THE “ARYUŚ” CHARACTER (Excerpt from the book <“Lion” Character in the Petroglyphs of Syuniq and Ancient World>)

The image of the lion is the most widespread animal image in the petroglyphs of Syunik

- after that of the goat - comprising around 17% of all the pictures. In many petroglyphs, the

single lion appears accompanied by one or more abstract signs (see: picture 1)

Picture 1. Lion images accompanied by abstract signs

According to our classification, the images presented in picture 1 are central to the

writing (single-centre writing). Here the image of the lion is central and the characteristics

of the central ideas expressed by the lion images are ideographed by the smaller abstract

signs.

Many petroglyphs also exist in which the lion is depicted on the goat “blackboard” (see

picture 2). If we recall that, based on the homonymy of the Armenian դիգ(dig)=“goat” and

դիք(diq)=“god”, the ideograph of the word diq=“god” is the image of a goat and we can

comprehend it as a determinative of the idea of god, then it is clear that the a lion on the goat

“blackboard” is the ideograph of a certain god’s name. Below we will see who that god is,

what name he bore, and what the name meant.

Picture 2. Lion images on the goat “blackboard”.

The traditional perceptions concerning the lion, which have reached down to the

present from ancient times, link the image of this animal to the sun, power, strength and

royal authority. Below we will attempt to substantiate that those perceptions come from the

times of the origin of petroglyph engraving and pictography as a consequence of the

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ideography of words expressing homonymous and abstract meanings of the word

առյուծ(aryuś)=“lion”, using the objective image of the word lion. In order to clarify this

issue, we must first reveal how this animal’s appellative is written and what homonyms it

has.

For this reason, let’s begin with what is the most important for our problem: the

Armenian appellative of lion. The oldest classical Armenian forms of the appellative of the

animal are “arewś,” “ariwś,” “areawś,” and “aroyś”. Ignoring the final “-ś” sound, which is an

augmentative affix1 acquired relatively later, we have the “arew-, ariw-, areaw-, aroy-” forms

for the initial, root appellative of the animal. Taking into account the word-end w>g

transition (compare: arew>areg, kov>kogi, aru>arog, orog etc.) we can also add the “areg,

arig, arog” forms to this list.

In this way we have the accurate appellative of our objective image (lion). Therefore,

we can form the list of words homonymous with the above mentioned appellatives of lion,

the logographs of which depict the lion image.

arew (also ariw in dialects), areg=“sun, light-emitting daytime star”. From its most

ancient mythological depictions in the Near East to the present, the lion has been considered

the symbol of the sun. Present-day scholars try to explain this sun-lion link by the external

characteristics of the lion or some feature or other in its nature. Scholars have also proposed

such explanations for other animal images (the bull, eagle, boar, snake and so on), but such

an approach is subjective and unsubstantiated. In our examination of the images of the lion

and other animals, we will show that they are ideographs and that homonymous words

expressing non-objective, abstract meanings have been ideographed by means of the names

of those animals.

The homonymy of the Armenian appellatives for Sun=“arew/ariw, areg” and

lion=“arew-, ariw-”, comes to prove that the sun-lion link arose around the time of the dawn

of pictography, when they began to ideograph and vocalise the word “arew, areg” with the

image of the lion (for the w=g equivalency, compare arew>areg, aru>arog/orog, kov>kogi

etc.).

In pictographic scripts, other characters have also represented the ideographs of the

appellative of the Sun or the God embodying the Sun. Firstly, in order to avoid confusion, let

us briefly familiarise ourselves with the most widespread of these. In the pictography of the

ancient world, especially in the Egyptian hieroglyphic script, the sun was also

diagrammatically drawn in the form of a circle with a dot in the centre ( ). The origin of

this character is also from the period of the creation of the rock carvings of Syunik; it was

initially used in the sense of sun and was used as an ideograph in Armenia up to the middle

ages.

The Armenian word “aregakn” is compounded comprising the “areg/arew” and

akn=“eye” components. In the same way the character is comprised of two components:

the =“sun, sun’s disk,” and ●=“eye” characters; i.e., we can say that the =Sun character

has been created based on the structure of the Armenian word “aregakn”.

Since the Armenian word “akn” has the meaning of “eye”, “spherical and circular

object, ball, wheel” and “a hole, fissure in the earth from where water emanates; a hole in

1 H.Ačaryan, Armenian etymological dictionary. See article on “ariwś” (in Armenian).

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general through which water, light, air pass”, then the word Aregakn can correspondingly be

interpreted as:

a. Aregakn= eye of Areg/Arew

b. Aregakn = ball of Areg/Arew

c. Aregakn = hole (from which the light emanates) of Areg/Arew

In Armenian all three of these interpretations are acceptable as characteristics of the

Sun. However, the (god of) Aregakn=”(god of) sun” is written dUD.IGI2 in Sumerian,

Akkadian, Hittite, and Urartian. We will refer to the areg/arew reading of the UD cuneiform

sign shortly, but the igi=“eye” reading of the IGI cuneiform sign represents the Armenian

word “ak(n)”. In other words, Aregakn = eye of Areg/Arew is a more favourable

interpretation of this form.

The = Aregakn sun character, having kept its appearance and meaning over

millennia, has also been used in the Armenian Medieval Book of Knowledge Signs. Moreover

on that journey it has taken on new “loads”, and has been ligatured to other characters ( ,

, ), which represent one or other of Aregakn’s characteristics.

And why Aregakn and not Arew?

Is it possible that there is a difference in meaning between these words?

It turns out that there is and this is what H. Ačaryan writes about it. “In correct

Armenian, aregakn and arew are differentiated by their meanings in that aregakn is the star

and arew is its light.”3

Thus we have two descriptive appellatives for the sun in Armenian – Arew/Areg, the

ideograph of which is the image of a lion, and Aregakn, the ideograph of which is = “sun”.

This piece of evidence in Armenian also makes the worship in the pantheons of the Ancient

World of the twin gods of the sun (dUTU and dNerigal – Sumer; Helios and Apollo – Greece;

Vahagn and Mihr –Armenia etc.) comprehensible.

