition.
The
clearly reflected in the relation of
and
in the
Armenia
as
manner
one
in
who
Ba
which he figures
is
at first
al
Shamin
in the
to
Vahagn
hero stories of
discomfited or slain in battle.
becoming more and more
hav
early stage of things
It is
certain that almost all of these Se
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 Hittiter und
mitic gods
Armenier.
SEMITIC DEITIES
I.
BA AL SHAMIN
37
(Armen. Barshamina)
In the village of Thortan, where patriarchs descended from

bril
Gregory the Illuminator were buried, later stood the
"
liantly white
"
statue of the Syrian
god Ba
This statue was made of ivory,
of heaven.
al
Shamin, the lord
crystal,
and
silver.
was a current tradition that Tigranes the Great had captured

No doubt the
during his victorious campaign in Syria.
was
of
material
the
character
and
costly
expressive
story of the
It
it
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
his valorous deeds, but

slain
by
his soldiers.
a supreme
whom
the Syrians deified on account of
who had been vanquished by Aram and

In reality Ba
god of the heavens,
and death, rain and sunshine,
al
Shamin was
originally
who gave good and evil, life

but who had already merged
of the Syrian sun-god, when he came

In his adoptive home he ever remained a
more or less unpopular rival of Vahagn, a native sun and
his identity in that
Armenia.
to
fire
god.
The one genuine Armenian myth

vived
night.
is
that
stole straw
Vahagn
about him that has sur
from him
in a cold winter
The Milky Way was formed from
dropped along
as the
the straw that
heavenly thief hurried away.*
This
may
be a distinctly Armenian but fragmentary version of the Pro

metheus legend, and the straw may well have something to do
(See chapter on Vahagn.) Needless
was current even in Christian Ar
which
myth
with the birth of

to say that the
fire.
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.
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
38
II.
NANE (HANEA?)
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
Nane
is
she was simply the Ishtar of Erech,

the heroine of the famous Gilgamesh epic, a goddess of the
tress of
life
and
death.
heaven.
In
fact,
activity of nature, of sensual love, of
Her
war and of
had been in olden times captured by the

return to Erech was celebrated as a great
statue
Elamites, and
its
Her worship in later times had spread broadcast

triumph.
west and north. She was found in Phrygia and even as far
as
Southern Greece.
According to the First Book of the
cabees (Chap, vi, v. 2) her temple at
Elam
Mac
contained golden
and great treasures.

She may have come to Armenia long before Tigranes en
It is
riched the pantheon with Syrian and Phoenician gods.
statues
explain how she came to be called the daughter of

Aramazd, unless she had once occupied an important position.
difficult to
We
hear nothing about orgiastic rites at her Armenian

a\tW of Ptolemy). On the con
temple in Thil (the
5
with Athene,
trary, in Hellenizing times she was identified
which perhaps means that she had gradually come to be recog

nised as a wise, austere and war-like goddess.
III.
Among
the
all
ASTAIK
the Semitic deities which found their
Armenian pantheon, none attained the importance
way
that
into
was
In spite of
acquired by AstXik, especially in Tarauntis.
two goddesses of her own
the presence of Anahit and Nana
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

J
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
"
It
all this.
may
be that
we have
here the intimate relation
Ba al to Astarte. It may also be that the myth is

and reflects the adventures of Ares with Aphro
Greek
purely
of a Syrian
dite, for
6
AstXik was called Aphrodite by Hellenizing
Hoffman recognized
nians.
(which means
"
little star
")
Arme
Armenian name AstXik

a translation of the Syrian Kauin the
kabhta, a late designation of Ashtart (Ishtar) both as a
The
dess and as the planet Venus.
latter
is
god
no more called
the little bride,"

AstXik by the Armenians, but Arusyak,
of
the veiled bride," and shows
which is an old title
Ishtar,
"
"
that the
Armenians not only identified the planet Venus with

were familiar with one of her most
their goddess AstXik, but
important titles.
In view of their essential identity it was natural that some
confusion should arise between AstXik and Anahit. So Vana-
gan Vartabed
the shame of the Sidonians,

the Syrians called Kaukabhta, the Greeks Aphrodite,
and the Armenians Anahit." Either this mediaeval author
says:
"Astarte
is
whom
meant
to say AstXik instead of Anahit, or for
name was not

The custom
menians
him AstXik
associated with sacred prostitution in Armenia.
of flying doves at the Rose-Sunday of the
Ar
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
when
a glimpse of the goddess
But AstXik, who

up with the
mist.
Her main temple was at Ashtishat, but she had
morning
also other sanctuaries, among which was that at Mount Palat
at sunrise
knows
she
is
their presence,
or Pashat.
bathing
in the river.
modestly wraps herself
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
4o
ZATIK
IV.
The Armenian
over
"
translation of the Bible calls the Jewish pass-
the festival of
Zatik,"
while the Armenian church has
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
The
old deity or an old festival. But what does it mean?
from time immemorial applied
that
Iberians have a deity -called
Zaden,"
"
by
whom
fishermen
used to swear, but about whom we know nothing definite

her name probably under
except that this deity is feminine and
lies that
(190
of Sathenik, the Albanian queen of King Artaxias
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
and clearer that once
clearer
deity whose
name
"
Adoni-Sedeq,
in
occurs in Melchi-sedeq y
Sedeq
is
my
It
becoming
Canaan there was such a chief
Sy8y/c.
Lord,"
"
Sedeq
is
is
my
King,"
or, according to a later
Sedeq is Lord." Farther East, the

Babylonian Shamash has two sons called respectively Kettu
and Misharu
(which, like Sedeq, means
righteousness
"
view,
"
Sedeq
is King,"
"
")
("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
gave,"
Phoenician inscriptions have Sedeqyathan,

Sedeq
as a personal name, as well as combinations of Sedeq
"
salt.
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
with
worship.
As twins they were represented by Ashera at the door of
Phoenician temples. According to the above mentioned San-
SEMITIC DEITIES
41
fragments, Sydyk was in Phoenicia the father

of the seven Kabirs (great gods) and of Eshmun (Asklepios)
In conformity with this in Persian
called the Eighth.
choniatho
and Greek times Sedeq was recognized among the Syrians

as the angel
(genius)
of the planet Jupiter, an indication
This god may have had also

some relation to the Syrian hero-god Sandacos mentioned
7
by Apollodorus of Athens, while on the other hand San-
was a chief
that he once
dakos
may
deity.
At all
and founded (i.e. he was the
of Celenderis and became through two gener
be identified also with the Sanda of Tarsus.
events Sandakos went to
god of) the
city
Cilicia
ations of heroes the father of Adonis.
was
Zatik, as well as Sedeq,
probably a vegetation god, like Adonis,
tion began at the winter solstice

spring.
suitable
The
and was complete in the

god would furnish a
spring festival of such a
name both for
The
the Jewish passover and the Christian

and resurrection
spring celebrations of the death

of Adonis were often adopted and identified
Easter.
whose resurrec
by the Christian
churches with the Death and Resurrection of Christ.

ever,
no
trace of a regular worship of Zatik
is
How
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,"
word zenwm y
from which
"
to
is
probably derived the Armenian
slaughter."
CHAPTER V
VAHAGN
"THE
EIGHTH"
GOD
A NATIONAL DEITY
Vahagn presents himself under the
of
hero and a god of war or
a
national
aspect
the extant records
INdouble
1
thorough study, however, will show that he was

courage.
not only a deity but the most national of all the Armenian gods.
It is probable that Vahagn was intentionally overlooked when
Armenian pantheon was reorganized according to a stereo

For his official
worships."
typed scheme of seven main
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,
the
"
with
whom
kings
who brought
on the pattern of that of

of the later Persian in
and
Mithra
Auramazda, Anahita,
Moreover, he became a favorite of the Armenian
scriptions.
he formed a triad
sacrifices to his
main temple
at Ashtishat.
We
How
did all this take place?

may venture to suggest
Zoroastrian ideas of a popular type were pervading
Armenia and a Zoroastrian or perhaps Magian pantheon of a
that
when
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
heavens and the earth travailed,
There
The
The
"THE
travailed also the purple sea,
travail held
Through
Through
(stalk) in the sea.

the hollow of the reed (stalk) a smoke rose,
the hollow of the reed (stalk) a flame rose
red reed
And out of the flame ran

He had hair of fire,
He had a beard of flame,
And his eyes were suns.
forth a youth.
Other parts of this song, now lost, said that Vahagn had
dragonVishapaxaX,
fought and conquered dragons.
was
also
He
title.
known
was his best
invoked, at
reaper,"
"
god of courage. It is mostly in this

became a favorite deity with the Armenian
later syncretistic times, was identified with
least in royal edicts, as a
capacity that he
and
kings,
Herakles.
He
in
Besides these attributes
Vahagn claimed another.
medieval writer says that the sun

5
was worshipped by the ancients under the name of Vahagn,
and his rivalry with Ba al Shamin and probably also with
Mihr, two other sun-gods of a foreign origin, amply con
was a sun-god.
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:
ficial
Indra, the lightning, Agni, the universal and sacri

Besides the fact that Vahagn s
fire, and Surya, the sun.
a compound of Vah and Agni, no

on
the
commentary
birth, nature and functions of Va
hagn may be found than the Vedic songs on these three
name may very well be

better
deities.
From
the above quoted fragment which was sung to the

6
accompaniment of the lyre by the bards of GoXthn long after
the Christianization of Armenia,
we gather
that
Vahagn
birth
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
44
He was a son of heaven, earth,

had a universal significance.
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
However, this matters little, for in Aryan

raging storm.
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
birth as a poetic fancy of the old
At
are on old
Armenian
bards.
Vahagn s
Here we
least in the
Rgveda the fire

Aryan ground.
claims as complex a parenthood as Vahagn. It is the child of
7
Even the description of the ex
heaven, earth, and water.
ternal appearance of the Vedic
Agni (and of Indra himself)
Agni
agrees with that of Vahagn.
birth.
fresh
continual
a
with
Vahagn,
always youthful, like

Agni (as well as Indra)
is
hair of fire
has tawny hair and beard like Vahagn, who has
and beard of flame." Surya, the sun, is Agni s eye. Vahagn s
"
eyes are suns.
However, the key

It is a
to the situation
is
the
"
reed
"
or
"
stalk."
very important word in Indo-European mythology in

fire in its three forms, sun, lightning, and
connection with
earthly fire. It is the specially sacred fuel which gives birth

to the sacred fire.
The Greek culture-hero Prometheus
brought down the
stolen from the gods (or the sun) in a

the
Indra,
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
fire
fennel stalk.
in the
him.
water and in plants, where the gods finally discovered

*
sage Atharvan of the Vedas extracted Agni from
The
VAHAGN
"THE
EIGHTH"
GOD
45
from the lotus stalk. Many dragonsome relation to the fire, sun, or
have
usually
killers,
9
We must
lightning, are born out of an enchanted flower.
and
it
as
a
echo
of
the same
very interesting
significant
regard
s
was
that
soul
sent
down
in
Zarathustra
the stalk
hoary myth
the lotus flower,
i.e.
who
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

it comes down
produced by the fire-drill in the clouds whence

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)

his fire-spitting serpents.
kills
The A tar
the
of the
dragon through
Avesta (who gives both heat and light) fights with Azi Dahaka. The Greek Herakles, manifestly a sun-god, strangles
serpents in his early childhood.
Surya,
is
a Vrtra-slayer.
dragon so successfully
well
Nothing
as the
Agni, as well as Indra and
away the Macedonian
scares
name of
the thunderbolt, and
it
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
is
says that
Agni
is
very prominent as a goblin-slayer, even more
so than Indra.
Finally,
Vahagn
attributes of courage
and victory are not
10
Both of them are

Agni and Indra.
of
war
and victory, no doubt mostly in virtue of their
gods
strangers to the Vedic
The war-like nature of weathermeteorological character.

is
a
of
universal mythology.
Even the
gods
commonplace
from his
name was only a title
Avestic Verethraghna inherits this distinctive quality

original
Indo-European
of Indra or Vayu.
self,
when
his
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
46
We
eral
purposely delayed the mention of one point in our gen

Modern Armenian folk-lore
description of Vahagn.
knows
a storm
god
called
Dsovean (sea-born), who with an
angry storm goddess, Dsovinar (she who was born of the sea),
11
rules supreme in the storm and often appears to human eyes.
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
the sky with his fiery
His
fertilizing rain?
from an
retained
the extant
Vahagn, still killing his dragons in

sword or arrow and sending down the
title
"
sea-born,"
ancient usage
Vahagn
and
which must have been

keeping with
Vedic Apam na-pat
in perfect
is
song, strongly recalls the
who is supreme in the seas, dispensing water to

also
identical with Agni clad with the lightning
but
mankind,
12
Dsovinar may very well be a reminiscence of
in the clouds.
the mermaids who accompanied the
water-child," or even
"
water
child,"
"
some female goddess
From
like Indrani, the wife of Indra.
becomes very plain that Vahagn

13
in the
is a fire and lightning god, born out of the stalk
mission
other
benef
with
the
among
special
heavenly ( ? ) sea,
these considerations
it
icent missions, to slay dragons.

is
His
title
of dragon-reaper
a distant but unmistakable echo of a pre- Vedic Vrtrahan.
Armenian myth about him is an independent

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
In
fact, the
tradition
14
And
not a striking coincidence that the only sur

about
viving fragment
Vahagn should be a birth-song, a topic
which, according to Macdonell, has, along with the sacrificial
poets.
is it
functions of Agni, a paramount place in the minds of the Vedic

singers of Agni?
16
CHAPTER VI
SUN,
I.
MOON, AND STARS
of Chorene makes repeated allusions to the wor

in Armenia.
In oaths the
MOSES
ship of the sun and moon
name
of the sun was almost invariably invoked, and there

2
Of what
were also altars and images of the sun and moon.
type these images were, and how far they were influenced by
shall
Syrian or Magian sun-worship, we cannot tell.
We
presently see the mediaeval conceptions of the forms of the

sun and moon. Modern Armenians imagine the sun to be like
the wheel of a water-mill.
Agathangelos, in the alleged
letter of Diocletian to Tiridates, unconsciously bears witness
to the
Armenian veneration for the
But the oldest witness

menians
is
them
moon and
Xenophon, who notes
sacrificed horses to the sun,
ence to his need of
sun,
stars/
that the
Ar
perhaps with some refer
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
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
sun and bore
its
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,
As to the moon,
the west being the abode of evil spirits.
Ohannes Mantaguni in the Fifth Century bears witness to the
6
moon
prospers or mars the plants, and Anania

of Shirak says in his Demonstrations?
The first fathers called
belief that the
"
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
48
her the nurse of the

has
its
parallel, both
a quite widely spread idea which

and in the short Mah-yasht
plants,"
in the west
of the Avesta, particularly in the statement that vegetation

8
At certain of its
grows best in the time of the waxing moon.
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
9
The
connected with the phases of the moon!
modern Armenians are still very much afraid of the baleful
activity
is
influence of the
moon upon
ward
10
the presence of the moon.
children and try to
it
off
by
magical ceremonies in
As among many other peoples, the eclipse of the sun and
moon was thought to be caused by dragons which endeavor
to
But the
swallow these luminaries.
Western Armenians
current
among
is
"
evil star
"
of the
a plain survival of the superstitions
the Persians,
who
held that these phenomena
were caused by two dark bodies, offspring of the primseval ox,

revolving below the sun and moon, and occasionally passing
between them and the earth.
eclipse, the sorcerers said that
11
it
When
moon was at an
resembled a demon (?). It
the
was, moreover, a popular belief that a sorcerer could bind the

sun and moon in their course, or deprive them of their light.
He
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
could bring the sun or
and although without breasts, they could milk it like a

This latter point betrays some reminiscence of a pricow.
masval cow in its relation to the moon and perhaps shows that
this luminary was regarded by the Armenians also as a goddess
floor,
12
Needless to add that the eclipses and the appear

ance of comets foreboded evil. Their chronologies are full of
of fertility.
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
Both sun and moon worship have

popular beliefs of the present
STARS
left
Armenians.
deep
49
traces in the
13
A few ancient stellar myths have survived,
in a
fragmentary
Orion, Sirius, and other stars were perhaps in

volved in myths concerning the national hero, Hayk, as they
condition.
bear his name.
We have seen that Vahagn s stealing straw from Ba al Shamin and forming the Milky Way, has an unmistakable refer
14
itself was anciently
ence to his character. The Milky Way
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

The
great luminary s travel beyond the western horizon.
of
been
has
the
sun
Armenians
always
spoken
among
setting
and among Slavs
as the sun that
According to Frazer
"
is
going to his mother.
Stesichorus also described the sun
cm-
a golden goblet that he might cross the ocean in the

darkness of night and come to his mother, his wedded wife and
barking in
children
dear."
The
sun may, therefore, have been imagined
as a
young person, who, in his resplendent procession through

The people prob
is on his way to a re-incarnation.
in
a
occurrence
of
death
and birth, which
believed
daily
ably
the skies,
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
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
15
several.
They often think the dawn or the evening twilight
to be the mother of the sun. She is a brilliant woman with eyes
even to the ancient Egyptians.
shining like the beams of the sun and with a golden garment,
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
50
bestows beauty upon the maidens at sunset. Now she is

imagined as a good woman helping those whom the sun pun
who
now
ished,
The
as a
bad
woman
mother of the sun
cursing and changing
men into stone.
usually supposed to reside in the

which
of
the
is
either
in the east at the end of the
sun,
palace
world or in a sea, like the Lake of Van. In the absence of a
is
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
The
of his daily journey.