In the petroglyphs of Syunik, we also see the =“sun” character on the goat

“blackboard” (see picture 3a). This means that the engravers of the Syunik petroglyphs

worshipped the God Aregakn. We can

read this picture as Diq Aregakni=“God of

the sun-star”, where we can read the “dig”

name of the goat as Diq=“god”, on the basis

of homonymy. In the next picture (picture

3b) the image of a lion is ligatured to the

images of a goat and dot in a circle. This

composition should be read from top to bottom, Diq Aregakn Arewi = “the god of the light of

the (daytime) star”. In this way we see that the appellatives, Areg/Arew and Aregakn were

already differentiated at the time of the engraving of the petroglyphs and different

ideographs were created for their ideography; i.e., the engravers of the petroglyphs

Picture 3. Examples of ideographs of the name

of the sun god in the petroglyphs of Syuink:

ba

2 Cuneiform specialists present this writing in the dUTUŠI or dUTU-ši form, where the U2-TU=UTU is the

ideograph writing for the Areg-Arev meaning and UD is the reading of the cuneiform sign, and ši is the reading

of the IGI cuneiform sign. However these forms are purely a formality because they are not interpreted by the

specialists. 3 H.Ačaryan, Armenian etymological dictionary, see article on Aregakn. (In Armenian)

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worshipped two sun gods, whose names have reached us through much later sources as

Vahagn and Mihr.

One more clarification concerning the synonyms expressing the meaning of “god”, so

that we understand what other ideographs of words with the meanings of “god” are in the

petroglyphs of Syunik.

In Armenian there is a series of words expressing “god” one of which is the original

word astuaś=ast-u-aś, the “ast-“component of which is homonymous with the ast component

of asteł=ast-eł=astł=“star”, and astičan=ast-i-čan=“step of a ladder”. The word astuaś has an

abstract meaning and it is not possible to draw it, but star and step are possible to draw,

picture. The following signs are given in the Medieval Book of Knowledge Signs for the

“star” meaning” , , and for the “step” meaning, the sign, which portrays a

ladder, is given. For the image of a true step ( ) the Book of Knowledge Signs gives a

meaning of “firm”. The verb is hastatel =“to reinforce, make, create, invent” and the root is

“hast”. The latter is the native Armenian root azd, ast=“power, influence, impact”, with an

«հ» augmentative.

The root “hast” with the –iĉ=“doer, performer” suffix gives us the word hastiĉ=“creator,

maker”. Here we already have a unique characteristic of God and comes from the meaning of

azd, ast, hast =“power, impact”. As a result we see that, with the objective image of the step

( ) and the “ast-” component of its appellative, it is possible to ideograph the abstract word

“hast/ast/azd” and the words hastiĉ=creator, maker”, derived from it, as well as the word

Astuaś=”god” compounded from the same root.

The step sign= is frequently encountered in the petroglyphs of Syunik. It is also

present in the signs discovered at the temple complex of Portasar (Göbekli Tepe). We will

refer to these in detail, separately.

Our other alternative to the

ideograph of the word Astuaś by

using its root “ast” is the star sign.

The three star signs for the “astł”

meaning as testified in the Book of

Knowledge Signs and as mentioned

above are also present in the

petroglyphs of Syunik. Of these, the

eight-pointed star sign has been used

with the “astuaś(=god)” meaning in

Sumerian pictography, and the

cuneiform sign ( ) arising from it has been used with the same meaning in all cuneiform

languages.

Picture 4. Examples of ligatures of Lion and Star

characters in the petroglyphs of Syunik.

The ( , , , , , )4 star signs with different numbers of points

(from five to twelve) have been used both in the petroglyphs of Syunik and in Sumerian

pictography. In the petroglyphs these star signs have also been ligatured to the image of the

4 A. Falkenstein, Archaische Texte aus Uruk I, Münich, 1936, №192

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lion. In addition, it has been ligatured to the tip of the tail of the lion, its mouth or placed on

its back (see picture 4).

Consequently if we read the star sign as Astuaś(=god), and the lion image as

Arew/Areg(=sun) – then for the aforementioned ligatures we have God of the Sun=Astuaś

Arewi/Aregi.

The use of the ligature of the star sign and the lion image reaches into the period of the

spread of Christianity. In some cases the meaning of the star sign has been lost or has been

identified with the Sun and has been replaced by the image of the radiating disk of the Sun.

(See picture 5c, d).

Picture 5. Ligature of the “astł” and “aryuś” signs: a)from the Syunik petroglyphs; b) Greek

money from the town of Mileţ (190 BC); c) image of the “Aryuś(=Lion)” constellation from a

XV century manuscript; d) ligature of the images of the Lion and Sun, which became the

coat-of –arms of Iran in 1423.

c a db

This much for now about the possibility of using the lion image as the ideograph of the

word Arew. Below we will see that this tradition of using the lion image as the ideograph of

the Arew/Areg name also existed in Sumerian pictography and then cuneiform, and also in

Egyptian hieroglyphic writing.

areg, aŕeg, arek=“powerful, strong, excellent, higher, most”. The lion image can also

be used as the ideograph of this word, homonymous to the “areg” appellative of sun. The

images in picture 2 can be read both as Areg Astuaś=“god of the sun” and also as Areg/Aŕeg

Astuaś=“powerful god”.

It is well known that the lion image served as the symbol of royal authority. Based on

this perception, it follows that the ideograph of the word meaning “king, monarch” also used

the lion image. Of course that would fall within the framework of the meanings of the word

“areg, aŕeg, arek”. In the sense of homonymy, the Armenian word “arqay(=king)” fits these

words and the appellatives of lion. Its simple root is “arq”, which is used in Armenian dialects

with the meaning of “authority”.5

If we take into account the k/g>q sound change specific to Armenian and the

peculiarities of ideography, then in the ideograph of the word areg/areq, the vowel between

the two consonants is ignored and it is possible to ideograph the word “arq” from the

objective image of the name arew/areg. Exactly the same was done in Sumerian pictography

and later in cuneiform.

Amongst other forms in Sumerian, the word meaning “king” was written in a

cuneiform sign derived from the image of a lion, with the well-known reading of PI-RI-

IG=PIRIG. We will touch upon cuneiform signs with this reading in more detail, below. 5 H.Ačaryan, Armenian etymological dictionary. See: “arqay” (in Armenian)

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Here we will only mention that the PI cuneiform sign has the a3 reading, the RI sign has

readings of ri, re, and the IG sign has readings of ig ,ik ,iq, eg, ek, eq. So, we can present the

PIRIG ideograph with the readings of areg/arek/areq. However this is how the Sumerian

scribes wrote the names of the sun and the lion (more about this below). In order to

differentiate the meaning of “arqa” from them, they replaced the IG cuneiform sign with the

KI cuneiform sign, which has the readings of ki/ke, qe2/qi2, ge /gi PIRIG = pi-ri-ki, with

the Akkadian šarru=“king” placed before it (Lu I 36, Lu I 37). Therefore PIRIG = pi-ri-ki=a -

re-qe = arq=արք= king. That is why and how the lion became the symbol of regal

authority. This is where it got its title as “king of the beasts,” when in the cat family, the tiger

is actually larger, stronger and wilder than the lion

5 5:

3

2

.

Only homonyms present in Armenian allow for such ideography. In the environment

of a foreign language, where those homonyms are absent, the image of the lion changes from

an ideograph to a symbolic sign which does not explain the king-lion link and is perceived as

a conventional character.

aru=“an abundant spring, rivulet, current”, “water way, canal, groove, exit, opening”.

In Armenian this word is homonymous with the “aroy(ś)” and “ariw(ś)>aŕyu(ś)>aru(ś)”

appellatives of the lion and consequently the lion image can also be used for this ideograph .

With the above-mentioned v>g sound change, the word “aru” also acquired the arog =

“spring, irrigating water” form, and the latter became “orog” by an initial vowel change.

When we study the petroglyphs from the point of view of the homonymy of the words

“aru/arog” and “aroy(ś)” it becomes immediately obvious that the lion has frequently been

depicted in a setting with water signs (see: Picture 6, first row.)

Picture 6. Examples of ligatures of the lion image and water signs.

Of all the abstract signs in petroglyphs, the kēt=“point” sign ( ) is more frequently

ligatured to the lion image (see picture 6, second row). We will touch on this character in

more detail in the section on abstract signs. At this point we will just mention that in

Armenian, based on the homonymy of ket, ged=“geometric sign” and get, ket, ged=“river, an

abundant current of water”, the “ket” sign can be read get=“current of water”. Therefore we

can read the ligature of the lion and dot characters as:

a. Ket + aryu(ś) = get+aru, get+orog = “river irrigator”

b. Ket + aryu(ś) = get+aroy = getar= գետառ = “mother river, out of which flow the

irrigator rivulets.”

In both cases we come to the conclusion that it is possible to create the ideograph for

the word գետառ=getar=“mother river, irrigator river” by ligaturing the dot and lion images.

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We have already spoken about the fact that short formulae bearing mythological meanings

were written by means of the petroglyph ideographic characters of Syunik. In this case the

“getar” reading of the dot+lion ligature must be understood as having the meaning of the

mother river (=Nagar=Haia) in the Book of Genesis.

In Armenian, the word “հաւառի=hawari” also has the meaning of “mother river”. The

former is formed from the “haw-” and “-ari” components, the first of which is homonymous

with the native Armenian word haw=“bird”, and the “-ari” component belongs to that series

of words which can use the lion image as an ideograph. Therefore, in order to create the

ideograph for the word hawari=“mother river”, it is necessary to ligature the lion and bird

images or to ligature bird wings to the image of the lion (we will refer to this interesting

pictography below). The existence of the Sumerian word hu-bu-ur=hu-bu-ura=hu-bu-

uru13=hubur/hubura/huburu=“underworld river, underworld sea current” is an important

testimony to the prehistoric existence of the word “hawari” and its ideography in the above-

mentioned form. This very river would be called Mother River since all springs and rivers

flow from it, from the bowels of the earth.

The syllable hu in the name hubur is the reading of the HU cuneiform sign; it bears the

meaning “bird” and is used as a determinative of the meaning of “bird”. This Sumerian word

is the exact duplicate of the native Armenian word հաւ=haw=“bird”: Hu=haw=“bird”. The

bu-ur component in the river name is identified with bur2=bu-ur=“to be burned, to be

inflamed, to gleam, to radiate,” the Armenian parallels of which are բուռ(ն)(=bur(n)) from

which, brnkil=“to be burned” and վառ(var)=“burned, shiny”. One of the appellatives of the

Sun God is written with this word: dBur2-ra=Աստուած Վառի(God Vari) (Ananum Tablet 7

71), (the –ra is the genitive case particle and the Armenian must also be written in the

genitive case, “var-i”). As a result – haw-vari=hawari= “mother river”.

The fact that Hubur has been used as a synonym of one of the cuneiform appellatives of

Armenia (Šubartu) is also important.

Hu-bu-urki = Su-bar-tum (Hh XXI-XXII Appendix 1 obv. 9):

Arog, aroyg =“powerful, vigorous in body”. This word in Armenian is homonymous

with both the “arog” form of the word “aru” above and the mentioned lion name forms. This

word is formed by the “ar-” prefix and the separate, obsolete root *oyg=“power, strength”.

With the g>ž conjunction we have the synonym oyž=“power, strength”. Linguists

consider the roots oyg and oyž to be loan-words from middle Persian. In reality the

Armenian word oyg is identical to the Sumerian ug, ug2, ug4 words which have the meanings

of “powerful, strong, firm” (Akk. dannu) and represent the readings of the PIRIGxUD,

PIRIG, UD cuneiform signs having the “lion” and “sun” meanings. We will touch upon these

shortly.

Perhaps it is necessary to add the root ayr=“fire” from which comes ayrel=”to burn”, to

this list. This root is also affixed in the forms “ayroş-, ayreaş-, ayreş-, ayraş-” the

ideograph of which, the former being words which express abstract meanings, could be

represented through homonymy by the lion image and pronounced through the root forms

of lion mentioned above. Moreover, if the ideograph of the word “arew/areg” did use the lion

form, then the same image, with the presence of another determinative could also represent

the effect of the burning summer sun (ayreş-, ayraş-, ayroş-). We will shortly see that the

ideograph of one of the widespread names of the god Nerigal uses the lion image and that

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very embodiment of the burning warmth of the Sun is one of the main features of Nerigal’s

character.

The ideograph of the words presented above which could be represented by the lion

image are distributed into four semantic groups, according to the meanings they express.

a. arew, areg; ayr, ayroş-, ayreaş-, ayreş-, ayraş-; - these are grouped around the idea of

“heavenly fire, light (=sun), fire, to burn”.

b. aru/arog; – the meanings of this word are linked to water elements (rivulet, spring,

irrigator water, current).

c. areg, arek, arq; arog, aroyg – this group of words expresses the idea of power,

strength, authority.

d. Based on the “hole, exit, opening, groove” meanings of the word aru, we can assume

that it could also be used with the meaning of “door” with the ideograph of the lion image.

In order to be convinced that the ideographs of the above mentioned words were really

represented by the lion image in the Syunik petroglyphs, and that that custom had continued

in subsequent ideographic writing systems, we must refer to information from Sumerian and

Egyptian languages, which are currently

considered to be the oldest written languages

in the world.

Firstly let us refer to certain data about

the Sumerian civilization which has reached

us through the efforts of archaeologists,

according to whom the lion image appears in

Lower Mesopotamia from early Ubaid times

when the foundations of the Sumerian

civilisation were being laid. One such piece

of information appeared during excavation in

the oldest Sumerian city of Eridu (beginning

of the VI millennium BC). The oldest

Sumerian temple was built in Eridu. It was devoted to Enki God and represented the core of

the Eridu civilisation, around which the city was shaped. The ideographic appellative of the

temple of Enki God has reached us through cuneiform sources in the form of E2.ZU.AB

Akk. bīt apsû), which literally means “house of the Sea” (E

Picture 7. Reconstruction of the Hay God

temple (Eridu VII) according to the excavated

ground plan.