It
is
at
the close
palace itself is gorgeously described.

where there are no men, no birds,
situated in a far-off place
and where the great silence is disturbed

of springs welling up in the middle of
each one of the twelve courts, which are built of blue marble
no
trees,
and no
only by the
turf,
murmur
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
and spanned over by
he returns he bathes
arches.
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

sun
but
that
the
myth
passes underneath the earth
the same. The sea is, of course, the primaeval ocean upon
that this
all
is
which the earth was founded.
on
journey that the

sun shines on the Armenian world of the dead as he did on the
It is
this
Babylonian Aralu and on the Egyptian and Greek Hades.

The following extract from an Armenian collection of folk
lore unites the sun
ocean
"
And
relation to
at sun-set the
It enters the sea and, passing
morning
at
the other
Mediaeval writers
Hades and
sun
is
to the subterranean
the -portion of the dead.
under the earth, emerges
in the
18
side."
17
speak about the horses of the sun,
MOON, AND STARS
SUN,
an idea which
One
Greeks.
is no more foreign to the Persians than to the

counts four of them, and calls them Enik, Me-
and Senik, which sound

names, but evidently picture the sun on
nik, Benik,
mingling the
"
says
51
like artificial or
his quadriga.
magic
Another,
of his time with mythical images,

compound of fire, salt, and iron, light
scientific ideas
The sun
is
blended with lightning, fire that has been shaped

or with a
fire drawn by horses.
There are in it
slight emendation
twelve windows with double shutters, eleven of which look up
ward, and one to the earth. Wouldst thou know the shape of
It is that of a man deprived of reason and speech
the sun?
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
dows of the sun
"
reader will readily recognize in the win

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
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
foreign to
In such cases it is the youthful moon who is pining

for
the sun-maid. Bashfulness is very characteristic of
away
the two luminaries, as fair maids. So the sun hurls fiery needles
heavens.
at the
moon
bold eyes which presume to gaze upon her face, and the
18
covers hers with a sevenfold veil of clouds.
These very
transparent and poetic myths, however, have

might be called ancient.
little in
them
that
The
ancient Armenians, like the Latins, possessed two dif

ferent names for the moon. One of these was Lusm, an un
mistakable cognate of Luna (originally Lucna or Lucina), and

the other Ami(n)s, which now like the Latin mens y signifies
"
month."
No
goddess, while
or Lunus.
doubt
Lusm
designated the moon as a female

to the Phrygian men
Amins corresponded
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
52
author who gives

of
the sun, portrays
the above semi-mythological description
The moon was made out
the moon in the following manner:
The same mediaeval and
quasi-scientific
"
of five parts, three of which are light, the fourth is fire, and
which is a compound. It is cloud-like,
.
the fifth, motion
dense
air, with twelve windows, six of
light-like (luminous)
.
which look heavenward and
six
earthward.
What
are the
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
forms of the moon?
In
are
it
19
Here again the sea-buffaloes may be a dim and

which was associ
confused reminiscence of a primaeval cow
sun!
"
"
"
form
moon
and, no doubt, suggested by the peculiar

of the crescent. Let us add also that the Armenians
ated with the
spoke of the monthly rebirth of the moon, although myths

are lacking.
Fragments of Babylonian star-lore found their
concerning
it
menia probably through Median Magi.
We
way
into
Ar
have noticed
the planetary basis of the pantheon. In later times, however,

20
Anania of
some of the planets came into a bad repute.
Shirak (seventh century) reports that heathen (?) held Ju
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
piter
According to Eznik
decisive influence.
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
Saturn
is
signs of the Zodiac.
in the ascendant, a
ascendant, a king
is
powerful and good person

is
born,
just as the
is
ram has
said:
"When
king dies; when Leo (the lion)
When
born.
So they
born.
the Taurus
With
a thick fleece.
is
ascendant, a
a
rich person
Aries,
With the Scorpion,
is
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

22
I heard a number
where we read:
served by al-Birum
"
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
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 j that it will be sterile
if it does not bleat."
is
FIG.
Found
in
the
i.
RELIEF
neighborhood of Ezzinjan
CHAPTER VII
II.
FIRE
worship of fire was possessed by Armenians as a ven

erable heirloom long before they came into contact with
THE
was so deeply rooted that the Christian

authors do not hesitate to call the heathen Armenians ashworshippers, a name which they apply also to the Persians
Zoroastrianism.
It
with less truth.
We
have seen that the old word
"
"
Agni
of
name
and
in
the
that
Armenians
the
to
known
was
Vahagn
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,
most probably the
the light-giving fire had a
mother,"
"
water-born and water-fed stalk or tree out of which

friction or otherwise.
To
fire
was
mother the
fire
obtained by
returned when extinguished. Even today to put out a candle
or a fire is not a simple matter, but requires some care and re
this
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
spect.
its
must be rejected and a purer one kindled
fire
impure
place, usually
but
it is
from a
in perfect accord
The people swear by

Fire was and
spirits
away.
night scares
still is
The
flint.
All this
may
in
be Zoroastrian
with the older native views.
the hearth-fire just as also by the sun.
the most potent means of driving the evil

Eastern Armenian who will bathe in the
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
out of a
Through the sparks

has become, along with
2
iron, 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
fire
flint.
that the latter apparently contains,
it
before this mighty deity. In Armenian there are two words

for fire. One is hur? a cognate of the Greek TrDp, and the
other krak, probably derived, like the other Armenian word
from the Persian cirag (also cirah,
candle,"
light,"
jrag y
carag). Hur was more common in ancient Armenian, but we
"
"
find also krak as far back as the
Armenian
literature reaches.
unmistakably a male deity, we find that the

This was also
fire as a deity was female, like Hestia or Vesta.
true of the Scythian fire-god whom Herodotus calls Hestia.
While Vahagn
is
A tar were
On
the contrary the Vedic Agni and the Avestic

masculine.
The worship
of
fire
There was
took
among
the Armenians a two-fold
This seems to
the hearth-worship.
aspect.
4
have been closely associated with ancestor spirits, which natu
rally flocked around the center and symbol of the home-life.
first
the lips of this earthen and sunken fireplace which the

young bride reverently kisses with the groom, as she enters
It
is
her
new home
piously
be taken
circle
for the
three
first
time.
times.
And
it is
around
brand from
it
this
that they
fire
will
when any member of the family goes forth to found

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,

like general reverence,
something
riage and baptism,
none
at
hand.
is
etc.,
and often,
which receives
in cases of
a substitute for a church
Ethnologists
who hold
that the
when
mar
there
is
development
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
56
of the family is later than that of the community would natu

rally regard the communal fire as prior in order and impor
tance.
very marked remnant of hearth and ancestor worship

in special ceremonies like cleaning the house
found
is
thoroughly and burning candles and incense, which takes place

everywhere on Saturdays.
The
one.
second aspect of fire-worship in Armenia is the public

It is true that the Persian Atrushans (fire-temples or
enclosures) found
Armenia, and that
little
fire,
favor in both heathen and Christian
as such, does not
a place in the rank of the
main
deities.
seem
to
have attained
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
5
town of the gods.

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
But usually the Armenian worship of the
of Phaitakaran.
possessed a native character.

The following testimonies seem to describe
fire
this
widely spread and deeply rooted national
In the hagiography called the

"
wrongly
Virgins
ascribed to
some phases of
cult.
Coming of the Rhipsimean

Moses of Chorene, we read
"
Mount Palat (?) there was a house of Aramazd and AstXik (Venus), and on a lower peak, to the south
that on the top of
east, there
was
"
fire, of insatiable fire, the god of

At the foot of the mountain, moreover,
a house of
incessant combustion."
there was a mighty spring. The place was called Buth.

burnt the Sister Fire and the Brother Spring."
"
They
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."
FIRE
57
8
Lazare of Pharpe, a writer of the fifth century, speaking

of an onslaught of the, Christian Armenians on the sacred fire,
which the Persians were endeavoring to introduce into Ar
They took the fire and carried it into the water

menia, says:
as into the bosom of her brother, according to the saying of
The latter part of his
the false teachers of the Persians."
"
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
upon which Keresaspa had unwittingly

sank and the fire fell into the water, this was
island (sea-monster)
kindled a
fire,
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
accounted to him a great
to the rain, or like the birth of the fire out of the stalk in the
heavenly
sea.
Whatever the
was, the ashes of the sacred
real
fire
meaning of
this
procedure
imparted to the water with
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
which they were
"
"
wiped
custom of the ancient Letts in
his article
on the Pre-Christian
9
Death and Burial Rites of the Baltic People.

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
We
ern nations) had several fire-festivals in the year.

however, the survival of an indubitable fire-festival
originally
aimed
at influencing the activity
have,
which
of the rain-god
annual bonfire kindled everywhere by Armenians at

Candlemas, or the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, on the
in the
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
58
3th of February, in the courts of the churches. The fuel

often consists of stalks, straw, and thistles, which are kindled
1
from
a candle of the altar.
on the
10
The
bonfire
streets, in the house-yards, or
is
on the
usually repeated
flat
roofs.
The
people divine the future crops through the direction of the

flames and smoke. They leap over it (as a lustration?) and
Sometimes also they have music and a dance.
circle around it.
The
ashes are often carried to the fields to promote their

It is
fertility.
perhaps not entirely without significance that

month of Mehekan (consecrated
this festival falls within the
to
Mihr),
11
fire-god.
as the
Armenian Mithra had
Another
distinctly
become a
fire-festival, rather locally observed, will
be mentioned in the next chapter.
FIG.
2.
DRAGON-LIKE FIGURE
CHAPTER VIII
III. WATER
FIRE
were a female principle, water was masculine,

as we have noticed, they were somehow very closely
associated as sister and brother in the Armenian fire-worship.
IFand
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
It
is
possible that this kinship
beneficent
virtues.
According to Tacitus,
the
Armenians
offered horses as a sacrifice to the Euphrates, and divined by

waves and foam. The sources of the Euphrates and Tigris
its
received and
still
receive worship.
around the river Araxes and
its
Sacred
tributaries.
were
built
Even now
there
cities
many sacred springs with healing power, usually called

the springs of light," and the people always feel a certain
are
"
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
the
at the
On
congregation
day the
Transfiguration Day
during
churches are richly decorated with roses and the popular
3
of the Festival is Vartavar^
Burning with Roses."
rites.
"
this
name
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
60
also reported that in various parts of

Vartavar is preceded by a night of bonfires.
It
is
Armenia, the
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
etc.) fires in
s,
at
Europe,
which roses played a very
barely possible that the Armenian

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
It
conspicuous part.*
name of this festival,
is
"
In Europe the midsummer water festival was ob

served also with bathings and visits to sacred springs. In parts
Europe.
were quenched in
the river 5 and in Marseilles, the people drenched each other
with water. There can be little doubt that the water was used
of
Germany straw wheels
on
set
fire
ways not only as a means of

disease, but also and principally
in these various
guilt
and
purification
from
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

of the Persians, in connection with their NewAs the Persian new year came in the spring,
festival.
by al-Biruni
Year
there can be
little
doubt that the festival aimed
at the increase
of the rain by sympathetic magic.

In fact, even now in certain
of
Armenia
the
tillers
places
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
with
the
it
first
also in ancient times the
water-festival of the year.
like the region of Shirak,
Vartavar celebrations.
an old AstXik
form a part of the

has some reference to
flying doves
Whether
(Ishtar)
Navasard brought
In certain places
festival,
this
is
difficult
to
say.
It
is
quite possible that as in Europe, so also in ancient Armenia,
WATER
love-making and other more objectionable
61
rites,
formed an
important feature of these mid-summer celebrations.

The great centre of the Armenian Navasard and of the water
festival (Vartavar)
the same character.
was Bagavan, probably because both had

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

TREES, PLANTS,
IV.
AND MOUNTAINS
HAVE
WE
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)
Then we have
divined.
names
the words Haurut, Maurut, as
of flowers (Hyacmthus racemosus Dodonet).

These,
and
Haurvatat
of
Iranian
to
the
seem
be
an
echo
ever,
retat
("
health
who were
"
and
"
other trees are
still
two Amesha-Spentas
and water. The oak and
immortality
also the genii of plants
how
Ame-
"),
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
often explained as a substitution of a part for the

whole, and it is very common also among the Semites in gen
1
eral and the Mohammedans in particular.
practice
is
mountains were sacred, while others, perhaps sacred

themselves
in very ancient times, became the sites of famous
by
The towering Massis (Ararat) was called Azat
temples.
Many
(Yazata?), "venerable." It was a seat of dragons and

but the main reason of its sacredness must be sought in
its
volcanic character, or even
its
fairies,
its
im
association
posing grandeur,
with some deity like Marsyas-Masses, by the Phrygo-Arme2
nians.
This Phrygian god Marsyas-Masses was famous for
his skill with the flute but especially for his
interest in rivers.
He
widely known
was the son of Hyagnis, probably a
AND MOUNTAINS
TREES, PLANTS,
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

Vahagn.
Mount Npat (Ntâr^s
else
but the
Phrygian form of
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 Zoroastrians 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
name and character of a
in Christian times easily

saint.
assumed the
CHAPTER X
HEROES
THE
loss of the ancient songs of
Armenia
is
especially
because they concerned them

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

Iranian and Semitic gods made their conquest of Armenia.
that the change
I.
There can be
Hayk
first
of
HAYK
doubt that the epic songs mentioned

Hayk was a handsome giant with finely
little
all.
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.
were
his
The bow and
the triangular arrow

Hayk was a true lover
inseparable companions.
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
was expected, Cadmus, the grandson of Hayk, brought

tidings of an invasion of Armenia by the innumerable forces
as
Hayk marched
of Bel.
south with his small but brave
army
meet the tyrant on the shores of the sea (of Van)

whose
2
Here began the battle.
briny waters teem with tiny fish."
"
to
arranged his warriors in a triangle on a plateau

mountains in the presence of the great multitude of
Hayk
among
invaders.
The
Hayk s
shock was so terrible and costly in men

and frightened, began to withdraw. But
first
that Bel, confused
unerring triangular arrow, piercing his breast, issued

his back. The overthrow of their chief was a signal
from
forth
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
name they have

Kingdom (Ashkharh
the same
or the
Adjectives
called
derived
from
strength and great beauty.
Iran.
Hayk
their
country Hayastan
Khshathra) of the Hays.

describe both gigantic
Gregory of Narek
calls
The word
beauty of the Holy Virgin, Hayk-like
was often used in the sense of a
giant."
!
even the
Hayk
itself
"
Some have
tried to give an astronomical interpretation to
Pointing out the fact that Hayk is also the Ar

menian name for the constellation Orion, they have main
this legend.
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
doomed
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
him,
is
to failure, for
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
lie in
best explanation of Hayk s name and history seems to

the probable identity of Hayk (Hayik,
little Hay,"
"
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
66
just as
Armenak means
ian sky-god
"
Armenius
little
Hyas whom
")
the Greeks called
with the Phryg

Both the
179.
know him as an independent

The
Assyrians call him the god
Thraco-Phrygian deity.
5
In a period when everything Thracian and Phryg
of Moschi.
Greeks and the Assyrians
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
ian
For us
an epithet of this god of vegetation and of wine.
of
the
Vedas
and
the
the
Vayu
Hyas is no one else but
legend of Hayk we probably have the
story of the battle between an Indo-European weather-god
So
Avesta.
in the
and the Mesopotamian Bel.

to derive a national
name
It is
like
very much more natural
Hay from
a national deity s
name, according to the well-known analogies of Assur and

Khaldi, than to interpret
II.
it
as pati,
"
chief."
ARMENAK
According to Moses of Chorene, Armenak is the name of

the son of Hayk. He chose for his abode the mountain Aragads (now Alagez) and the adjacent country.
He is undoubtedly another eponymous hero of the
menian
Ar
Armenius, father of Er, mentioned by Plato

in his Re-public? can be no other than this Armenak who,
race.
according to Moses of Chorene and the so-called Sebeos-fragThe final

ments, is the great-grandfather of Ara (Er).
syllable
is
a diminutive, just as
is
the
"
"
in
Hayk.
ular legend, which occupied itself a good deal with

seems to have neglected Armenak almost completely.
quite possible that
min and the Vedic
sky-god.
Ara,
may
The
Armenak
is
Pop
Hayk,
It is
the same as the Teutonic Ir-
Aryaman, therefore originally a title of the

many exploits ascribed to Aram, the father of
indeed, belong by right to Armenak.
HEROES
III.
Shara
is
his father
He
The
"If
As he was uncom
gave him the rich land of Shirak

was also far-famed for his numerous
old Armenian proverb used to say to
monly voracious
gluttons:
SHARA
said to be the son of Armais.
to prey upon.
progeny.
67
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.
IV.
ARAM
Harma, seems to be a duplicate of Armenak, 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
Aram,
a son of
the Pontus Euxinus to the Ocean (Mediterranean).
Through
Aram became
the ruler of Pontus and Cappadocia upon which he imposed the Armenian language.
this last victory
somewhat meagre and confused tale we have prob

Aram or Armenius in war against the
Syrian god Ba al Shamin, some Median god or hero called
10
Nychar, and a western Titan called Paiapis ChaXia, who no
doubt represents in a corrupt form the Urartian deity Khaldi
In
this
ably an Armenian god
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

kingdoms of Asia Minor.
against the Hittite
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
68
V.
With Ara we
THE BEAUTIFUL
ARA,
are unmistakably on mythological ground.
this interesting hero has, like Hayk and

suffered
at the hands of our ancient Hellengreatly
The present form of the myth, a quasi-classical ver
Unfortunately
Aram,
izers.
sion of the original,
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
is
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
came
unexpected rebuff,
impetuous
against Ara with a large force, not so much to punish him
Semiramis
the
this
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
called
his
palace hoping that her gods
Aralezes)
wounds.
would
restore
him
(the dog-spirits
to life
by licking
Although, according to the rationalizing
his
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
the Armenians in peace.
life
For,
and continue
rule
his
according to
when Ara
this
over
11
author,
dressed up
s body began to decay, Semiramis

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
end of Plato s Republic?* where he
is
to be
tells
found
at the
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
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
carried
other
off,
state."
The long
eschatological dissertation which fol
probably Thracian or Phrygian, as these peoples were

especially noted for their speculations about the future life.
The Pamphylian Er s parentage, as well as the Armenian
lows
is
version of the same story, taken together,

probable that we have here an Armenian
may
it
Semiramis
source.
the myth.
But
it
highly
(or Phrygian),
13
myth, although by some queer

have reached Greece from a Pamphylian
rather than Pamphylian,
chance
make
it is
be a popular or learned addition to

quite reasonable to assume that the orig
may
inal story represented the battle as caused
by a disappointed
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
woman
epic in
which Ishtar appears in the forest of Cedars guarded

to allure Gilgamesh, a hero or demi-god, with
by Khumbaba
attributes of a sun-god, into the role of
how Gilgamesh
refused her advances.
Tammuz.
We
know
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.
and
by
He
takes part in the wanderings of Gilgamesh,
fights with him against Ishtar and the heavenly bull sent
Anu to avenge the insulted goddess.
Apparently
wounded
in this struggle
Eabani
wanders to the world of the dead
On
dies.
Thereupon Gilgamesh
in search of the plant of life.
he meets with Eabani who has come back from

the region of the dead, to inform him of the condition
of the
and
the
care
with
which
the
dead
must
be
buried
departed,
of
in order to make life in Aralu (Hades) bearable
his return
Possibly the original Ara story goes back to this Baby

lonian epic but fuses Gilgamesh and Eabani into one hero.
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
70
Sayce suggests that Ara

latter
may be the Eri of the Vannic

15
may have been a sun-god.
TIGRANES,
THE DRAGON-FIGHTER
and the
scriptions
VI.
in
This story also must be interpreted mythologically, although

It is a dragon
it is connected with two historical characters.
fraction
of histor
contain
the
not
does
which
slightest
legend
but was manifestly adapted to the story of Astyages
book of Herodotus. For the sake of brevity we
ical fact,
in the first
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 y
Median king
"
dragon,"
in the times of
The legend was
as
was also the name of a famous
Cyrus the Great.
16
follows:
Tigranes (from Tigrish y

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
"arrow,"
the old Iranian
fear of both these
saw himself
rulers.
One
night in a dream, he
land near a lofty ice-clad mountain

fair-eyed, red-cheeked woman, clothed
in a strange
(the Massis).
in purple
young
name
tall,
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
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
rode northward.
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
his Magi of a grave and imminent danger from Tigranes,
Aldahak decides to marry Tigranuhi, the sister of Tigranes, in
by
HEROES
71
order to use her as an instrument in the destruction of her
His plan succeeds up to the point of disclosing his

intentions to Tigranuhi.
Alarmed by these she immediately
her
brother
on
his
puts
guard.
Thereupon the indomitable
brother.
Tigranes brings about an encounter with Azdahak in which he

plunges his triangular spear-head into the tyrant s bosom
17
pulling out with it a part of his lungs.
Tigranuhi had already
to
come
to
her
brother
even
before the battle.
managed
After
to
this signal victory,
move
to
Tigranes compels Azdahak

settle around Massis.
Armenia and
family
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,

18
of Azdahak.
FIG.
3.
is
no one but the
first
queen
BRONZE FIGURES
Found in Van usually explained as Semiramis in the form of a dove

possibly representing the Goddess Sharis, the Urartion Ishtar.
and
CHAPTER
THE WORLD OF
HE ARMENIAN
SPIRITS
world of
XI
AND MONSTERS
spirits
and monsters teems
with elements both native and foreign. Most of the

names are of Persian origin, although we do not know how
JL
from Iran. For we may safely

of
these uncanny beings bear a general
assert that the majority
one
might even say, universal character. So
Indo-European,
much of
this lore
came
directly
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.
this ground mythology and folklore join hands.
On
The
chief actors in this lower, but very deeply rooted stra

of religion and mythology are serpents and dragons, good
or evil ghosts and fairies, among whom we should include
tum
of the classical world, the elves and kobolds of the

1
Teutons, the vilas of the Slavs, the jinn and devs of Islam, etc.
the
nymphs
At
this
undeveloped stage of comparative folklore
be rash to posit a
common
beings. Yet they show,
it
would
origin for all these multitudinous
in their feats
noteworthy interrelations and
and
characteristics,
similarities all
many
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-
unnrn Io loofb^
iA
"j
enohcnimuIII
nr.
rnoi
"to
ytnrf ul
-jril
ni
PLATE
IV
from an Armenian Gospel manu

Library of the Kennedy School of
Illuminations
script
in
the
Missions, Hartford, Connecticut.
WORLD OF
tion to the ghost.
pear in the
The
form of
protect, their old
AND MONSTERS
SPIRITS
73
genii, the ancestral spirits, usually
a serpent.
homes.
ap
As
serpents they reside in and

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
whom
they love, harm to those
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

2
the world, like the serpent mother of the Scythian race, 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,
and
traits
let us
which are ascribed to
run over some of the feats
all
or most of them.
will serve as an appropriate introduction to the ancient
This
Arme
nian material.
haunt houses as protectors or persecutors; live in

ruins, not because these are ruins, but because they are ancient
have a liking for difficult haunts like mountains,
sites;
They
caves,
in
all
ravines,
forests,
stony places;
live
and roam freely
bodies of water, such as springs, wells, rivers, lakes, seas;
and gardens, and dispose

of hidden treasures; although they usually externalize them
selves as serpents, they have a marked liking for the human
possess subterranean palaces, realms
shape, in which they often appear.
They
human habits,
Thus they are
exhibit
and organizations.
needs, appetites, passions,

born, grow, and die (at least by a violent death).
They
are
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
74
hungry and
and have a universal weakness for milk;

grain and go a-hunting. They love and hate,
thirsty
they often steal
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.
not
always
The
weird,
result of these unions
remarkable,
They steal human

stead.
They usually
wicked, progeny.
is
sometimes
often
also
very
children, leaving change
(but not always) appear

about midnight and disappear before the dawn, which is her
alded by cockcrow. They cause insanity by entering the human
lings in their
body.
Flint, iron, fire,

3
water,
and lightning, and sometimes also

They hold the key to
things have a superior knowledge,
are very repugnant to them.
magical lore, and in all

They may
usually combined with a very strange credulity.
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,
safe to assert that their corporeality itself
is
it is
usually of a subtle,
is by far
airy kind and that the psychical aspect of their being
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.
al
Largely owing to such common traits running through
Ar
the
most the whole of the material, it is difficult to subject
menian data to a clean-cut
I.
classification.
SHAHAPET OF LOCALITIES
(Iranian Khshathrapati, Zd. Shoithr#pMy

lord of the field or of the land) is nothing else than the very
The Shahapet
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
was always
good except when angered. According to the Armenian trans
lation of John Chrysostom, even the vinestocks and the oliveIn Agathangelos Christ Himself was
trees had Shahapets.
which appeared usually as a serpent.
called the Shahapet of graveyards,
Its character
evidently to contradict or
correct a strong belief in the serpent-keeper of the resting place
We
of the dead.
know
that, in Hellenistic countries,
grave
We
stones once bore the image of serpents.

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

But the identity of these two is established by
a household ceremony which is of far-off kinship to the Ro
with his name.
man
patermlia} 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
5
needed to stimulate
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.
fertility."
This ancient ceremony
in its present
form may be
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
described as follows:
"
"
was placed on the threshold, because, as we have seen, water

is
supposed to help the departure of the spirits, an idea also
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
76
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
is
spirits to
regarded
the fields, and the pouring out of the water

According to the de
as a sign of their departure.
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
departs in anger, there will be in that house endless
trouble and privation. Sometimes they appear in the middle
fully.
If
it
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
The
serpent-guardian of a district discriminates care

fully between strangers and the inhabitants of the district,
7
hurting the former but leaving the latter in peace.
serpents.
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 Armenischer Volksgltwbe (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
or the dragon
s stone,
as the
dragon
the serpent
blood, the serpent
or the dragon
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
amount of the ghostly and the

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
9
character, especially associated in the people s minds with evil
beings, but they have a certain
demoniac
in
He
spirits.
them.
could enter the
human body and
possess
caus
it,
ing the victim to whistle. But even he had redeeming qualities,

on account of which his name could be adopted by kings and
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.
his
Mount
Massis, wrongly called Ararat by Europeans, was

of the Armenian dragon. The volcanic char
home
the main
its earthquakes, its black smoke

time of eruption, may have suggested its
But the mountain was
association with that dread monster.
acter of this lofty peak, with
and lurid flames
in
sacred independently of dragons, and
Yazata
"
venerable
The Armenian
"
meaning
it
was called Azat
(i.e.,
.
")
for dragon
with poisonous
is
Vishap, a
saliva."
It
word of Persian
origin
was an adjective that
once qualified Azi Dahaka, but attained an independent ex

even in Iran. In the Armenian myths one may plaus
istence
and the dragons, although

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
"
ibly distinguish
the chief dragon
"
these
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
Tigranuhi, seemingly with her
King
away a
own
fair princess called
consent.
spear in a single
Her
brother,
dragon with his

10
combat and delivered the abducted maiden.
Tigranes, a legendary character, slew the
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
78
Queen
and
Sathenik, the Albanian wife of
King Artaxias, fair

had been bewitched into a love affair
fickle as she was,
with a certain Argavan who was a chief in the tribe of the

dragons. Argavan induced Artaxias himself to partake of a
the palace of the dragons,"
banquet given in his honour in
"
where he attempted some treacherous deed against
his royal
of
the
but
nature
is
not
the
stated,
plot
guest.
King must
have escaped with his life for he kept his faithless queen and
11
died a natural death.
The
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
common
victim of this inveterate habit
to the dragons
and
12
Devs of Armenia and
their European cousins, the fairies

was Artavasd, son of the above mentioned Artaxias, the friend
of Hannibal in exile and the builder of Artaxata.
History
us that Artavasd, during his short life, was perfectly true

to the type of his uncanny ancestry, and when he suddenly
tells
sis, it
down
a precipice of the venerable Maswas reported that spirits of the mountain or the dragons
disappeared by falling
themselves had caught him up and carried him off.

More important than all these tales, Vahagn, the Armenian
god of
fire
(lightning),
won
the
fighting against dragons like

details of these encounters
title
of
"
"
by
Although the
dragon-reaper
Indra of old.
have not come down to
dragons in them must have been allied to Vrtra, the
us, 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

dragon as such, there was also a race of dragonmen, born of the intermarriage of the dragon with human
sides the
WORLD OF
SPIRITS
AND MONSTERS
79
But we cannot be very certain of this, although there

would be nothing strange in it, as the history of human beliefs
of remarkable men, and
teems with the
serpent fathers
the character of the Iranian Azi Dahaka himself easily lends
wives.
"
"
The children of the dragon also,

to these things.
whether mixed beings or not, dwelt around the Massis and
were regarded as uncanny people with a strong bent towards,
itself
and much
skill in, witchcraft.
However
13
be about the children of the dragon, it is

incontestable that the dragons themselves were a very real
it
may
terror for the ancient Armenians.

in a
wide ravine
left
We
are told that they lived

on
the side of the higher
an
earthquake
by
peak of the Massis. According to Moses, Eznik, and Vahram

14
Vardapet, 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.
boasted a gigantic size and a terrible voice (EXishe).
the people were neither clear nor unanimous about
They
But
their real shape.
pents and
They were
as sea-monsters,
usually imagined as great ser

and such enormous beasts of the
We
land or sea were called dragons, perhaps figuratively.

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
"
"
15
from his poisonous breath.

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
16
lihood.
They loved to suck the milk of the finest cows.
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,
Hold fast! Hold fast!" (Kail Kal!)

probably to induce them to leave the grain by treating them as
often shouted
,"
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
80
17
But they carefully avoided saying

guarding genii.
Take!
(Ar! Ar!}.
"Take!
"
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
development, a trait which we find also

and especially Celtic fairies.
would seem that the dragons as well as their incorporeal
in a primitive stage of
in western
It
cousins the Kaches claimed
and kept under custody those mor
who had originally belonged to their stock. Thus Artavasd was bound and held captive in a cave of the Massis for
fear that he might break loose and dominate or destroy the
tals
18
Alexander the Great, whose parentage from a ser

pent or dragon-father was a favorite theme of the eastern
world.
story-mongers, was, according to the mediaeval Armenians,

confined by the dragons in a bottle and kept in their mountain
Rome. King Erwand also, whose name, according

Alishan, means serpent, was held captive by the dragons
palace at
to
He
must have been a changeling, or rather

born of a serpent-father. For he was a worshipper of Devs
in rivers
and
mist.
and, according to Moses, the son of a royal princess
from an
father.
He was proverbially ugly and wicked and
an
evil
possessed
eye under the gaze of which rocks crumbled
unknown
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.
need not doubt that this dragon was
We
related to the foregoing, although ancient testimony on this

Eznik s account of the
subject leaves much to be desired.
WORLD OF
ascension of the dragon

sky,
is
AND MONSTERS
SPIRITS
in perfect accord
"
through so-called oxen
"
81
into the
with the mediaeval Armenian accounts
This process was always

accompanied by thunder, lightning, and heavy showers. Vanakan Vardapet says:
They assert that the Vishap (the dragon)
of the
"
pulling up of the
dragon."
"
being pulled up. The winds blow from different directions

and meet each other. This is a whirlwind. If they do not
is
overcome each other, they whirl round each other and go

upward. The fools who see this, imagine it to be the dragon
Another mediaeval author says:
or something else."
The
"
whirlwind
is
wind
that goes upward.
Wherever
there are
wind has entered the veins

of the earth and then having found an opening, rushes up
abysses or crevasses in the earth, the
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.
the
This
is
what they
call
pulling up
21
dragon."
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
but rarely,
man
sees
many
if ever, personifies
spirits at
Nature
work
itself.
in nature,
To him
those
very real, numerous, somewhat impersonal and ver

playing antics now on the earth, now in the skies, and
under the ground. In the case of the dragon causing
spirits are
satile,
now
storms, to the
Armenian mind the storm seems
to be a second
ary concomitant of the lifting up of the dragon which threat

23
ens to destroy the earth.
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
an important point which must not be lost sight of. 24
is
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
82
We must not
forget to mention the worship that the dragon