(

gy.

2=“house, temple”, ZU.AB=zu-

ab>zu-aw=ծով(śov)=sea, pool). In Sumerian, the subterranean pool of life-giving sweet-water

from which the springs arose was called Sea. This idea of the Sea is identical to the Śirani

Śov, Arun Śov of Armenian mytholo

The oldest excavated foundations of the temple are from the middle of V millennium

BC (Eridu XI). The temple was reconstructed several (over 17) times. A version of one of

these reconstructions (Eridu VII, end of V millennium BC) is shown in picture 7. Eventually,

Ur Nammu (~2112-2095 BC) the founder of the Ur III dynasty builds a ziggurat on the ruins

of the Enki God temple. The temple is probably ruined in the XXIV century BC, when the

Semite tribes first invade Sumer.

During excavations archaeologists come across twin lion statues at the entrance to the

Enki God temple (see picture 8a). Sumerian written sources6 also mention the twin lions in

6 See e.g.՝ Inana and Enki, Segment A, lines 11, 23

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front of the Enki God temple. Of course as lion images, those statues expressed a specific

meaning, which we will touch upon shortly.

The lion images discovered in archaeological material from Sumer and Elam are more

frequently encountered on stamps (see picture 8b, c, d)7

Picture 8. a) Lion statue from the Enki God temple (Eridu); b, c, d) Mesopotamian stamps

with the lion image (Uruk V-IV; IV millennium BC, second half),

e) Hurrian stamp with image of lion and goat (III millennium BC).

cb

a de

Subsequently, although the traditions of pictography, particularly the use of the lion

image (seals, statuettes, bas-reliefs) continued to be used in Sumerian culture, in the last

quarter of the IV millennium BC, the process began in the Sumerian writing system of

schematisation and then transition of images to cuneiform writing. The lion image has also

been subjected to these transformations as a result of which the ideographic cuneiform sign for “aŕyuś” was created. The reading for the latter of PIRIG=“aryuś” has been reconstructed

by sumerologists. Three cuneiform signs have the reading of PIRIG and the meaning of

aryuś=“lion”. These are presented in the table below:

Sumerian

cuneiform sign Name of the

cuneiform sign Reading of the

cuneiform sign Meaning of the

reading

PIRIG pirig lion

UD pirig2 lion

PIRIG×UD pirig3 lion

As we mentioned, the PIRIG cuneiform sign has developed from the image of a lion

and the meanings of the cuneiform sign are “lion”, “power, strength” and “light, shine”. The

pictogram of the UD cuneiform sign ( , , , , )8, and also the

Egyptian hieroglyphs , (with unknown phonetic values)9, are identical to the

7 The reader can find many pictures in, for example: P. Amiet, La glyptique Mesopotamienne archaique, Paris,

1961 8 A. Falkenstein, Archaische Texte aus Uruk I, Münich, 1936, №194 A. Falkenstein, 9 N. Grimal, J.Hallof, D. van der Plas, Hieroglyphica, Utrecht, Paris, 2000

9

Armenian aravot=“morning” character in the Armenian Book of Knowledge Signs ( ,

).10 The prototype for all these are the petroglyph characters of Syunik

( , , , , , ).

The ideographs of words with the meanings of “sun, day, light, shine, hot, summer” and

the name of the Sun God are expressed by the UD cuneiform sign. The pirig2 reading of this

cuneiform sign bears the “lion” and “vivid, shiny, radiant, luminous, bright” meanings. The

PIRIGxUD cuneiform sign is the ligature of the previous two, where the pirig3 reading also

bears the “lion”, “vivid, shiny, radiant, luminous, bright”, meanings.

Thus we see that in Sumerian also, the ideograph of the words arew=“sun” and

arew(ś)=“lion” use the same character. In order for the ideograph of the word arew(ś) to be

the sign meaning “arew”, the appellatives of the Sun and the lion must be homonymous, i.e.

sound the same. Otherwise, the ideograph with the “arew” character could not represent the

word meaning lion.

However as we see, the readings of the Sumerian UD or UTU=sun ideographs are not

homonymous with the word pirig, meaning “lion”. The requirement that the words

signifying lion and sun be homonymous gives us grounds to assume that the reading of

pirig=“lion” needs adjustment. The fact that there is no pirig=“lion” word in any language in

the region is the basis for such an assumption. The only one that is close in sound is the

Persian “palang” and Armenian “pǝlǝng” word which is used with the meaning of “tiger” (see

for example the branch of Daviţ from the “Sasna Śrer” epos). Perhaps at some time or other

the words pǝlǝng=pirig(?) and arewś=“lion” were used as synonyms. However, we can

immediately reject this version because this also does not have a homonym with the meaning

of “arew” in either Armenian or Persian.

So all that is left is to assume that the misunderstanding comes from the incorrect

reading of the word PIRIG with the meaning of “lion”. Let us ascertain what different

readings there can be of the word PIRIG, of which the forms of syllabication are:

PIRIG = pi - ri/re - ig/eg (Proto-Ea 572; Sb Voc. I Rec. B205 etc.)

PIRIG = pi - rig/reg (Sa 223; Aa III/3 81; Ea III 144b etc.)

PIRIG = pi - ri = pi - rig5/reg5 (Sa Voc. Frag. L 3’-5’ etc.)

In order to solve our problem it is first necessary to know the list of readings of

cuneiform signs which are in the syllabication of the word PIRIG. They are as follows:

= PI = a3, am7, aw, bax, be6, bi3, bux, dax, ex, ew, geltan, gešdu, ĝeštug, geštug, ĝištug,

gištug, ĝeštu, geštu, ĝištu, gištu, geštunux, gišdu, gištunux, ĝestug, ĝešdu, ĝistug, ĝišdu, i16, iu2,

iw, ma9, meštunux, me8, mi5, mištunux, muštu, muštug, neda, niĝĝeštug, pa12, pe, pi, ta7, tal2,

tala2, til7, u17, uštu, uštug, uw, wa, we, wi, wu, ya, ye, yi, yu - (58 readings)

= RI = bagx, bakx, dal, dala, de5, degx, di5, ere, eš11, ĝešdal, ĝešdi, hux, ri, re, rig5, ša7, tal, tala, ţal - (19 readings)

10 H.Ačaryan, Armenian letters. Yerevan 1984, Appendix, page 687 (in Armenian).

A.Abrahamyan. Armenian letters and writing, Yerevan, 1973, page 237 (in Armenian)