Eznik
says that Satan, making the dragon appear
enjoyed.
appallingly large, constrained men to worship him. This wor
ship
was no doubt similar
in character to the veneration paid to
many lands and perhaps not entirely

from
serpent-worship. According to the same
guished
evil spirits in
distin
writer,
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
at least in Sassanian times
converted.
about this
25
But there was nothing regular or prescribed

which was simply dictated by fear. As the black
act,
26
make their appearance often in

hen and the black cock
general as well as Armenian folk-lore as an acceptable sacri
fice to evil spirits,
some
role in the
we may reasonably suppose
had
marks of veneration paid to the dragon
But we have also more
ancient times.
that they
in
definite testimony in
(History of St. Hripsimeans)

about dragon worship. The author, after speaking of the cult
of fire and water (above quoted) adds: "And two dragons,
early martyrological writing
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,
devilish
and spring, produced a wonderful sight with

And the deep valley
shakings and leapings.
by the sacred
flashes,
fire
(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
and Tiridates, which
"
"
treaty
between Con-
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
stantine
is
Arshag, son of Valarshag, also had a spear dipped in the blood

27
of
with which he could pierce thick stones.
Such
reptiles
"
"
arms were supposed
to inflict incurable
wounds.
WORLD OF
SPIRITS
III.
The Kaches form
AND MONSTERS
83
KACHES
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
Their name means

the brave ones,"
kobolds, etc.
which is an old euphemism (like the present day Armenian ex
"
fairies,
"
our
or like the Scots
used
gude folk
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
pression
of the
may
betters,"
"
")
spirit
clearly see
how the people connected or confused them

Our sources are the ancient and mediaeval
with the dragons.
Unlike the dragon the Kaches were apparently incor
writers.
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
which they were usually associated and

Massis was one of their favorite haunts. Yet they
in stony places with
Mount
could be found almost everywhere.
The
country was full of

bearing their name and betraying their presence, like
Stone of the Kaches, the Town of the Kaches, the
localities
the
Village of the Kaches, the Field of the Kaches (Katchavar,

28
where the Kaches coursed
etc.
"
"),
Like the dragons, they had palaces on high sites. According

to an old song it was these spirits who carried the wicked Artavazd up the Massis, where he still remains an impatient
They hold
Alexander the Great in Rome, and

and darkness, i.e., mists. 29 They waged
wars, which is a frequent feature of serpent and fairy, commu
30
nities, and they went hunting.
They stole the grain from
prisoner.
King Erwand
also
in rivers
the threshing floor and the wine from the wine

press.
They
often found pleasure in beating, dragging,
torturing men, just
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
8*
as their brothers
and
the
sisters in
Men
victims black and blue.
West used
to pinch their
were driven out of their wits
through their baleful influence. Votaries of the magical

in mediaeval Armenia were wont, somewhat like Faust and
numerous
tribe, to
off, astride
gallop
of big earthen jars,
31
art
his
to
and walking on water, they arrived in foreign

countries where they laid tables before the gluttonous Kaches
far-off places,
and received
instructions
from them.
Last of
all,
the medi
Kaches (and probably also their ancestors) were very

The people often heard their singing, although we
do not know whether their performance was so enthralling as
aeval
musical.
that ascribed to the fairies in the
However,
their
modern
music to their own.

the
representatives
According
to the
seem
Greek
to prefer
sirens.
human
to Djvanshir, a historian of
of Transcaucasia, the wicked Armenian King

built a temple to the Kaches at Dsung, near Akhalka-
Iberians
Erwand
Xak
West and
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
knowledge.
a certain unacquired and imperishable
They could neither learn anything new nor for

They had rational minds which were
They loved weddings, singing,
development.
and rejoicings, so much so, that some of the later
get what they knew.

incapable of
tambourines,
confused them as a kind of evil spirits

whose power of temptation divine help must be in
ecclesiastical writers
against
voked.
In
spite of their
name
("
perpetual brides
")
they
WORLD OF
were held
SPIRITS
to be mortal.
32
AND MONSTERS
The common
85
people believed that
these spirits were especially interested in the welfare, toilette,

There are those who
marriage, and childbirth of maidens.
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."
"
TORCH (OR TORX)
V.
Torch
is
in
name and
character related to the
Duergar
(Zwerge, dwarfs) of Northern Europe and to the Telchins

33
of Greece or rather of Rhodes.
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
from Greece, and probably belongs to a genuine PhrygoArmenian 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
His home was sought in the west of Armenia most
eyes.
tion
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
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
86
than those of Samson, Herakles, or even Rustem Sakjik (of

Segistan), whose strength was equal to that of one hundred
3*
and twenty elephants.

With his bare hands the Armenian Torch could crush a
He could smooth it down into a
solid piece of hard granite.
slab
and engrave upon
it
He
with his finger-nails.
and other objects
pictures of eagles
was, therefore,
known
as a great
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
artisan
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
35
waves the rocks had started rolling/
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, Chary
one"
Just as Zoroastrianism recognized zemeka y
"
the evil
"
winter,"
an arch demon, so the Armenians regarded snow, ice,

hail, storms, lightning, darkness, dragons and other beasts,
as
as the creatures of the
Char or the Devs.
36
Although they
of a rigid dualism in the moral world or of a con
stant warfare between the powers of light and the powers of
knew
little
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
air."
They had, like the Mohammedan
pictured as beings of
a
subtile
body.
angels,
They were male and female, and
"
lived
in
marital
often also with
relations
human
not
37
beings.
only with each other, but

They were born and perhaps
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
died.
38
men. But they appeared

39
hours
both
as
human
waking
beings and as serpents.
Stony places, no doubt also ruins, were their favorite haunts,
wild beasts
in order to frighten
also in
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
"
40
stony
places."
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

with a stick or sword, or even keep these
terrible weapons near him while sleeping, could feel quite
strike suspicious spots
secure
from
their endless molestations.
41
Of
we must
course,
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
Their Avestic mode of self-propagation, by tempting

42
dreams, is not entirely unknown to the Arme
spirits.
men
in their
nians.
Pariks
They probably formed

(Zoroastrian Pamkas
a class
by themselves
43
enchantresses),
pernicious female spirits, although the
common
who
like the
also
were
people did not
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
88
know whether they were Devs
quite
too,
or monsters.
were mostly to be sought and found
VII.
The most gruesome

of the Als.
It
came
These,
45
ALS
tribe of this
to the
in ruins.
44
demoniac world was that
Armenians either through the
Syrians or through the Persians, who also believe in them

46
Al is the Baby
and hold them to be demons of child-birth.
lonian Aluy one of the four general names for evil spirits.
But the Armenian and Persian Al corresponds somewhat

Jewish Lilith and Greek Lamia.
to the
Probably the Als were known to the ancient Armenians,

but it is a noteworthy fact that we do not hear about them until
mediaeval
human
times.
They appear
beings, shaggy
and
as
bristly.
half-animal
They
are
and half-
male and female
47
They were often called beasts, nev

ertheless they were usually mentioned with Devs and Kaches.
and have a
"
mother."
48
they lived in watery, damp

According to Gregory of Datev
and sandy places, but they did not despise corners in houses
and
pure
stables.
spirits
prayer against the Als describes them as im

with fiery eyes, holding a pair of iron scissors in
wandering or sitting in sandy places. Another

unnamed author describes an Al as a man sitting on the sand.
their hands,
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.
The Als were formerly disease-demons who somehow came

to restrict their baleful activities to
mothers.
They
unborn children and their
attack the latter in child-birth, scorching her
pulling out her liver and strangling her along with

the unborn babe.
They also steal unborn children of seven
ears,
months,
at
which time these are supposed
in the
East to be fully
\o
PLATE V
Al.
Thepta, a variety of
Faith of Armenia.
From
Alishan
Ancient
PLATE
VI
Al, the dread of women in childbirth.

AUsharfs Ancient Faith of Armenia.
From
moV-
WORLD OF
formed and mature,
(as a tribute?
in order to take
to their
AND MONSTERS
SPIRITS
dread king.
49
said to blight
and blind the unborn
blood, to eat
its flesh,
them
"
deaf and
89
dumb
"
In other passages they are

child, to suck its brain
and to cause miscarriage,
and
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
frequently beaten.
mother
50
faints, this is
spirits are
supposed to reside) are
If, after
giving birth to the child, the

construed as a sign of the APs presence.
In such cases the people sometimes resort to an extreme means

of saving the mother, which consists in exposing the child on
51
roof as a peace-offering to the evil spirits.

Identical
or at least very closely connected with the Al is Thepla, who
a
flat
by
sitting
upon
woman
in child-bed causes the child to
black and faint and to die.
NHANGS
VIII.
These monster
spirits,
become
52
at
Armenian mythology,
The word means in Persian,
least
in
stand close to the dragons.

crocodile," and the language has usually held to this matterof-fact sense, although in the Persian folk-tale of Hatim Tai,
"
the
Nhang appears in the semi-mythical character of a seamonster, which is extremely large and which is afraid of the
crab.
The Armenian translators of the Bible use the word in
the sense of
the
"
crocodile
"
and
"
hippopotamus."
However,
Nhangs of Armenian mythology, which has confused an
unfamiliar river monster with mythical beings, were per

53
and incorporeal. They were evil spirits which had

fixed their abode in certain places and
assiduously applied
sonal
themselves to working harm.
They sometimes appeared
as
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
90
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
54
In a geography (still in MS.) as

cribed to Moses, the Nhangs are said to have been observed
dwellings like the
fairies.
in the river Aragani
(Murad Chay?) and
in the Euphrates.
After using an animal called charchasham for their

pire-like they sucked its blood and left it dead.
vam
The same
lust,
Nhang was
author reports that, according to some, the
a beast,
and according to others, a Dev. John Chrysostom (in the

Armenian translations) describes the daughter of Herodias
as
more bloodthirsty than

IX.
"
the
Nhangs of
the
55
sea."
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
descended to restore him to
lez"
In the Ara myth, these
life
by licking
his
"
Ar
wounds.
spirits are called the gods of Semira-
misj also in a true and realistic story of the fourth century

about the murder of Mushegh Mamigonian, the commander of
56
the Armenian king s forces.

His family could not believe
in his death
others expected him to rise; so they sewed
.
the head
<
saying,
and
means
upon the body and they placed him upon a tower,

Because he was a brave man, the Arlez will descend
raise
"
"
him.
"
Presumably
"
ever-lappers."
They
their
name
is
Armenian, and
5T
or even
men," or
lappers of Ara"
were invisible spirits, but they were de
lappers of brave
"
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
rived
beings of a higher spiritual order could be related to bodily

creatures.
as dogs.
89
The Arlez were imagined
to exist in animal
form
WORLD OF
OTHER
X.
SPIRITS
SPIRITS
AND MONSTERS
91
AND CHIMERAS
The Armenians believed also in the existence of chimeras

by the name of Hambans or Hambarus y Jushkcvpariks (Vushkapariks), 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

forms like the Devs and Pasviks.
different
suming perhaps
are probably feminine beings with a body, living on land

and particularly in desert places or ruins. Von Stackelberg
They
thinks that the
This
spirits."
which
may
word Hambartma means
in Persian,
"
house-
possibly justified by the shorter form, Anbar,

convey the sense of the falling of a house or wall;
is
Hambaru may be interpreted as a ghostly inhabi

tant of a deserted place. The word may also mean
beautiful
so the original
"
or even
"
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

Threatening Babylon with utter destruction Isaiah
cal beings.
(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
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 cretp^
there.
(siren) of the Septuagint.
60
Another chimerical being was the Jushkaparik or Vushkaparik, 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
peared
in the
Dev
with amorous propensities) that ap
form of an
ass
and lived
in ruins.
However
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
92
Eznik and the ancient

a
through
hardly justifiable approximation

the ass-bull of the Septuagint
Oi>o/ceWavpo9,
22, xxxiv.
n,
14).
word
translators of the Bible use the
According
to
to
translate
(Isaiah
xiii.
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
Thus
brass.
word
it
it came nearer the

conception of a centaur, which
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
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
61
The Pais seem to be a variety of the
also of the Man-Pai.
boasted
Pariks.
The
not so hopeless with the sea-bull, a chimerical

monster which propagated its kind through the cow, somewhat
case
after the
is
manner of the
sea-horses of Sinbad the Sailor
s first
Men
asserted that in their village the sea-bull as

voyage.
saulted cows and that they often heard his roaring.
can
We
well imagine that immediately after birth, the brood of the

monster betook themselves to the water, like the sea-colts of
the Arabian Nights
But
story which
we have
just mentioned.
62
one which Poseidon sent

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
to
this sea-bull
Minos for
may
also recall the
a sacrifice
Theseus innocent son, Hippolytus.

Another such chimeric monster, but surely not the
63
the long list, was the elephant-goat (fhlachal)
sent to destroy
last
of
CHAPTER
XII
COSMOGONY, DEATH, AND ESCHATOLOGY

Armenian cosmogony has
survived and we may well doubt they had any, seeing
definite cosmogony is not an integral part of Indo-Euro
certain of the old
NOTHING
that a
The
early Christian writers, as Agathangelos

and Eznik, often explain how God established the earth on
call the Syrian view.
They maintain
nothing," which they
pean mythology.
"
more general Semitic

view, teach that the earth was founded on a
Only in modern Armenian folklore do we hear
this against those
(Biblical etc.)
who, according
to the
watery abyss.
about the primeval ox or bull upon whose horns the world was
and which causes earthquakes by shaking his head whenever

1
he feels any irritation.
Agathangelos conceives the heavens as
a solid cube hanging on nothing, and the earth
compactly
set
"
formed and provided with a thick bottom, standing on noth

For all the Armenian authors the earth stands firm and
ing."
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

not we find that in the Zoroastrian
they held the world and
a distinct
cosmogony or
stage of their religion,
all that is therein to
be the work of
plainly called the creator
Aramazd, who, by Agathangelos,

of heaven and earth.
The invisible world for them was
is
thickly populated with occult powers, gods, angels (Hreshtak,

from the Persian fmshtak, messenger
spirits, demons and
"
"),
demoniac monsters of many kinds. Human life, its events

and end, were predestined either by divine decrees (Hraman,
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
94
Farman) which were unchangeable and unerring, or
Pers.
through their mysterious connection with
and the zodiacal
We
signs.
stars, constellations,
do not know
positively, but
it
were thought to be the fravashi

is
In
(double, the external soul or self) of human beings.
human
a
star
whenever
a
folklore
modern
shooting
drops,
very likely, that the stars
In a word, the old Armenians were thorough

going fatalists. This view of life was so deeply rooted, and
being dies.
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 (marmin) and a soul
^x
(hogi,
Uru, the Iranian urva, may

"breath,"
have originally been used also in the sense of soul, but it finally
or shunch,
came
?)-
phantom or a ghostly appearance. Ghosts were

urvakan, i.e., ghostly creatures. That these spirits re
to
called
mean
ceived a certain kind of worship
undeniably attested by the
is
old word urvapast,

ghost-worshippers," applied by AgathanThe linguistic evidence shows
Armenians.
to
the
heathen
gelos
"
was nothing more than breath," al

was
this
gradually modified into something
conception
though
more personal and substantial. It was never called a shade,"
"
that originally the soul
"
was closely associated with light, a

view which has a Zoroastrian tinge. Death was the separation
a more or less subtile mate
or rather extraction of the soul
but in Christian times
it
from the body, through the mouth. This has always been
conceived as a painful process, perhaps owing to the belief that
The soulthe soul is spread through the whole body.
rial,
"
"
taking
angel and the
"
writer
"
are
nowadays the
pal actors in this last and greatest tragedy of
human
life.
princi
After
death the soul remains in the neighbourhood of the corpse until

burial has taken place. The lifeless body usually inspires awe
and
fear.
after this,
quickly washed and shrouded, and before and

candles and incense burn in the death-room, perhaps
It
is
COSMOGONY, DEATH, ESCHATOLOGY

not so
much
to
show the way
to the disembodied
95
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
The dirgehastened to gather around the deceased man.

of
hired
raised
a
class
the
and
women,
dirge
mothers,
sang his
The
nearest relatives wept bitterly, tore their hair, cut

and arms, bared and beat their chests, shrieked and
reproached the departed friend for the distress that he had
praises.
their faces
caused by his decease.
It is
very probable that they cut also
their long flowing hair as a sign of
are
who, technically speaking,
mourning, just as the monks,

spiritual mourners (abe\a>
from the
Syriac abhlla)^ did, at the very beginning of their tak

The dead were carried to their
ing the ecclesiastical orders.
mention whatever of crema
no
have
bier.
a
graves upon
We
tion
among
On
the Armenians.
the open grave of kings and

of servants and women com
other grandees a large number

mitted suicide, as happened at the death of Artaxias, to the
great displeasure of his ungrateful son, Artavasd. The forti
fied city of
Armenian
Ani
in
kings.
DaranaXi contained the mausoleums of the

These were once opened by the Scythians,
either expected to find great treasures in them or intended

this barbarous method to force a battle with the retreating
who
by
natives.
The hankering
"
wander-lust
"
of the
are well
spirits
known
prayers and wishes for the
home and their

Armenians. The many
for their ancient

to the
of the departed soul, as well

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
"
rest
"
as the multitudinous funeral
in the
form of horses and lambs, which perhaps symbolized
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
96
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
(Hindus) delighted is recalled by the present

which in some localities friends bring to the bereaved
ancient Indians
of rice
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
This is proved by the boisterous revels
in their funeral rites.
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.
There was and

5
is still
It is
a regular funeral feast in many places.