10

= ŠIM = bappir2, bappira2, asila2, asilal2, asilla2, lumgi, lunga, mud5, mulugx, ningi, nugx, nungi, rig/reg, rik/rek, riq/req, siraš, šem, šembizi, šim, siris, siriš, su20, šembi2, šembulugx, ši6, šimbizi - (29 readings)

= IG = da11, eg, eĝ, ek, eq, ga7, gagal, gal2, gala7, ĝal2, ig, iga, ik, iq, kagar, mal3 (16

readings):

The observant reader probably has already noticed that the -ri/re-ig/eg, -rig/reg, -

rig5/reg5 = -rig/-reg component of the syllabication of the word pirig is exactly identical to

the “-reg”, “-rew” component of the Armenian «areg” and “arew” names of the Sun (taking

into account the g>w conjugation). Therefore, if we substitute the first pi- syllable in the

reading of PIRIG with an “a” sound, we get areg/arig/arew/ariw, which corresponds exactly

to the Armenian appellatives of the Sun. And of course we can do that because the reading a3

is amongst the readings for the PI cuneiform sign (let us recall that the numerical index

placed next to Sumerian words has nothing to do with the reading and merely shows how

frequently the reading of the given cuneiform sign was used in the series of homonymous

readings of other cuneiform signs. For example, there is the index 3 next to the a reading of

the PI cuneiform sign, because, a3 is the third in frequency of use amongst other cuneiform

signs with the reading of a).

Thus we can prove that the words with the meaning of “sun” and “lion” are also

homonymous in Sumerian and moreover, that they (areg/arig > arew/ariw) are identical to

the Armenian words areg, arew=“sun” and arew(ś) , ariw(ś)=“lion”.

Let us bring an example of the use of the PI-re-eg, PI-reg = a3-re-eg, a3-reg = areg,

arew reading of the UD and PIRIG cuneiform signs, with the meaning of “sun”. One form of

writing the appellatives of the four corners of the world in Sumerian is as follows:11

Appellatives of the four corners

of the world The Akkadian

appellatives of the

same

The corresponding

four corners of the

world pirig-ban3-da šu-u2-tu2 south pirig-nu-ban3-da il-ta-nu north pirig-si-sa2 ša2-du-u east pirig-nu-si-sa2 a-mur-ru west

Of course the word PI-re-eg, PI-reg = a3-re-eg, a3-reg = areg has nothing to do with

the lion in these appellatives; it presents the word areg/arig=arew/ariw=”sun”, because the

four corners of the world are defined by the specific positions of the sun: south=the lowest

point of the sun (the newborn sun at the start of the year), north=the highest and strongest

position of the sun, east=the direction of the sunrise at the equinox and west=the direction of

the sunset at the equinox.

We also see that the appellatives south and north and east and west differ from each

other by the syllable -nu- placed at the end of the word PIRIG = areg/arig, arew/ariw = “sun”.

This is a Sumerian negative particle which is identical to the Armenian negative particle “an-

”. Therefore it must be assumed that in whatever meaning south (ban3-da) and east (si-sa2)

were described, north (nu-ban3-da) and west (nu-si-sa2) were used in the opposite meanings,

respectively. The above-mentioned Sumerian appellatives describe exactly those positions.

11 Erimhuc II 78-81

11

Here, in pirig-ban3-da=areg banda, the areg component represents the Sun and in the

banda component we can see the Armenian root band/bant=“tie, bonds” or vand (from

which comes vandel=“to hold, repulse, persecute”).12 Hence, we have the areg banda= aregnaband or aregnavand forms for the appellatives of south. As a result, the south and

north in which the sun reaches its highest point in winter and summer, respectively, are

given according to their natural characteristics (held and untied).

As far as it concerns the word si-sa2=şi-şa2=sisa, şişa=“straight, vertical, stick out”13,

the identical Armenian word is “şiş”, from which comes şşuil= “stick out, stick up vertically,

sprout, to bud”: In these senses, the word “şiş” is a synonym of the word “śag” (śagel= “come

out, appear, sprout”) and could be used to characterize the rising of the sun. Therefore areg

sisa/şişa=arewaşiş/arewasis= “the sticking out of the sun, the coming out of the sun” is the

characteristic of the east. Let us pause here, distance ourselves from the topic of the lion for a

short time and, taking advantage of the opportunity, try to follow the tracks of the meaning

of the word « şiş » discussed above, because in that we see the key to the etymology of the

toponyms of Syunik = Sisakan, which relate to our issue.

INTERPOLATION I (Interpretation of the name of Syunik)

As we saw above, Sumerian helped us to expand the framework of meanings of the word “şiş” and to use it as a description of east. Sumerian also shows the existence of the si-sa2=sis=սիս and şi-şa2=şiş=ցից parallel forms (also written as zi-zi. compare:. GIŠ zi-zi = “erect penis”). In this case, it is tempting to etymologise the old name of Syunik, Sisakan through şiş= sis. The Syunik and Sisakan appellatives have been used in parallel in literature, both as the name of the land and the name of the family (ministerial house of Sisakan).

Since one of the synonym appellatives (Syunik) is obviously formed from the word siwn=“erected wood or stone, stake”, then it is logical to derive the other appellative (Sisakan) from the synonym of “siwn”, şiş, sis, i.e. assume the initial *Şişakan form, and from that Sisakan. In this case we consider it probable that the town name Sisean>Sisian originated from the megalithic structure in its vicinity: *şiş-ean=sis-ean=“şiş, sis, stones” where “- ean” is the plural collective particle. Therefore the toponym must literally mean “erect (stones)” and there is no need to artificially re-name them Zoraş Qarer or Qarahunǰ, as some researchers do.

12 Linguists consider the Armenian word band/bant as a middle Persian loan-word on the ridiculous reasoning

that since Armenian has the word “pind” from the the Indo-European prototype then “bant” must be a loan-

word from middle Persian (see H.Ačaryan: Root Dictionary, “bant” article). But the meaning of “prop, support”

may be attributed to the Sumerian word banda which should be understood as tying in another sense (to

strengthen by tying or using a support to strengthen). 13 The e-dictionary of the University of Pennsylvania gives the meaning “to make straight; to make vertical”.

12

The first etymology of Sisakan was given by Movses Khorenatsi (V century). linking the toponym and the family name to the name of Sisak, the son of Gełam. Subsequent etymological attempts have not been accepted (Hübschmann, Lagard, Adonş et al.).14

Firstly, our interpretation corresponds to the geographic features of Syunik. Syunik is a mountainous “island” (a column, a spike) in relation to the surrounding territories: the Araqs and Qur valleys. Syunik is also a land of naked, protruding mountains and peaks (columns, spikes) from the internal, geographic aspect. Here we can also include the man-made megalithic structures and serpent stones (monoliths) strewn all around Syunik.

However we do not think that if the name Sisakan arose from the word şiş/ sis, then it is linked to the geographic features of the region. In reality, as in Sumerian, the şiş/sis, root of the name Sisakan appears as a feature of the east. As a result Sisakan previously meant “eastern”. This truth also belongs to the list of facts which played an active role in prince Sisakan becoming one of the four consuls of Medz Hayk’ (Great Hayk’/Great Armenia) and the one responsible for the defence of the eastern side of the country. Subsequently the word şiş=sis became perceived literally as “erect, column” and the parallel appellative of Syunik (land of columns) was created. If we look at the geographic picture of the region from the point of view of the Upper Palaeolithic and Early Neolithic periods, then the eastern limits of the Utik and Artsakh

lands of Great Armenia were flooded by the waters of the Caspian Sea (Khvalyn transgression). Therefore for the dwellers in the Syunik mountains and those in the lower lands of Artsakh and Utik, the sun would rise over the waters of the Caspian sea, i.e. the territories mentioned would justly be given the general name of the eastern land. In other words they were called eastern land not because they were on the eastern side compared to the other parts of Great Armenia but because the sun rose over that sea which, according to ancient perceptions, surrounded the Earth.

Picture 9. One section of the megalithic structure

near Sisian

In this case we can identify Syunik, Artsakh, and Utik with the Garden of Eden. “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed”:15 If we can identify Great Armenia with Eden, as the land of the sources of the Euphrates and Tigris, then the lands of Syunik, Artsakh, and Utik are the eastern side of Eden and must identify with the garden of Eden and the country of Khavila/Evilat in the Book of Genesis. Mesopotamian cuneiform sources tell us that the ruler of the land of Khavila is the god Nerigal. dNe3-unu-gal = LUGAL Ha-wi-lumKI=“the king of the land of Khavila” (RA, 1, 1,

14 S. Umaryan: The pantheon of Syunik. Yerevan, 1981 15 Book of Genesis II, 8

13

12);16 This country name of Hawila is identical to the Armenian word *xawil>xawił=«orchard, garden, paradise:17 We will talk further about the geography of Syunik in the Upper Palaeolithic period, but now, having the image of the king of paradise, Angeł = god Nerigal before us, let us return to the examination of the lion images in the rock pictures of Syunik.

Let us refer to yet another example of the use of the word PIRIG= “lion” with the

meaning of “areg/arew” in Sumerian. This is one of the names of the god Nerigal, which is

written in the following forms:

= PIRIG.AB@g.GAL = nergal

= PIRIG.ABxGAL = nergalx

The readings of Nergal and nergalx are attributed to these ideographic forms,

respectively. For the reading of a deity’s name, the following readings and meanings of the

cuneiform signs are taken:

ABxGAL = erigal, irigal, urugal = “subterranean world, underworld, bowels of the

earths” (Akk. erşetu, irşitu)

AB@g = iri11, eri11, ere11, unu = “settlement” and urugal2 = “underworld”

GAL = gal, qal, kal2 = “large; secret, hidden, detached, distant”

Consequently for the mentioned name forms of the god Nerigal, we have:

PIRIG.AB@g.GAL = PIRIG iri11/eri11/ere11-gal=PIRIG eregal/erigal/irigal,

= PIRIG unu-gal= PIRIG unugal

= PIRIG urugal2

PIRIG.ABxGAL = PIRIG erigal/irigal/urugal:

Here in every case the PIRIG ideogram representing the reading of the lion image

presents the word areg=areg/arew = “sun” which is already familiar to us. As far as the words

eregal, erigal, irigal, urugal, unugal are concerned, sumerologists have reconstructed the

meaning of “underworld, bowels of the earth, subterranean world” for them. Let us find the

Armenian parallels for these.

We already know that St. Sahak Partev and St. Mesrop Mashtots used the deity name

Angeł in place of Nerigal in the Armenian translation of the Old Testament. The reader also

probably noticed that, in the name forms of Nerigal given above, the Unugal component

(u=a) of Areg Unugal is identical to Angeł; Unugal>Angel/Angeł=Անգել/Անգեղ.

Consequently the full name of the deity will be Areg Angel/Areg Angeł.

The other forms of writing, Areg eregal/erigal/irigal/urugal/urugal2, represent the

name of the deity Areg Aragel/Arageł=Արեգ Արագել/Արագեղ, where the Aragel/Arageł

component is well- known in Armenian mythology.

The Areg component of the ideogram represented by the lion image in these deity

names is the Sun. Now let’s try to understand the meanings of the Angeł and Arageł

components. Let us start with the characteristics of the Sun God *Aragel > Arageł.

16 Տee: A. Deimel, Pantheon babylonicum, Romae, 1914, p. 191 17 H.Martirosyan: Heavenly and earthly Eden, Pages from the Ancient History of the Armenians. Yerevan,

2001, p. 5

14

The name of the deity Arageł has traditionally been split into the “ara” and “geł”

components. This was first done by Movses Khorenatsi (V century) who mentioned the

name of the deity (Ara Gełeşik) and attributed the “geł” component with the meaning of

“beautiful”. We consider this folk etymology, the purpose of which was to make the legend

of “Ara Gełeşik and Šamiram” explicable.18

We also split the name of the deity Arageł into the components “ara” and “geł”

however we elucidate the component “geł” with the meaning of goł, gał, geł=“cover, hide,

conceal, keep”. These interpretations are also prompted by the Sumerian data, because the

word gal/kal2/qal has:

a. the meaning of “big, large” the duplicate of which is the Armenian word gał=

“much, large” from which, by repetition, gałgałel = “make larger”

b. the meaning of “distanced, isolated, hidden” of which the Armenian parallel is goł,

gał, geł= “cover, hide, conceal, keep”.

Although this interpretation of the word geł is considerably sound, however in

Armenian gil/gel/geł also bears the meanings of “round, gem, wheel”, as well as “eye, hole,

cavity”. For example, in the expression աչքի գիլ(achqi gil)= “eyeball”, the word “gil” bears

the meaning of “round, circle, gem, wheel” and the “gel” root in gelikon/gaylikon=”an

instrument for opening a hole, drill”, bears the meaning of “orifice, cavity”. The parallel for

these also exists in Sumerian. The readings of geli3, gili3, of the KAxLI cuneiform sign,

having the initial meaning of “hole, cavity”, have been used with the meanings of “throat,

trachea”. Therefore we can also attribute the meaning of “entering or exiting point, hole,

orifice, cavity, exit, door” to the gel/geł component of the deity name Arageł.

Consequently, in order to ascertain the entire meaning of the deity name of Areg

Arageł we need to elucidate the meaning of the “ara” component. This of course derives from

the polysemantic root “ar”, the main meanings of which are ar=“build, make, create”, and er/

era=“first”, eri=“first (leg of animal)”, ar=“ forward, the front”. These meanings do not

introduce any certitude to our problem, and additional explanation is needed. For that exact

reason, let us once again deviate from the topic proper.