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
harmonize divergent and even contradictory views, and con

tact with Zoroastrianism introduced new elements of confusion.
to
The
ordinary Armenian word for grave is gerezman, which

house of praise,"
nothing else but the Avestic garo-nmana y
"
is
the heavenly paradise as the place of eternal light, and as

6
the happy abode of Ahura Mazda.
The use of this important
i.e.,
word by the Armenians for the grave may be simply

mism, but
a euphe
also be expressive of an older belief in

or
torture suffered by the soul in the grave,
happiness enjoyed
very much like the foretaste of paradise or hell which is al
lotted to the Mohammedan dead, according to their deserts.
it
may
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.

also marked traces of a belief in a Hades.
There are
The
Iranian Spenta Armaiti (later Spentaramet), "the genius of

the earth," occurs in Armenian in the corrupt form of Santara-

met and only
in the sense of
Hades
or Hell.
The
97
Santaramet-
akans are the dwellers in Santaramet, i.e. the evil spirits. Even
the Avesta betrays its knowledge of some such older and pop
darkness of Spenta Arwhen it speaks of the
The earth contained Hades, and the spirit of the
naturally the ruler of it. Nor is this a singular phe
"
ular usage
7
maiti."
earth
is
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?).
word ouydn
as
The Armenian language possesses also the

This is
the name of the ruler of Hades.
clearly Aidonceus, or
whether
it is
Hades.
But
it
is
difficult to ascertain
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

gayanky 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
Santaramet and
Dzokh became
day of judgment, both
designations of Hell, if indeed
had not already happened in heathen times.

There is some uncertainty in regard to the location of Hades.
this
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
may very well be understood also of the pagan

For we know that Hell is a further development of
devils,
Hades.
Hades, and that the Babylonians, the Greeks, and the Egyp
tians all sought Hades, sometimes in the earth, but more usu-
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
98
For
ally in the West.
the world of the dead.
of
modern Armenian
tion of the
*
dead."
of them the setting sun shone upon

And we have already seen how a bit
all
the por
folklore calls the setting sun,
The life led in the grave or in Hades,
"
however sad and shadowy, was held to be very much like the
The dead needed food, servants, etc., as the food
present.
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.
knew and
Azdahak Byrasp (Azda-
First of all, the people
told a popular Persian story about
hak with the io,OOO 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
ing belonged to any one in particular
done
in public.
So he began
ostentatious goodness.
For him noth

and everything must be
publicity.
his career
with a perfidious but
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
Now
Azdahak developed an
and for spreading the lie.
Finally Hruden (Thraetona, Feridun) conquered and bound
him with chains of brass. While he was conducting him to
Azdahak himself
into a dragon.
inordinate appetite for
human
Mount Damavand, Hruden

to drag
flesh
fell asleep
him up the mountain.
When
hak into a cave before which he stood
and allowed Azdahak
he awoke he led Azda

as a barrier
preventing
from coming out to destroy the world.

But both among the Armenians and among their northern
the monster
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
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
into Massis
99
and concubines committed suicide (or were slain?) on the

grave, the ungrateful and unfeeling son complained and said:
Thou hast gone and taken the whole Kingdom with
"Lo!
now rule over ruins?

Angered by this
from
the
made
answer
Artaxias
grave and said:
"
Shall I
thee.
proach,
re
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
In
see the light.
fact, shortly after his accession to the throne,
went out to hunt wild boars and wild
and falling with
asses,
when he
he became dizzy
down
a precipice, disappeared. The

that he was chained in a cave of Massis
his horse
people told about him

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
hammer on
the anvil strengthens those chains; therefore, even in Christian

times, on Sundays
and
festival days, the blacksmiths struck
hammers on the anvil a few times, hoping thereby to pre

vent Artavazd from unexpectedly breaking loose upon the
their
world.
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 MelamIt
is
also
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-
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
ioo
nian knows the Persian
word
"
ristaxez,
resurrection,"
Modern Armenian
proper name
(Aristakes).
vivid picture of the cinvat-bridge which
10
There is the word
kingdom
bridge.
it
as a
folk-lore has a
calls
the hair-
for the heavenly

which
is
also
the
Persian dirakht,
called
drakht (from
paradise
The picture lacked neither fire nor Devs for the tor
tree
"
"
"
").
ments of the
Santaramet and Dzokh, once

meaning Hades, had also acquired the meaning of Hell. But
out of these broken and uncertain hints we cannot produce
evil doers, while
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
subject.
However,
as a
the native stories
on
branch of the Thracian race, the
this
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
11
myth of Er.
ARMENIAN
I.
THE
VAHAGN
conclusion that
(SEE CHAP. V,
p.
Vahagn was Agni,
42).
i.e.,
a fire-god in
its
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
different aspects,
is difficult
to escape.
fact that Vahagn grants courage to his worshippers.

Moreover, both
Vahagn and Verethraghna were identified by ancient Hellenizers with
Herakles.
Windischmann
represented in
also because the
is
view
is
untenable, not only because Verethraghna
Armenia by other more unmistakable names, but

Vahagn myths have nothing in common with the
we have seen, both gods were

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
It is true that the Avestic Verethraghna was also
just examined.
born in an ocean.
But he does not fight against dragons nor is he
Avestic Verethraghna, although as
identical in pre-Vedic
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,
Verethraghna.
it
is
very difficult to derive the name of Vahagn from

did the strong
r s
of
Verethra
become
How
"
"
"
"
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

Vahram y and Vram y which occur in Armenia?
(perhaps also Vardan) y
For these reasons, as well as his manifest connection with the fire,
seems best to consider Vahagn s name as a compound of Vah and
Agni. By some Sanscrit scholars this has been interpreted as FireThe sacrificial Agni is called in the Vedas havya-vah or
bringer.
it
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
364
havya-vdhana (Macdonell, p. 97). But Vah must have meant some

It is interesting
to the old Armenians.
a bringer
thing else than
"
"
names and adjectives derived from Vahagn use

His temple
the
first
syllable as if it were a divine name by itself.
only
was called the Vahevahyan temple. His priests were known as Vahunis or Vahnunis.
claiming descent from Vahagn were often
to note that all the
Men
a corruption of Vahan. Wackernagel

Vahan, and Van
at his rites or mysteries, the en
that
(quoted by Gelzer) suggests
Vahe vah," as at weddings
thused worshipper must have shouted
Greeks shouted V/ACVT/IOS/ for v/m/v. The resemblance would perhaps
for (ra/?aios
have been more striking if he had cited the case of
called Vahe,
"
<ra/3oi
in the Dionysia.
If there is anything in the classical testimonies bearing upon the

and in particular
kinship of the Armenians with the Thracian races,
ancient
the
set
one
the
with
Phrygian satyr or rather
might
Phrygians,
god Hyagnis beside Vahagn. (See on Hyagnis, La Grande EncycloAt first glance the similarity
fedie and Pauly-Wissoiva, s.v.)
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 vrp occur alone.
Agnis stands for Hyagnis in the
Mosaic of Monnus (Pauly-Wissoiva, loc. clt.) and vi;s or 3as is
Both Aristophanes and the Assyrians
confessedly a Phrygian god.
knew him as such. It would seem that at the stage of development
in which we meet with Hyagnis and Marsyas in Phrygian mythology,
character in favor of
they had become divested of their original
the all-victorious Sabazios or Dionysos, becoming mere flute-players
and musical inventors who adorned his procession. But the original
"
"
"
from
Hyagnis to the fire can be legitimately inferred

the fertilizing rivers is a
transparent name, and Marsyas interest in
and
of
classical
geography. It is not unlikely
mythology
commonplace
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
reed suggested a flute. The Vah of Vahagn and the v?ys
and
relation of
his
every
of Hyagnis are identical with vys used as a name or title of Diony

When we consider the fact that the Greek v was bilabial, then
sos.
But we may
a v could change into a v.
for
other
between
languages;
cognate
phenomenon
One may
example, the Greek eo-Trepa appears as vespera in Latin.
even say that between the different members of the Thracian family
So the Phrygian word for bread given by
h and v
we
can easily see
how
observe the same
interchanged freely.
APPENDIX
Herodotus
as
/focos
is
hatz in Armenian.
not without some foundation, associated

In fact V ah
to rain."
with their veiv,
together with Vayu, the air and weather
the Avesta) and the other self of Indra.
"
the Avestic
Vayu
fights
on the
side
365
The Greeks
this
word
usually,
and
"
vrjs
Hyas,"
and Hyas must be brought

god of the Vedas (and of
According to Darmesteter,
of Mithra against the Devas by
means of the tempest. We may even compare the Zoroastrian Vae

the good Vayu
with the Armenian Vahevah mentioned
i
vah
On the
above, and conclude that the resemblance is not fortuitous.
other hand the Armenian word aud y
weather," adequately
represents the Vedic and Avestic Vata, which, according to Macdonell,
")
("
"
"
air,"
is
Vayu
The
in its physical aspect.

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)
or
who
"
"increase
bears the
(ARW
giver
bringer"
ence to his relation to the rain.
i.
title
of Visiya,
368), which
is
"
the fruit
a clear refer
A. von Gutschmid finds that the Armenian legend about St. Athewho 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.
This Herakles may be Vahagn, but more
(Gutschmid, iii. 414.)
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,
A euhe(i. 31.)
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
)
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
nogene,
manner: Agne, on her own instance, gave a burial

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
following
feast in
Agnefit.
According
to this naturalistic
myth,
fire is related to
the day
and
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
366
It
therefore to the sun.
by
it,
This
conquers the cold and
and being extinguished,
it
is
conquered in turn
(its mother?).
returns to the tree
another echo of the ancient fire-myths.
is
II.
WITCHCRAFT AND MAGIC
(See
CHAP. VI,
p.
48).
Armenians were much given to witchcraft and

John Mantaguni (5th century) mentions no less than
Eznik s short notices on
of magical practices.
forms
twenty-five
bringing down the moon remind us of the same practice among the
The
ancient
divination.
Thessalians, so often spoken of by Latin writers, such as Apuleius,
Horace, Petronius,
etc.
Non
Horace
says:
defuisse masculae libidinis
Ariminensem Foliam
Et otiosa credidit Neapolis
Et omne vicinum oppidum
Quac
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
The following quotations
a favorite trick of Taoist doctors.
were furnished by Prof. Hodous of the Kennedy School of Missions,
Hartford, Conn.:
ang dynasty,
According to the Hsuan Shth Chi, written during the
ai Ho (827-836 A.D.)
the
ang dynasty in the reign of
At the mida certain scholar named Chow possessed a Taoist trick.
"In
met with his guests. At the time the moon was

l
I am
to his guests when they were seated,
said
very bright.
In order to do
sleeve.
able to cut off the moon and place it into
autumn
festival he
He
my
empty the room. He took several hundred

I
a string, and mounted them saying,
with
them
tied
chopsticks,
am about to climb up and take the moon. Suddenly they noticed
Then he opened the room and
that heaven and earth were darkened.
Then with his
The moon is in the dress of Mr. N. N.
said,
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
this
he
commanded them
to
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
There was a local scholar called T ang. The
ing after the Tao.
natives called him a man a hundred years old.
Yang \vent to him
and he persuaded him to
a girl saying: Bring the
When
stop a night.
night came he called
The girl pasted

quarter of the moon.
a piece of paper like the moon on the wall.
ang arose and bowed
to it saying:
Tonight there is a guest here, you should give him
When he finished speaking the whole house was as bright
light.
as if he had hung up candles."
It
is
last
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.

(SEE CHAP. X,
p.
BY W.
J.
CHAPMAN
68).
In the Noldeke Festschrift, Lehmann-Haupt has shown that the

Assyrian queen Sammurarnat (fl.c. 800 B.C.), probably a Babylonian
by birth, is the historical figure about whom the legendary story of
But this does not account for the fact
Semiramis has gathered.
that the Semiramis of legend has characteristics which unmistakably
belong to the goddess Istar, and that in the story, as Ctesias tells it, she
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
Sammurarnat; in Ctesias, the supernatural birth of the great queen
and her disappearance from the earth in the form of a dove (Assyr.
is
is just as unmistakably mythological; yet a third version

of the story, that of Deinon (Aelian, vii. I, 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
lummu)
the government puts the king to death, is pure folklore. Yet Demon 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
bisexual, that
is
in the
an omen
omen-tablets we read
When a child is
of Azag-Bau, who ruled over the land."
"
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
368
"
Ein Mannweib,
This idea underlies the version adopted by Ctesias:
die Semiramis, hatte das Reich gegrundet; ein weibischer Mann (the
(Duncker, Gesch.
legendary Sardanapalus) brachte es ins Verderben
"
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
the Gilgamesh Epic, vi. 13, where Istar says to

shalt enter into our dwelling amid the sweet odors
Azag-Bau; compare
the hero:
"Thou
Semiramis would then mean

fond of
sweet odors." There is, however, another etymology, which is also
of ancient date, summu ramat y
fond of the dove," the dove being
the sacred bird of Ishtar (Diodorus, ii. 4).
See Alfred Jeremias,
(sammati) of
"
cedar-wood."
"
Izdubar-Nimrody pp. 68-70.
W.
J.
CHAPMAN
The Armenians
mighty dam,
to
ascribed the Urartian works in Van, especially a

Semiramis building activities. She is supposed to have
chosen that city as her

died in Armenia.
fled afoot,
As
summer
she
residence.
The
saga reported that she
was pursued by her armed enemies, she
but being exceedingly thirsty she stooped to drink water
(from a source) when she was overtaken by her enemies.
How
she
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 waterdied
is
Media and her death in India.

See also on Semiramis, Lenormant, La Legende de Semiramis y
Brussels [1873]; Sayce, "The Legend of Semiramis," Hist. Rev.,
1888; Art. "Semiramis" in EBr Qth and nth ed; Frazer,
%
iii, 161 ff.; Uhlrich Wilcken, Hermes, xxviii [1893], I ^)I ff*
*%7 ^-5
canals in
GB
F. Hommel, Gesch. Bab. u. Assyr. y 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
THE CYCLOPS
IV.
369
(SEE CHAP. XI,
p.
85).
Cyclops, and especially Polyphemos, are to be found every

Die
where in Europe and Asia (see e.g. W. C. Grimm,
Sage von Polyphem," ABAW, 1857, P- I #; J- and W. Grimm,
Kinder und Hausmdrchen y No. 130; W. R. S. Ralston, Russian
Folk Tales, London, 1873, ch. iii; Herodotus, on the Arimaspians,
z
iv. 27; G. Krek, Einleitung in die Slavische Litteraturgeschichte
Graz, 1887, pp. 665759; G. Polivka,
Nachtrage zur Polyphem-
The
"
"
sage,"
ARW
[1898] 305
i.
The
f.).
Sailor, Odysseus-like, blinded
on
black giant
whom
Sinbad the
his third voyage, is well known to

Polyphemos appears also in Russian
readers of the Arabian Nights.

folk-lore, with the name of Licko, with the sheep under which his
tormentor escapes, and with his cry,
No man has done
while
"
it,"
bewailing his lost eye. It is perfectly evident that certain im

portant details, such as the one single round eye and the burning of
he
is
have disappeared from the rationalizing and short Armenian ac

The modern descendants of the Cyclops in Armenia are oneeyed beings, who are either gigantic devils or a monstrous race living
in caves. Each individual weighs a hundred times more than a human
In the day-time they sit on their roofs in wait for travellers,
being.
it,
count.
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.
Fiction,
London, 1905, Chap.
THE AL
V.
MacCulloch, The Childhood of
10.
(SEE
CHAP.
XI, p. 88).
St. Peter, St. Paul and

magical text of uncertain date says:
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
"
Silas
art thou, impure, accursed and awful beast, etc. ? . . . He answered:

I am the wicked
I.
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
with child.
flesh
We
of
steal
little
children and the liver (?) of mothers

infants of eight months from
the unborn
mother and we carry them, deaf and dumb, to our King. The
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
the
abyss, the corners
"
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
370
permission of Christ.
They heard
the cry of an infant
and going
in its direction, they surprised the Al in its evil work.

They
him and bound him to the Al-stone. Thereupon came the
caught
mother
of the Al 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
the son of the Hero David. While avenging his father,
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
The underground river Gail (Lukos) flows under the
that cave.
Once a year (either on the festival
cave with a terrible rumbling.
of Roses, originally a fire and water festival, or in the night of the
Mher was
he
sees
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
man
forgetting himself allows the door to be closed upon him.