INTERPOLATION II (Underworld, Earth, Heaven)

The link between the deity name being discussed and the sun hints that the word “ar, ara” must be the characteristic of one of the main components of the structure of the universe. The Sumerian term urugal, eregal, erigal, irigal=“underworld” also testifies to this. Moreover, it is obvious that the Sumerian word uru-, ere-, eri-, iri- corresponding to the “ar-, ara-” component of Arageł bears the true meaning of “underworld”. The meaning of “settlement, city” is attributed to the former in Sumerian. The Sumerian word a-ra-li, in which the ara component that is of interest to us is also present, also bears the meaning of “underworld”. Certain cuneiform dictionaries directly

18 Movses Khorenatsi, History of the Armenians, A. 15

15

testify to the equivalence of ara=a-ra2=er-şe-tu="underworld” (see for example CT 51 58-63 no. 168 iv 65). The UD cuneiform sign also has the er-şe-tu=“underworld” meaning and ara7 reading (Aa III/3 1-21 9). The fact that according to many Sumerian sources, Nerigal is the ruler of the underworld is also significant. We think that this fact is also manifested in his dEr3-ra, dIr3-ra name. The Er3 and ir3 (and also eri3, eru) readings belong to the ARAD cuneiform sign, and the latter bears the meanings of “male”, “man”, “strong”, and “ram”. The words expressing these meanings are homonymous in Armenian and are formed with the “ar”base. Thus: aru (gen. arn)=“male” arn=“male sheep, ram” ayr (gen. arn), ēr(-ik) “man, husband” ari=“brave, masculine” The Sumerian ARAD cuneiform sign represents the ideogram of the homonymous words ayr(gen. arn)=“man” and arn=“ram”. In order to differentiate between them, the determinatives ( sager3=այր(ayr)=“man”, and uduer3=առն(arn)=“ram”) signifying sag/şag= “head, person” (compare Armenian śag=“tip, peak”) and udu=օդի(odi)=“small horned animals” respectively, are added. The Armenian word arnak= “the evil spirit that takes souls to the underworld” (arn + ak particle) should be added to the above list of words. This best corresponds to the character of dEr3-ra,19 as the god of death in Sumerian sources. In Sumerian, ra- is frequently used as the genitive case ending and we can consider the ra in the deity name dEr3-ra both as a genitive case ending and as a phonetic complement to the previous word (er3) ending with an r sound. Therefore, according to the deciphered readings of the ARAD cuneiform sign, the real deity name is Er

n ara does.

3, Ir3, Eri3, Eru, and it corresponds to the Armenian ar, ara, er, era=«first, front» forms. Apart from the mentioned meaning, the latter will also have the meaning of “underworld”, as the Sumeria Is that really so? Is there data confirming that in Armenian? It turns out that the information exists and not only does it confirm the above, but it also helps to understand how the Armenians imagined the three-tier structure of the world in ancient times (Heaven, Earth and Underworld) and what they named each of those tiers. They imagined the centre of the world to be the Earth. In Armenian the name Earth (=Erkir) is identical with erkir=“second”.

The upper part of the world or the roof of the Earth is Heaven. In Armenian the word erkin=“sky” in turn is formed from the root er=եր-եք(er-eq)=“three” and kin=“times” particle. (compare krkin=kr-(=two) + kin(=times)=“doubled, second time, again”). Hence the appellation Heaven literally means “tripled, thrice, third”. In this system, the Underworld is the opposite structure to Heaven, or the support for the Earth. If Earth was called the second, and Heaven third, then the Underworld, which represented the base and support for these, would naturally be called Ar, Ara, Er, Era, Ari,

Eri=“first”:20

19 With his particular mechanical approach, H. Ačaryan, links the word “arnak” to the Assyrian word arnāgā=

“jackal” which is neither semantically nor phonetically acceptable. (H.Ačaryan, Armenian etymological dictionary. See article on “arnak”). 20 A. Sayce was the first to link the Armenian name Ara to Nerigal, but he gave the explanation of the word

“ara” through the Akkadian word aria=”destroyer, demolisher”. (See:՝ A. Sayce, The cuneiform inscriptions of Van, 1882, pp. 415, 416; G. Łap‘anşyan, The worship of Ara Gełeşik. Yerevan 1944, p. 10)

16

There is no other language in which the components of the three-tiered world are named with classical numbers and no other language in which there is a semantic connection between the words denoting Underworld, Earth and Heaven. And from these facts, it follows that the notion of a three-tiered world and the naming of those tiers, as a mythological-worldview system, was born from a way of thought inherent in the Armenian language. This data in Armenian also allows us to adjust the meaning of the word urugal, eregal, erigal, irigal. These readings are interpreted as “large(=gal=gał)” settlement (=uru, ere, eri, iri)”. However, it follows from the above that it is necessary to interpret it as a complex formed from the words “clandestine, hidden, secret (= gal = gał, geł, goł)” and “underworld, bowels (= uru, ere, eri, iri)”. Consequently the word uru, ere, eri, iri=“first, underworld” must be differentiated from the homonymous uru, ere, eri, iri=“city, settlement”. In exactly the same way, by adding a “y” initial sound to the “ar” root, homonymous to the Armenian word ar/ara/year/yeri=“first”, we have the word yar=“get up, stand” which, with the “-ič” particle, gives us the word yarič, harič=”village, township, settlement”. Therefore Armenian also provides the meaning of urugal, eregal, erigal, irigal=“large settlement”. It follows from Sumerian mythology that Nerigal is the God of the Underworld. The name of this god is often written with the PA cuneiform sign (dPA): The latter has the readings of ari3 and aru. Therefore we can present the name Nerigal in the dAri3 and dAru forms. The above interpretation of the Armenian and Sumerian names for the parts of the world gives us grounds to interpret the deity name dAri3 as God of the Underworld (ari3=արի=underworld). We will see below that the dAru appellative of Nerigal is linked to the cosmic gates connecting the Underworld, Earth and Heaven, and the word aru is identical to the Armenian aru=“hole, opening, door”. We bring here just one testimony from Sumerian sources in which the Akkadian word su-u-qi = sūqu=“hole, way; course of brook, canal” is put before the dPA(= dAru)= dNerigal correspondence. (An : anu ca2 ameli 85). We believe further comments are unnecessary here.

Nerigal is frequently mentioned as the king of Gu2-du8-a, Gu2-di city, ( lugal-gud 2-du8-a-ki), where his temple and centre of worship was. This toponym is mentioned in the Old Testament in the form of Kowta/Kowţa (Kings: Book IV): In Sumerian dictionaries, thed

A-ri-a21 syllabogram of his name is often placed before this title for Nerigal.