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.
the poor
Some day Mher
VI.
THE FINGER-CUTTERS OF ALBANIA
Moses of Kalankata,
describes a
PP- 39~4 2
in
his
sect
history
of
)>
of Albania
"finger-cutters"
(in Armenian,
which has un
Vatchawith devil-worship and witchcraft.

kan, the King of Albania in the last quarter of the 5th Century,
was a zealous persecutor of all heresies and of heathen practices.
mistakable
affinities
He was especially endeavoring to uproot the "finger-cutters," when

a boy came to him with the report that while he was crossing the pinewoods 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
As
four pegs by his thumbs and large toes, they flayed him alive.
him
also
use
to
order
in
him
descried
the
they
stranger, they pursued
but he fled from them, and leaping into the river swam
where he climbed a tree, and, unseen by his pursuers, he
observed the whole procedure, but more particularly those who partici
name.
pated in this bloody rite. These he denounced to the King by
They were arrested by his command and put to torture, but no con
As they were all being led to
fession could be extorted from them.
as a victim;
to
an
islet
the place of execution, the
King
singled out a
young man among
APPENDIX
them, and through the promise of
him
to confess
The
devil
what took
following
comes
in the
is
life
371
and freedom,
finally
induced
place at the secret gatherings.
the testimony given by this young man: "The

a man and commands the people to stand
form of
One
(?) must hold the victim without

skin is taken off along with
wounding
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,
When the time of the evil worship
prepared and laid in a basket.
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
If they are unable to bring him the customary tribute
visible?).
[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
[Further] they
partakes in the company of his wicked ministers.
saddle a horse which they keep ready for him.
This he rides and
in three groups.
of these
or slaying him.
The whole
gallops off until the horse comes to a stop.
This he does once a
There
the devil vanishes.
year."
The King commanded the young man

mony on the prisoners themselves before
to repeat this ghastly cere

the royal army.
Many of
them were thus flayed and murdered in the presence of their own fam
There were slain on that day many poisoners. 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.
ilies.
NOTES
ARMENIAN
The
titles and descriptions of the

in the Bibliography.
complete
will be
found
works cited in the Notes
INTRODUCTION
I.
Herodotus,
vii,
The Armenian
73.
This view
is
confirmed by other evidence.
is a Satem language.
The
language,
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
like
Thracian,
old
mony
to their original identity with the Thracians.
CHAPTER.
1.
It is barely possible that, as
und Armenier,
Jensen maintained in
Armenian word shand,
his Hfttlter
"
a reminis
3
cence of the Cicilian or Hittite sanda, sandan (see Frazer,
,
who
identi
Attis
and
i.
was
part 4, Adonis,
124 f.). Sanda,
y
Osiris,
fied with Hercules, was a
god of fertility, and may well have been
a tribal variety of Tushup, the Hittite weather god.
2.
have now very clear evidence of the presence of Indothe
lightning,"
is
GB
We
among the Kassus of the lower part of the Zagros range,

Mittanis of Northern Mesopotamia, and the Hittites of Asia
Minor, before and after the I5th century B.C.
Iranians
the
3.
ERE
ix,
900.
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,
in Roscher,
and
Sabazios
1896-1909, vol. 5; artts.
Dionysos
Pauly-Wissowa, and Daremberg-Saglio; G. Davis, The Asiatic
4.
"
"
"
"
Dionysus, London, 1914.

6. The most unmistakable one of these is Hyagnis (see Chap.
and Appendix I), Hyas seems to be identical with Hayk, and
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
3 8o
Marsyas-Masses with the name of the sacred mountain Massis (Ararat).

The Dio of Dionysus is often explained as god," and may be found
"
Armenian word Di-kh y gods."

Codex La Cava calls Istvo,
Ostius,"
"
in the
"
Hostius."
See A. V.
tr. R. B. Anderson, London, 1889.
Teutonic
Mythology,
Rydberg,
As for Astvads, Agathangelos (5th cent.) defines it as "one who
brings about," an explanation which seems to have struck the philo
Others have related
sophical fancy of the ancient Armenian Fathers.
from
or
the Persian hast,
creature
it to Hastvads y
creation,"
"
7.
"
"
"
Another old writer saw
"
exists."
The
"
unction."
in
Cimmerian word for
the
it
"
Persian yazd y the Avestic astvat y

incarnate," the
(Brahma?), the Celtic Duez, and the Teutonic
Hindu Asdvada
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?tu y
Gk. &TTV,
"habitation,"
Indo-Germanic
a view
ig
Prof.
worships."
"city,"
"
"
(to honor),
which by the addition of

would mean "that which the
Nar of Moscow
"5,"
city
Astvads with Sabazios y

for a while independently
identifies
which the present writer held
of Nar.
8.
The
loss
of an
before r or
initial
not an
/ is
j>
nomenon
uncommon phe
Armenian (see C. Brugmann and D. Delbriich, Grundrtss

der vergleichenden Grammatik der Indogerman. Sfirachen* Strassburg, 1886-1900, i. 503, and A. Meillet, Grammaire armenienne.
The intervening e presents no difficulty. The Latin <periculum is
fear."
probably represented in Armenian by erkiu\,
in
"
9.
The
attracting
Greek
Slavic character of things
some attention
Religion,"
Thraco-Phrygian has lately been

Slavonic Elements in
(see G. Calderon,
Classical Review [1913].
"
The
Letto-Slavic char
Armenian language has been known for the last four

decades through the researches of Hiibschmann.
Here it may be
acter of the
noted that something of this had already been observed in the folk
lore of the Armenians (see Chalatianz,
Intro.).
10.
11.
Die
alien Thraker, Vienna, 1893-4

Gladys M. N. Davis, in a recent
(SWAW),
work
called
ii.
60.
The
Asiatic
Dionysos, London, 1914, has revived an older theory that would

This book has been very
identify Dionysos with the Vedic Soma.
severely criticised, but its main contention is worthy of further
investigation.
12. See also
Armenien," in
A. Meillet,
Sur
les
termes religieux iraniens en
Revue des etudes armeniennes y
"
Ananikian,
"
Armenia,"
in
ERE.
i,
fasc. 3,
1921;
M. H.
NOTES
CHAPTER
381
II
1. EXishe
(5th cent.), speaking of the Sassanian Mihr, reports
the seven gods,"
that the Persians considered him as the helper of
"
which means Auramazda with the six Amesha Spentas.

Khatch (pp. 201203) maintain this view, and also aptly
Phoenician pantheon with seven Cabirs, and Eshmun
Even in India Aditi had seven, then with the addition
Dolens and
point to the
the eighth.
of the sun,
eight children.
2. Farther west, especially in Persianized
represented with a crescent on her head.
Lydia,
Anahita was
Agathangelos, p. 34.
See detailed description in Sandalgian s Histoire documentaire,
794.
5. A thorough comparative study of the Armenian church rites
still a desideratum.
When we have eliminated what is Byzantine
3.
4.
p.
is
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,
or Syrian,
the Transfiguration roses and rose-water, the blessing of the grapes

Assumption of the Virgin, the blessing of the four corners of
the earth, etc.
at the
CHAPTER
1.
III
Agathangelos,
p. 590.
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
2.
Hellenizing.
Yet
the Avesta does not leave us without a parallel in
this matter.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Agathangelos, pp. 52, 6 1.

Ibid., pp. 52, 6 1, 1 06.
Ibid., p. 623.
It is noteworthy that his Christian successor
lightning.
7. See artts.
in
ERE
iii.
"
Calendar (Armenian)
70 f., 128 f.
"
and
"
8.
is
a hurler of the
Calendar (Persian)
"
Al-Biruni, Chron., pp. 202203.

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.

Chap. 8.
10. See
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
382
11. Gregory the Illuminator substituted the festival of St. John

but as that festival did not attain
Baptist for that of the Navasard,
more than a local popularity (in Tarauntis) the later Fathers seem
it with the great festival of the Assumption of the
These
which the blessing of the grapes takes place.
to have united
at
Virgin,
Christian
associations
gradually cost the old
festival
many of
its
traits.
original
12. Al-Blruni,
Chron. y
p.
199.
Gelzer and others have

13. Moses, ii. 66; Agathangelos, p. 623.
made of his title of Vanatur, hospitable," a separate deity. However
corrupt the text of Agathangelos may be, it certainly does not justify
"
this inference.
to translate
"
art.
Further, Vanatur is used in the Book of Maccabees

For a fuller discussion of this subject see
Zeus Xenios.
Armenia (Zoroastrian)
"
in
ERE
i.
795.
14. Al-Blruni, Chron.,p. 20O.

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

1
6.
Agathangelos,
17. Moses, ii. 12.
p.
This cannot be Zoroastrian.
590.
1 8.
Ibid., ii. 53.

19. Agathangelos, p. 6
20. Moses, i. 31.

21. Kund in Persian
2.
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
or
of Aramazd), whose statue, described as "the thunderer
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,
"
"a
P-SH-)
23. Whenever
she may have come to Persia, her patronage over

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
the rivers
or
human.
Cf. Mythology of
24. Agathangelos, p. 52.
all
Races, Boston, 1917,
"
art.
278
f.
HN
v. 83.
25. Dio. Cass., 36, 48; Pliny,
26. Strabo, xi. 532C.
Cumont thinks that this
of ancient exogamy (see
vi.
Anahita
"
in
ERE
was a modification
414, and his Les
i.
NOTES
383
religions orientates dans le faganisme romain, Paris, 1907, p. 287).

it is difficult to see wherein this sacred
prostitution differs from
Yet
and Ma.
the usual worship paid to Ishtar

"
As Ramsay
explains
it
"
(ERE ix. 900 f.) this is an act which is sup

Phrygians
posed to have a magical influence on the fertility of the land and
Ashperhaps also on the fecundity of these young women. Cf arts.
tart
(ERE ii. H5f.) and Hicrodouloi (Semitic and Egyptian)
in his art.
"
"
"
"
(ERE
vi.
672
f.).
27. Faustus, iii. 13.

28. Alishan, p. 263.
29. Moses, p. 294.

30. Justina was a Christian virgin of Antioch
magician called Cyprian tried to corrupt
whom
a certain
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. n) that Ishtar as Sharis had
secured a place in the Urartian pantheon.
32. Agathangelos, pp. 51, 61.
33. Moses, ii. 60.
12.
ii.
34. Ibid,
35. Faustus, v. 25.

36. Agathangelos,
37. Cicero,
p.
591.
De
imferio Pomp&ii, p. 23.

38. Agathangelos, p. 59; Weber, p. 31.
39. Farther west Anahit required bulls, and was called Taurobolos.
40.
HN xxxiii.
41. Pliny, loc.

42. Moses,
4; see Gelzer, p. 46.

cit.
1
ii.
6.
"
43. Eraz,
"
dream,"
"
secret,"
world,"
or
occult,"
identical
is
and perhaps
"
paradise."
of the Greek
44. Moses,
is
Muyn
with
the
Persian
also with the Slavic raj,

is
now
unintelligible
word
"
raz,
the other
and the
/AOIXTOS
evidently a mere reproduction of the cryptic muyn.
ii.
12.
name occurs also as Tre in the list of the Armenian

months.
In compound names and words it assumes the Persian
form of Tin We find a Ti
in the old exclamation
Ti
45. Tiur
"
or Tir, forward!
"
Ti-mann, a
and
it
may
"
"
be also in such
(By)
compound forms
as
"
and Ti-kin, a Ti-woman," i.e.,

lady,"
Ti-air may be compared with
queen."
Tirair, a proper name of
uncertain derivation.
to the absence of the
r
However,
m Ti, one may well connect it owing
with the older
a
of
Ti-air,
"
"
lord,"
"
"
Indo-European Dyaus, Zeus, Tiwaz,

of the Armenian
as a dialectical
variety
etc.,
Tiv,
cognate
or one may consider
"
di,
god."
See also
p.
13.
"
it
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
3 84
46. Eznik, pp. 150, 153, etc.

find also the word bakht y
we
Synonymous or
parallel with this,
"
47. Pshrank,
p.
271.
because,
fortuna."
See for a fuller account Abeghian, p. 6 if.

the temple of Nabu in Borsippa, it
like
48. Perhaps
contained a place symbolizing the heavenly archive in which
divine decrees were deposited.
the
49. Agathangelos.
The Writer
50.
He
Christian times.
"
It
curious to note
is
"
is
was confused with
now
that the
called
"the
the
little
angel of death in
brother of death."
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,
the Babylonian
Year s
as well as the patron of the priests.
New
On
Day (in the spring) he wrote on tablets, the destiny of

this was decided on the world mountain.
men, when
52. Farvardin Yasht, xxvii. 126.

53. Moulton, p. 435. Even the Arabs
name of
of
knew this deity under the

UTarid, which also means Mercury, and has the epithet
"
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 y
arrow," on account of
"
its
swiftness.
G. Rawlinson s Herodotus y app. Bk. i, under Nebo.

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
55. See
56. Jensen
"
may even be regarded as one element in the mysterious Hermes

Thrice greatest." It
Tresmegisthos, which is usually translated as
seems to be much more natural to say: Hermes, the greatest Tir.
"
However, we have here against us the great army of

and a hoary tradition.
classical scholars
F. Cumont, in his
57. Eznik, pp. 122, 138; also EXishe, ii. 44.
Mysteries of Mithra y wrongly ascribes these myths to the Armenians
themselves, whereas the Armenian authors are only reporting Zrvantian ideas.
58.
is
Greek Agathangelos; Moses,

to this day called by Mihr s
60.
One
ii.
8.
of the gates of the
city
name (Meher).
These human sacrifices may also be explained by Mihr
of Van
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.
6 1. Eznik, pp. 15, 1 6.
CHAPTER IV
1.
Moses,
2.
Ibid.,
ii.
Ibid.,
i.
3.
ii.
14.
14.
14.
Anania of Shirag, ed. St. Petersburg,

ii.
14; Greek Agathangelos.
of Elam, Artemis.
6. Moses, ii. 14; Greek
Agathangelos.
4.
5.
Ibid.,
7.
Apollodorus,
iii.
p.
48.
Josephus calls the
Nana
14, 3.
CHAPTER V
1.
i.
31: Agathangelos, pp. 106, 607.
Agathangelos, p. 106.
3. Ibid., p. 606.
reed
is
4. The Armenian word for
eXeg.
Ibid.,
2.
The Phrygian
cognate of eXeg is probably at the root of the Greek e Xeyfiov,
ele
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. in), but eXer has nothing to do with eWv
"
"
"
gy>"
"
"
"
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 Oldenberg, 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.
Even in Egyptian mythology the Sun-god

9. Chalatianz, p. xiii.
sometimes born out of an egg, but he is born also out of the lotusstalk, for he is said to have spent his childhood in the lotus flower.
Cf. Mythology of AIL Races, Boston,
1918, xii. 25, 50.
is
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
386
10.
11.
Macdonell, pp. 89, 98.

It is a very strange and significant coinci
p. 83 f.
Abeghian,
dence that in the Veda also the sea-born Agni is related to the light
ning (Rlg-veda-Sanhita: a collection of ancient Hindu Hymns,
tr. H. H. Wilson, London, 1850-88, vi. 119, note), and that Agni
gives rain (Ibid. y p. 387). Cf. also Oldenberg, p. 167 f.; Macdonell,
35, where the sea is identified with the heavenly sea.
12.
Oldenberg,
We
p.
120.
would suggest that this is the origin of the use of baresman

13.
both in India and in Iran at the worship of the fire and of the bares
man
at the
Magian worship of
upon which the
the sun.
The
grass or stalk cushion
and the bunch of green stalks or twigs

held before the face were perhaps supposed to be an effective charm
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.
sacrifice is laid
15. See Appendix, I,
Vahagn.
CHAPTER VI
1.
Moses,
ii.
19.
The modern Armenian
use of the word "sun"

due perhaps to the fact that the sun brings the
day, and days make up the sum of human life.
3. Abeghian, p. 41.
5. Xenophon, Anab., iv. 5. 35.
6. Discourses, Venice, 1860, p.
198-9.
7. Ed. Patkanean, p. 66.
8. Yashty vii. 4; Al-Biruni, Chron.,
p. 219.
9. Eznik, p. 1 80.
2.
Ibid.y
ii.
in the sense
of
10.
77.
"
life,"
Abeghian,
p.
is
49.
11. Dadistan-i Dinik, Ixix. 2; Stkand-Gumanlk Vijar,iv. 46.

12. Eznik, p. 217.
See also Appendix II, Witchcraft and Magic.
TICO
ii.
13. Abeghian, pp. 41-49; Tcheraz, in
823 f.
the
14. Alishan, in one of his popular poems, calls the Milky
manger from which the dragon may break loose. This is the echo
Way
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
One of them was married and the other single. In
threshing-floor.
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
The
solation."
other
married and needs
would do
help."
387
the same, saying,
Thus going
to
"
My
brother
is
and fro they scattered the
straw.
15.
1
6.
Abeghian, pp. 4145.

Pshrank, p. 198.
17. Alishan, p. 89.

18. Abeghian, p. 45; Pshrank, p. 198.
Quoted by Alishan,
19.
20. It
of
is
well
p.
known how
all the planets in
98.
later Zoroastrianism
degraded the genii
demoniac powers.
21. Eznik, p. 153 f.

22. Al-Biruni, Chron., p. 211.
CHAPTER VII
1. Here it is worth while to notice how Kuhn in his exhaustive
study of fire-myths, called Die Herabkunft des Feuersf Gutersloh
He says (p. 35): "The myths
1886, summarizes his conclusion.
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
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 ist Book of Jalal ad-DinarRumi s Mathnavi makes much of the fire which iron and stone contain,
and which may not be extinguished by water.
became h
in Armenian, as
Armen.
3. Aspirated
p
pater,"
The Phrygian word for fire is said by Plato to have resembled
hayr.
ally
"
the
Greek
"
"
"
"
irvp
In many places these ancestral

undefined and general.
4.
spirits
have become just
spirits,
There were
in Armenia at least three towns of the gods: BagaDerzanes, Bagavan in Bagrevand, and Bagaron on the river
Akhurean.
See H. Hiibschmann, Die Altarmen.
Ortsnamen, pp.
5.
yarij in
410-11.
6.
7.
Alishan, Hayaâtum, p. 79.

Story of the Picture of the Holy
8.
Lazare of Pharpe (5th cent.),
"
p.
Virgin,"
203.
in
Moses of Chorene.
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
388
ARW
9.
xvii.
London,
i.
GB
3
,
part 7, Balder the Beautiful,
f.
194
German
of the
Many
10.
Similar customs are reported also
[1914] 479.
See Frazer,
of the Belgians.
sacred fire-festivals were also taken under
the patronage of the church and started

2
Herabkunft des Feuers , p. 41 f.).
GB
from a candle (Kuhn, Die
Balder the Beautiful, i. 131,

,
pt.
7,
for a very interesting and fuller account of the Armenian New Fires
at Candlemas.
In fact the whole Chapter
constitutes the richest
11. See
Frazer,
material on
new
and the
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
best treatment
were intended to exert some favorable influence on the

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
For in this sense alone It is possible to
rainy season, i.e. the spring.
fires
fire-god in general
understand the old English verses:

"
If Candlemas be dry and fair

half o winter s to come and mair;
If Candlemas be wet and foul
The half o winter s gane at Yule."
The
See also
"
"
artt.
Feu
"
Candlemas
in
"
in
ERE
La Grande Encyclopedic;
iii.
189
"
Fire
"
in
EB
9
;
f.
CHAPTER VIII
vi.
1.
Annalsy
2.
Lehmann,
37.
"
ARW,
iii.
Religionsgesch. aus Kaukasien
[1900] 4
und
Armenien," in
f.
who have explained Vartavar from the Sanscrit

with water," and it can possibly mean also
sprinkling
meaning
However befitting, this Sanscrit etymology
increasing the waters."
far-fetched.
3.
There
are those
"
as
"
is
4. For the numerous references on this subject, see the General

Index of Frazer s Golden Bough, under
It
Fire,"
Water," etc.
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,
kasien
und
p.
59f.; Lehmann,
Armenien," in
ARW
Religionsgeschichte aus
Kau-
[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. y I. iii. 6) this mountain was known also
by the name of Baris,
which Sandalgian compares with the Sacred mountain Hara-berezaiti
of the A vesta.
,
iii.
CHAPTER
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
of the
story of the conquest of Urartu by the

in the biblicised form of the
something
Armenians, seems to be reflected
legend.
2.
Moses,
3.
Alishan,
10, ii.
i.
126.
p.
Dr. Chapman calls my attention to the

passages in Sayce s and
Sandalgian s works on the Urartian inscriptions, where they find
c
the name Huas or Uas.
Sandalgian also explains it as Hayk.
(In
See also the
scriptions Cuneiformes Urartiques, 1900, p. 437.)
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 azat
4.
(from
and
"
yazatat),
venerable."
the Vedic payn,
Patrubani sees in
"
keeper
Republic, x. 134.
8. Patrubani explains
";
Hayk
Armen. hay-im,
the Sanskrit
fana
"
look."
7.
minded."
The
Armenus
as
"
Arya-Manah, Aryan (noble? )to mean

comrade."
friend,"
Vedic Aryaman seems
"
"
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 thinneddown and very corrupt echo of the name of Hanagiruka of
Mata,
mentioned in an inscription of Shamshi-Rammon of
Assyria, 825-812
B.C. (Harper, Ass. and Bab.
Liter., p. 48).
9.
"
11.
Moses,
i.
15.
"
See also additional note on

Semiramis, Appendix
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
390
12. Republic,*. 134.
Pamphylians were dressed up
13.
like the Phrygians, but they
were
a mixed race.
"
EBr al
Jeremiah s account of
i.
33if. Frazer in
myth
GB 3 part iv, Adonis, Attis y 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 zu den Kinder- und Haus-Marchen der Bruder Grimm,
Further, we learn through Herodotus
Leipzig, 1913, i. 126 f.).
that
the
of the Getae in Thrace, taught
Sabazios
Zalmoxis,
(iv. 95.)
about the life beyond the grave, and demonstrated his teaching by
disappearing and appearing again.
14. See art.
the
in
"
Gilgamesh
in
also F.
Chantepie de la Saussaye, Lehrbuch
We
15. Sayce, Cuneiform Inscriptions of Van y p. 566.

may also
to
the
verbal
resemblance
between
Er-Ara
and
the
Bavarian
Er,
point
which seems to have been either a title of Tiu

Dyaus, or the name
of an ancient god corresponding to Tiu.
1 6. For the real
Tigranes of this time we may refer the reader to
Xenophon, Cyrofaedia, iii. i. Azdahak of Media is known to Greek
authors as Astyages, the maternal grandfather of Cyrus the Great.
According to classical authors the historical Astyages was not
by Tigranes, but dethroned and taken captive by Cyrus.
1 8.
According to Herodotus (i. 74) the name of the first queen
of Astyages was Aryenis. .Anush is a Persian word which may be
17.
killed
But
"
interpreted as
pleasant."
"
anushiya,
names
in
This
devoted."
Armenian
as connect
nush, Hranush, Vartanush,
it
may
also be a shortened
latter sense is supported
form from
by such compound
anush with names of gods,
e.g.
Hayka-
etc.
CHAPTER XI
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.
"Wasser
als
Damonenabruhrendes Mittel," in
3. Goldziher,
ARW, xiii. [1910] 274 f. This may have reference to water in its
1.
See
"
art.
"
Fairy
relation to the birth of fire or to the
lightning.
NOTES
391
4. Agathangelos, p. 57. Cf. the cross of the archangel

in graveyards of Roman Catholic churches, e.g., French.
5.
p.
Prolegomena
Study of Greek Religion, Cambridge, 1903,
540.
6.
This description
this old rite,
owing
the Syriac name of a

certain that originally
7.
is
based on the account given by Alishan and

arisen in regard to the true nature
Some confusion has
in Pshrank.
of
to the
Michael
Shvod was thought to be Shubat,

month corresponding to February. But it is
Shvod was the name of a class of spirits.
to the fact that
For a comparative study of serpent-worship and serpent-lore
see art.
in
"Serpent"
ERE
xi.
According to Frazer, GB
part 7, Balder the Beautiful,
London, 1913, ix. 15, the serpent s stone is identical with the serpent s
Nor should this egg be
This, however, is not quite certain.
egg.
confused with that in which a fairy s or dragon s external soul is
3
8.
often hidden
9.
(ibid.,
ii.
io6f.).
Later magical texts use the word
"
"
dragon
in the sense of
evil spirit.
parallels see J. A. MacCulloch, The Childhood of Fiction:

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
10.
For
Study
these infatuated
women who
enamoured woman
12. See art.
13.
We
persecute the monster, often against the
will.
"
"
Changeling
know
in
ERE
that the Persian
iii.
358f.
Azi Dahaka, a corporeal creature
and helper of Ahriman, had a human representative or could person

ify himself as a man.
Quoted by Alishan, p. 194.

This pulling up of the dragon out of a lake by means of
oxen appears also in Celtic (Welsh) folklore.
1 6. In
England the Lambton Worm required nine cows milk daily.
14.
15.
a
KillLuther, in his Table-Talk, describes a diabolical child
which exhausted six nurses. The house-serpent also is often
crop,"
fed on milk, while in other instances the serpent is said to be disin
"
clined to milk.
House-fairies (the Brownie of Scottish folk-lore) thrash as

grain in a night as twenty men can do. See Kirk, Secret Com
monwealth, Introd. by A. Lang, p. 24.
17.
much
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
392
1
the
8.
There
is
a contradiction here.
world-destroyer
the
is
dragon
In the original Persian story

chained by the hero
himself,
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,
20.
p.
180.)
For whirlwinds
witches see
"
"
in connection with jinn, fairies,
demons, and
ERE
v. 688*.
Fairy
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
in
chains and the lightning.

Sometimes it is a cloud-monster that is
driven
hard
and
smitten
with the lightning so that he shrieks.
being
At other times it is the dragon hung in suspense in the sky that is

trying to break h\s chains in order to reach and destroy the world.
The thunder-roll is
Angels pull him up and fasten his chains.
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 live 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
where
he
dragon,
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
and
fleeing, and who naturally
gradually has taken the place of the ancient dragon, as the Muhammedan 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
See Frazer,
important question which need not be discussed here.
GB
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
The
affinity both with the Indian Vrtra and the Armenian Vishap.
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
s child, the Thunder s grandchild and

Here Indra and Vrtra are unmistakable.
ning
a hurler of thunderbolts!"
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

in the bile of the Lernean Hydra.
which had been dipped
28. Alishan, p. 191; Abeghian, p.
29.
ic>4f.
Vahram Vartabed, quoted
in Alishan, p. 194.
dart, which killed people
and cattle in
30. Perhaps the fairies
Scotland and elsewhere, is a dim reminiscence of this hunting habit
of the
31.
who
fairies.
Modern Armenian
folk-lore also
knows of witches with a
tail
foreign lands astride upon such jars.

Brides of the Treasuries," fairy guardians
32. Cf. the Muslim
of hidden treasure.
Western fairies also are often imagined as
fly to
"
mortal and as seeking to attain immortality through intermarriage

with human beings. However in other instances it is they who try to
human
from dying
and dull mortality

by im
them
in
In
wells.
Pshrank
a
man
stumbles
mersing
fairy
(p. 194),
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.
For the
33. I owe this identification to Dr. J. W. Chapman.
free
children
"
"
flesh
"
Rhodische Urvolker," in Hermes, 1

[1915] pt. 2, pp. 271 if. 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
Telchins,
called
see
Blinkenberg,
"
AngeX
expression
interpreting the
rather
The Vulture
Tun,"
means
tion with that house

his
word AngeX
"
as
ugly."
The
and Torch s connec

an unfounded conjecture of Moses own or of
"
is
s House,"
legendary sources.
35. See Appendix IV,
The Cyclops.
EXishe,
p. 65.
p. 191,
nth cent, writer reports that a
36. Eznik,
37.
An
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
Modern Armenians are still catching
ognized as a female Dev.
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
394
These can be
sticking a needle into their clothes.
married or held in servitude and they will stay as long as the needle
mermaids by
remains.
38. Eznik, p. 178.

39. Faustus, v. 2.
40. Moses,
41. Eznik,
42.
iii.
55.
178
p.
Vendidad,
f.
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,
"
Lalayantz,
ditions
Traditions
de
PArmenie,"
p.
xiii f.;
Revue des
[1895] J 93^J F. Macler, art.

i. 80 2;
Pshrank, p. 170. Macler
x.
ôûlaires y
et superstitions
tra
"Armenia
s is a good
in ERE
The
of
the
two
studies.
present-day Armenian
summary
preceding
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
(Christian),"
(Pshrank, p. 170).
46. Goldziher,
ARW
47. This
"mother
x.
[1907] 44.
of the Als
"
resembles the Teutonic devil
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
The tribute mentioned in the text resembles the Scottish
peoples.
tradition of the similar tribute paid by the fairies to the devil, usually
human
victim
in
(see
ERE
J.
A.
"
MacCulloch,
artt.
Changeling,"
360, v. 678).
50. Modern Parsis burn a fire or light in the room, probably for
"Fairy,"
iii.
"
the
ii.
same purpose. (See J.

66 1, though the writer
J. Modi, art.
fails to give the
ERE
in
(Parsi)
reason underlying this
"Birth
practice.)
51.
The
Abeghian
spirits
(p.
of Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday eve, of which

des
f.) and, following him, Lalayantz (Revue
I2O
x. [1895] 3), speak, are Christian inventions.

are
and
Friday, as fast days, and Sunday as a holy day,
Wednesday
their
not
do
who
on
those
themselves
to
respect
avenge
supposed
traditions
$o$ulaires>
sanctity.
also to modern Armenian folklore (Abe

the Devs assume their functions
But
sometimes
f.).
ghian, p.
but
not
and
only steal the mother s liver,
Pshrank,
they
p. 170),
(see
52.
The Als
1
08
are
known
NOTES
395
also bring the child, probably born, to their chief, substituting for
a changeling. See also Appendix V, The At.
him
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
showed themselves
and lured men maliciously into the
(S. Reinach, Orpheus, Eng. trans., London, 1909, p. 133).
abyss.
55. Alishan, p. 62 f.
in the
form of
bulls
and
the Teutonic Nixies
horses,
56. Faustus, v. 36.

57. See p. 68.
It is difficult to tell whether these beneficent
58. Eznik, p. 98 f.
belonged to the original stock of Armenian beliefs or whether
they were a survival of the Urartian or even Babylonian spirit world.
spirits
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.

hero s return to life is, however, rather
slain
thought, and this trait
may
The myth
to
foreign
not have reached him at all.
"
about a
Greek
G. H.
Basmajian, an Armenian Assyriologist, in his short Comparative Study

of our Aralez and the Babylonian Marduk (Venice, 1898), points
out that Marduk had four dogs, Ukkumu,
the snatcher," Akkulu,
"
and Iltepu,
the satisfier,"
eater,"
Iksuda,
snatcher,"
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)
Yet this view,
give life to the dead bodies."
which had already been held by Emine and V. Langlois (Collection
des hlstoriens anciens et modernes de P Armenie, Paris, 18679, i. 26,
note i), cannot be said to be the last word on this interesting but
Marduk s dogs do not lick wounds, nor is Marduk
obscure point.
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
Prof. Sayce saw some connexion between the Arall
volume.)
mountain and the Armenian Aralez, while another scholar has sug
gested Aralu or Hades as a possible explanation.
Basmajian comes
"
"
the
"
the
"
"to
perhaps nearer to the solution.
de
Armenie y
Sandalgian
(Histoire documentaire
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.
l
754759)
ii.
599)
says that arales
quotes
the
meant for
letter
of
the ancient
Armenians inhabitants
of Arali (Summerian Hades), but later generations, having forgotten
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
396
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.
Armenian
39, in the old
version.
1.
Alishan,
The
p.
185.
resembles
the Celtic Water-bull, the Tarbh

Uisge of the West Highlands, which had no ears and could assume
It dwelt in lochs and was friendly to man, occasion
other shapes.
The similar Tarroo
ally emerging to mate with ordinary cows.
Both have a curious
Ushtey of the Isle of Man begets monsters.
resemblance to the Bunyip, a mythical water monster of the Australian
blacks.
See J. A. MacCulloch, The Religion of the Ancient Celts y
Edinburgh, 1911, p. 189; Mythology of AIL 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
When the unsuspecting victim follows them for the
grimaces.
and who can resist the temptation ?
sake of being amused,
they
and
him
into
their
pull
push
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,
62.
buffaloes,
sea-bull
men, children and other living beings are drawn
into their
(Pshrank, pp. 171172.)

watery abode and drowned by them.
See also Appendix VI,
The Finger Cutters of Albania."
"
CHAPTER XII
1. See E. W. Lane, Arabian
Nights y 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

chapter of ath-Tha labT s Qisas al- anbiya.
2. See chap, iii., part
3, on Tyr; also Abeghian, p.
;
Pshrank,
3.
p.
f.,
and
168.
Herodotus
who was
in the first
(iv. 127) tells us that the Scythians challenged Darius

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,
through the very noisy funeral-feast.
i.e.,
The
funeral-
and was a widely spread custom. See artt.

Death and Dis
posal of the Dead," ERE, iv. 411 fL,
Feasting," ib., v. 801 ff.; and
W. Caland, Die vorchristlichen baltischen Totengebrduche,
iii.
5. For more details on burial customs among the Armenians, see
Funeral Rites" in EBr",
Abeghian, p. i6f; Pshrank, p. 256, and
feast
"
is
"
ARW
"
xi.
329.
6.
A. V.
Kuhn,
7.
W.
GrtindrisSy
Vendidad,
Jackson, Die Iranlsche Religion, in

ii.
iii.
Geiger and
685.
35.
Darkness was also the distinguishing feature
of the house of Lie.

8.
Pshrank,
9.
For
the
p.
198.
more Avestic form of
this
myth, see A. V.
W.
Jackson,
Die Iranlsche Religion, in Geiger and Kuhn, Grundriss, ii. 663 f.

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.)
p. 234; Abeghian, p. 20.
A. Stewart, The Myths of Plato, London, 1905 (the myth
of Er, Repib., 6i3E to 62 iD, with parallel trans., pp. 134-151;
observations on the myth of Er, pp. 152-172).
10.
Pshrank,
11. J.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ARMENIAN
I.
ABAW
ABBREVIATIONS
Abhandlungen
Koniglich-Preussische
Akademie
der
Wissenschaften zu Berlin.
.... Archiv fur Religionswissenschaft.
ARW
EBr 11 ....
Encyclopedia Britannica, nthed.

Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics.
ERE ....
OLZ ....
Orientalische Litteraturzeitung.
Sacred Books of the East.
SBE
SWAW
Sitzungsberichte der
Wiener Akademie der Wissen
schaften.
TICO ....
Transactions of the International Congress of Orien
London, 1893.
.... Verhandlungen des zweiten
talists,
VKR
allgemein.
II.
DAREMBERG,
V.,
internat.
Kongresses fur
Religionsgeschichte, Basel, 1905
ENCYCLOPEDIAS
and SAGLIO, E., Dlctlonnalre des antiquites grecques
et romaineSy Paris,
iSSjfi.
ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA, Cambridge, nth ed., 1910-11.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION AND ETHICS, ed. J. Hastings, Edin
burgh, igoSff.
and
J. G. GRUBER, Allgemelne Encyklopadiv der Wis

und Kunstey Leipzig, 181850.
GRANDE ENCYCLOPEDIE, LA, Paris, 1885-1901.
PAULY, A. F. VON, Realencyclo padie der classischen Altertumswissen-
ERSCH,
J. S.
senschaften
schaft,
ROSCHER,
New ed.
W. H.,
by G. Wissowa, Stuttgart, i9O4ff.

Lexicon der griechischc
Ausfiihrliches
romische Mythologie, Leipzig,
III.
SOURCES
For the Indo-European period down
to Christian times the
important native sources are:
AGATHANGELOS, 5th
cent.,
ed.
und
1884-1902.
Venice,
1865.
most
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
436
ANANIA OF SHIRAG,
yth cent., ed. Patkanean, Petrograd, 1877.
EZNIK, 5th cent., ed. Venice, 1826.

EXiSHE (ELBRUS), 5th cent., ed. Venice.
FAUSTUS OF BYZANTIUM, 5th cent., ed. Venice, 1869, also in V.
Langlois, Collection des historiens anciens et modernes de I Armenie, Paris, 1857-9.
MOSES OF CHOREN,
ed. Venice,
5th cent., History and Geography of Armenia,
1865.
OHAN MANTAGUNI,
The
5th cent., ed. Venice.

version of the
Armenian
ancient
Old Testament
is
useful
We
also gather short but valuable notices from Xenophon s AnabasiSy Strabo s Geography, and the works of Dio Cassius,
Alishan has gathered in his Ancient Faith of
Pliny, and Tacitus.
for names.
Armenia
(in Armen.), Venice, 1895, a good deal of very valuable

from edited and unedited works of the mediaeval writers.
The Armenian language itself is one of the richest sources of infor
material
mation,
along with
the
church
ritual
and
collected
scientifically
we may name Abeghian, Armenischer

Among
Crumbs
Volksglaube, Pshrank,
from the Granaries of Shirak, and
parts of Srvantzdian s Manana (see under IV. Literature).
the latter
folk-lore.
IV.
Besides
many
articles in
LITERATURE
ARW, EBr, ERE,
Daremberg
et Saglio,
Pauly-Wissowa, Roscher, and La Grande Encyclopedic, the follow

ing works may be noted.
ABEGHIAN, M., Armenischer Volksglaube, Leipzig, 1899.

AHARONIAN, A., Les croyances des anciens Armeniens, Geneva, 1912.
ALISHAN, L. Ancient Faith of the Armenians (Armen.), Venice,
1895.
ARAKELIAN, H., La
p.
291
religion
ancienne
des
Armeniens
in
VKR,
f.
ASLAN, K., Etudes historiques sur le peuple armenien, Paris, 1909.

BALASSANIAN, S., History of Armenia* (Armen.), Tiflis, 1896.
BASMAJIAN, G., Critical Study of our Aralez and the Babylonian
Marduk, Venice, 1898.
True History of Armenia, Constantinople, 1914.
CARRIERE, A., Les huh sanctuaires de PArmenie payenne, Paris,
1899.
CASSEL, P., Drachenkampfe, Berlin, 1868.
drchen und Sagen, Leipzig, 1887.
CHALATIANZ, G.,
CHANTEPIE DE LA SAUSSAYE, P. D., Lehrbuch der
geschichte*,
Tubingen, 1905.
Religions-
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CUMONT,
F.,
Texts
et
Brussels,
437
Die Mysterien des Mithra, Leipzig, 1903.

monuments figures relatifs aux mysteres de Mithra,
1896-9.
Religions of the Armenians (Armen.),
DAGHAVARIAN, N., Ancient

in Banasser, 1903.
DAVIS, GLADYS
M.
N.,
The
Asiatic Dionysos,
London, 1914.
DER-MESROBIAN, S., Critical History of Armenia, Venice, 1914.

DOLENS, N., and KHATCH, A., Histoire des anciens Armeniens,
Geneva, 1907.
M., Recherche sur
EM IN,
l
Orient, N.S.
v.
le
tyaganisme
armenien, in Revue de
18.
Moses of Khoren and
the
Old Efics of
the
Armenians,
Tiflis,
1886.
ERMAN,
A.,
Handbook of Egyptian
Religion,
tr.
A.
S.
Griffith,
London, 1907.
R., The Cults of the Greek States, Oxford, 1896-1909.
FRAZER, J. G., The Golden Bough? London, 1907-15.
GEIGER, W., and KUHN, E., Grundriss der iranische Philologie, Strass-
FARNELL, L.
burg,
18951904.
GELZER, H., Zur armenische Gb tterlehre,
in Berichte der KoniglichS dchsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenchaften, -phil. hist. Classe.y
1895, pp. 99-148.
GUTSCHMJD, A. VON, Kleine Schriften, Leipzig, 188994.
HOMMELL, F., Grundriss der Geografhie und Geschichte des alten
Orients y Munich, 1904.

H., Armenische Grammatik, Leipzig, 1897.
collection of essays by various scholars), Vienna, 1911.
INJIJIAN, L., Armenian Archaeology, Venice, 1835.
A. V. W., Iranische Religion, in Geiger-Kuhn, Grundriss
HUBSCHMANN,
Hushartzan (A
JACKSON,
d. iran. Philologie, Vol.
ii.
JASTROW, M., Die Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens, Giessen,

1905-12.
JENSEN, P., Hittiter und Armenier, Strassburg, 1898.
KARAKASHIAN, A., Critical History of Armenia (Armen.) Tiflis,
1895.
LAGARDE,
P.,
Armenische Studien, Gottingen, 1887.
Purim, Gottingen, 1887.

LANGLOJS, V., Collections des historiens anciens
et
modernes de l?Ar-
menie, Paris, 186769.

MACDONELL, A. A., Vedic Mythology, Stuttgart, 1897.
MAEHLY, J., Die Schlange in My thus und Kultus, Basel, 1867.
MEYER, E., Geschichte des Alterthums? Berlin, 1909.
MOORE, G. F., History of Religions, vol. i, Edinburgh, 1914.
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
438
^W.
MOULTON,
J. H.,
Early Zoroastrianism, London, 1913.
NAZARETIAN, Armenians and Armenian Mythology (Armen.),
in
BAZMAWEP, 1893-4.
OLDENBERG, H., Die Religion
des Veda, Berlin, 1894.

the
Cult of the Dead in Antiquity,
and
L.
B., Spiritism
PATON,
New York, 1921.
PATRUBANI, Beitrage %ur Armenischen Etymologie y Budapest,
i8 97
PSHRANK, Crumbs from the Granaries of Shirak y a collection of
.
eastern Armenian folk-lore.

SAHAG-MESROB, Urartu, Constantinople, 1909.
SANDALGIAN, J., Histoire documentaire de PArmenie y
SARKISSIAN,
Agathangelos
(Armen.), Venice, 1892.
B.,
and
his
SCHRADER, O., Arische Religion, Leipzig, 1914.

SEROPIAN, BSHP. M., Armenia and Hayastan, n. d.
SIECKE, E., Drachenkampfe, Leipzig, 1907.
SRVANTZDIAN, Manana.
Iranian Influence on the Religious
STOCKELBERG,
"
Ancient
in
Paris,
Many-centuried
1917
Mystery
Beliefs of the
the
Imperial Archaeolog
Report of
of Moscow, Oriental Comm. (Russian), ii. pt. 2,
Moscow, 1901.
TCHERAZ, M., Notes sur la mythologie armenienne, in TICO, // .,
Armenians,"
ical Society
London, 1893.
TISDALL, W. ST. CLAIR, The Conversion of Armenia to the Chris
tian Faith, Oxford, 1897.
UNGUAD, A., Das Gil games ch-E pos, Gottingen, 1911.
WEBER, S., Die Katholische Kirche in Armenien y Freiberg, 1903.
WINDISCHMANN, F., Die persische Anahita oder Anaitis, in Abhand-
Akadamie der Wissenchaften,

Bayr.
lungen der Konig.
viii. pt. I, Munich, 1856.
i.
Classe,
A large number of works on Folk-lore have been used, among

which the following may be named.
Macedonian Folk-Lore, Cambridge, 1907.
D., Demonology and Devil Lore, New York, 1879.^
The Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India,
W.,
CROOKE,
London, 1897.
HARTLAND, E. SYDNEY, The Legend of Perseus, London, 1896.
and
KIRK, REV. R., The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns,
A
ed.
London,
1893.
Lang,
Fairies,
ABBOTT, G.
CONWAY, M.
F.,
BIBLIOGRAPHY
An
LANE, E. W.,
439
Account of the Manners and Customs

of the
Mod
ern Egyptians.
Arabian Society in the Middle Ages, ed. S. Lane

Poole, London,
1883.
RALSTON, W. R. S., Russian Folk-tales, London, 1873.
RHYS, SIR JOHN, Celtic Folk-lore, Oxford, 1891.
WENTZ, W. Y. E., The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, Oxford,
1911.
WUNDT, W.
M., Elemente der Volkerpychologie? Leipzig, 1913.
Also the following
articles:
"
in
Dragon,"
Darevnberg-Saglio.
ERE
"
Phrygians,"
in
New
"
Serpent,"
in
ix.
Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious
Knowl
edge.
"
Serpent
Worship,"
in
EBr.
PRINCIPAL ARTICLES CONNECTED WITH ARME

NIAN MYTHOLOGY IN THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
RELIGION AND ETHICS (VOLS. I-XII)
VI.
ANANIKIAN, M., "Armenia (Zoroastrian)," i. 794-802.

CARNOY, A. J., "Magic (Iranian)," viii. 293-6.
CASARTELLI, L. C.,
"Dualism
CRAWLEY, A.
CUMONT,
"
"Art
E.,
Fire and
Anahita,"
(Mithraic),"
"
and Amulets
(Iranian),"
1112.
i.
Fire-Gods," vi.
26-30.
i.
414-5.
872-4.
(Mithraic),"
Altar
E.,
"God
i.
i.
(Persian),"
(Iranian),"
vi.
744-5.
346-8.
290-4.
Priesthood (Iranian)," x. 319-22.
"Priest,
GRAY, L.
v.
"
F.,
"Architecture
EDWARDS,
"Charms
(Iranian),"
"
H.,
Achaemenians,"
i.
69-73.
"
Barsom,"
"
ii.
4245.
Abode of
the (Persian)," ii. 702-4.

and Cosmology (Iranian)," iv. 161
"Fate
(Iranian)," v. 792-3.
Festivals and Fasts (Iranian)," v. 872-5.
Blest,
"Cosmogony
"
"Fortune
(Iranian)," vi.
96.
Heroes and Hero-Gods (Iranian)," vi. 66 1-2.

viii. 37.
"Life and Death
(Iranian),"
viii. 6l
2.
and
Darkness
(Iranian),"
"Light
"
2.
iii.
448.
ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY
440
JACKSON, A. V. W.,
"
Amesha
"
Ahriman,"
Spentas,"
"Architecture
i.
i.
237-8.
384-5.
i.
760-4.
881-4.
Ashmounds," ii. 114-5.
Avesta," ii. 266-72.
Demons and Spirits (Persian)," iv. 61920.
Mithraism," viii. 752-9.
JONES, H. S.,
LEHMANN, E., Ancestor Worship and Cult of the Dead
"Art
(Persian),"
(Persian),"
i.
"
"
"
"
"
i.
MAcCuLLOCH,
J. A., "Branches
v.
"Serpent,"
MACLER,
F., "Armenia (Christian),"
Calendar
MILLS L.
iii.
(Armenian),"
"
H.,
Twigs,"
ii.
831-3.
358-63.
678-89.
xi. 399-411.
"
Fairy,"
and
iii.
"Changeling,"
"
(Iranian),"
454-5-
i.
Ahuna-Vairya,"
i.
802-7.
70-3.
238-9.
"
"
Behistun,"
MODI,
J. J.,
424-5.
ii.
450-4.
ii.
Barsom,"
"Birth
(Parsi),"
ii.
66o-2.
"
MOULTON,
J. H.,
PATON, L.
B.,
Iranians," vii.
"
Ashtart,"
ii.
418-20.
115-8.
"
Ishtar," vii.
RAMSAY,
W.
428-34.
"
M.,
SAYCE, A. H.,
"Median
Phrygians," ix.
900-11.
i.
793-4.
"Armenia (Vannic),"
Religion,"
"
SODERBLOM, N.,
Ages of
viii.
the
514-5.
World
(Zoroastrian)," i.
205-10.

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THE MYTHOLOGY OF ALL RACES

VOLUME I. Greek and Roman

MACCULLOCH, D.D., Bridge of Allan, Scotland.

Ph.D., University of Finland, Helsingfors.

R. CAMPBELL THOMPSON, M.A., F.S.A., F.R.G.S., Oxford.

A. BERRIEDALE KEITH, D.C.L., Edinburgh University.

VOLUME VII. Armenian, African

ALICE WERNER, L.L.A.

Andrews); School of Oriental Studies, London

President of the Republic of China)

Litt.D., University of Tokyo.

VOLUME IX. Oceanic

American (North of Mexico)

HARTLEY BURR ALEXANDER, Ph.D.,

HARTLEY BURR ALEXANDER, Ph.D.,

VOLUME XII. Egyptian, Indo-Chinese

SCOTT, K.C.I.E., London,..

from an Armenian Gospel manu

Missions, Hartford, Connecticut.

CANON JOHN ARNOTT

SOMETIME SCHOLAR AND FELLOW

ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF AMERICA

BY MARSHALL JONES COMPANY

All rights reserved

Printed June, 1925

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

BOUND BY THE BOSTON BOOKBINDING COMPANY

THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT

VAHAGN, THE &quot;EIGHTH&quot; GOD

NATURE WORSHIP AND NATURE MYTHS

NATURE WORSHIP AND NATURE MYTHS

HIGH GODS AND HEAVEN

LEGENDS OF THE SPIRIT-WORLD

XII. TORTOISE STORIES

XIV. STORIES OF WITCHCRAFT AND WEREWOLVES

from an Armenian Gospel

Relief from Bayarid

Bronze Head of Anahit

VIII Types of the Wasanye

Some Bantu Types

XI The Woman Who Found

XII The Footprints of the First Man

XVII The Ghost-Baby

for the Spirits

View on Lake Kivu

The Virunga Volcanoes

Swahili Player on the Zomari

Majaje the Rain-Maker

2. The &quot;New Yam&quot; Ceremony

Group of Ituri Pygmies

New Moon Dance

Ruined House at Lamu

View on the Calabar River

Bantu Types, Safwa Tribe

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

THE ARMENIAN HOSTS

WHO WERE ATROCIOUSLY TORTURED TO DEATH

tended beyond the objectionable but widely spread rites of a

VAHAGN, THE "EIGHTH" GOD

2. The "New Yam" Ceremony