21 A. Deimel, Pantheon Babylonicum, Romae, 1914, зю 59, №107

For several centuries, in different corners of the world, scholars and people from different strata have been

exploiting the term “Aryan”, for which no solid explanation has been given to-date. One possible explanation of

that term is indicated by Nerigal’s Ari, Aria, Aru name. The followers of the worship of Nerigal may have been

called Aryans. There are two more possible explanations of the term Aryan which we will refer to later and by

comparing them, we will try to ascertain which one of them is true.

A few words about the appellative Gu2-du8-a, the centre of the worship of Nerigal. We identify it with

the “kot-/koţ component present in numerous toponyms in the territory of Armenia (Angełakoţ, Brnakoţ,

Kotayq, Koţi etc.). Many Sumerian toponyms have their parallels in Armenia. Moreover these toponyms are not

etymologised by the Sumerian information currently known. The toponym Gu2-du8-a is one of them. This

name can be etymologised in Armenian with the word koţ=“furious, severe, fierce.” the meanings of which

correspond to the characteristics given to Nerigal in Sumerian sources, (fierce, furious, severe, inflammatory).

For example, the Nerigal dGir3-ra name is composed of the word gir3=“fierce, enraged, inflammatory” of which

the Armenian parallel and synonym of “koţ”, is the root “gir” from which, by repetition we have grgir=“to be

agitated, to be angered, to fight.” Another of Nerigal’s names is written with the ŠU ideogram (dŠU) meaning

ձեռ(zer)=“hand” and կոթ(koţ)= “shaft, handle” (cf. Akk. qātu). Of course such a script can only be possible in

17

These three forms of writing Nerigal’s name are homonymous with the appellatives of lion: “ariw(ś), aroy(ś), areaw(ś)”. Consequently, returning to the images in picture 2, we can say that by carving the lion on the ‘blackboard’ of a goat, the engravers of the petroglyphs of Syunik have created the ideogram for the Ari/Aria name of dNerigal=God Angeł.

Returning to the deity name Areg Angeł, we can already etymologise it as “door, hole

of the underworld” or “hidden, covered sun in the underworld”.22 We will touch on the

“door, gateway of the underworld” interpretation a little later but the “hidden sun in the

underworld” interpretation casts a new light on the legend of Ara Gełeşik, which Movses

Khorentasi and Sebeos23 (VII century) bring. Numerous researchers (N.Adonş, M, Abełyan,

A. Matikyan, G. Łap‘anşyan, et al) have touched on the legend of Ara Gełeşik. However, all

of them,24 ignoring the claim of the source that “when the body began to rot, ordered to

throw it into a great abyss and bury it”25, produce ersatz arguments from here and there to

present Ara Gełeşik as a dying-resurrecting deity. However in reality there is no mention in

Khorenatsi’s source of Ara Gełeşik’s resurrection.

Those who present Ara Gełeşik as the Sun God are right; that is the God

Angeł=Mhir=Nerigal. As far as the dying-resurrecting character of the God’s essence is

concerned, that is wrong. Ara Geł=Angeł=Mihr=Nerigal, the God embodying the Sun of the

Underworld bears the essence of a departing-returning god. In the folk legend, P‘oqr Mher is

just such a one; the Sun hidden in the Underworld. By entering the cave, i.e. the

Underworld, P‘okr Mher set the beginning of the era of anticipation of his redeeming return.

The conclusion of the above authors that there had been a God Ar/Ara in the Armenian

national pantheon is also true but it is incorrect to try and link the name of the deity to the

rigal

the case of homonymity existing between the words koţ= “furious, severe, fierce” and kot= handle”. Let us add,

that in one dictionary the place name kurGu2-du8-a is explained with the homonymous appellation of kurza-'-i-

ri. What is said above gives grounds to identify the name place za-'-i-ri with the form “zayr” which is formed

from the “z” intensifier and the root of the native Armenian ayrel=“to light, to set fire to burn”. The verb form

of the former is “get really angry, to rage.” This last example shows that the notion of fire – which is one of the

main traits in Nerigal’s character - is also at the base of the meanings of the above mentioned names of Ne

“furious, vigorous, irascible”. 22 . Based on the ancient Armenian perceptions of the structure of the Universe as stated above, we can present

the actual word areg=“sun” as a compound formed from the simple roots of ar=“underworld” and ayg, ēg=“arise”

and we can etymologise it as “arising from the underworld”. For the “aregakn” appellative of the sun, we have

aregakn=ar-eg-akn=“akn arising from the underworld” where, for the word “akn”, we can take the meanings of

both akn=”eye”, and also ak=”wheel”. This is more comprehensible from the point of view of ideography

because we can read the same character ( ) as “eye”, “wheel”, “sun”. This etymology of the word Areg is

evidenced by the fact that in classical Armenian it was only used with the meanings of “east,” “eastern” i.e. it

showed the direction of the sun rising. 23 Movses Khorenatsi, History of the Armenians, A, 15

Sebeos, History A 24 N.Adonş, The world view of the ancient Armenians, Hayreniq, Boston,, 1926-1927; M. Abełyan, The

legend of Šamiram,Works, h,Ǝ, Yerevan, 1985,p. 242; A. Matigean: Ara Gełeşikǝ, Vienna 1930; G. Łap‘anşyan: The story of Ara Gełeşik, Yerevan. 1944 , (In Armenian) 25 Movses Khorenatsi, History of the Armenians, A, 15

18

Sun (the word and the star).We saw above that the word “ar, ara” bore the meaning of

“underworld” and that God Ar(a) =dEr3-ra meant God of the Underworld:26

We think it is necessary here to briefly familiarize the reader with the ancient

perceptions of the Underworld.

INTERPOLATION III

(Creation is from the Underworld)

The perception that the Underworld is death, the grave, hell, the place where evil souls reside is entrenched in the mentality of modern man (be he Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Atheist). Eternity, creation and other positive perceptions are linked to the luminous, bright and blue Heavens. We see the beginnings of similar perceptions in the first millennium BC (Indo-Aryan Mahabharaţa and ramayana eposes, interpretational literature of rigveda, Zoroastrianism, Hebrew Old Testament, Greek mythology etc.). These perceptions also played a certain role in 1865 when the German scientist H. Richter propounded the idea of panspermia (πανσπερμία). The term is formed from the Greek words πᾶν= “uni, whole” and σπέρμα= “seed”. This hypothesis, which was subsequently further developed by other scientists, assumes that the seeds of life arrived on earth from other planets. We see virtually the opposite picture in the mythology of Mesopotamia. The gods who had creative, solar characteristics, (Enki, Nerigal, Marduk, Dumuzi and so on) are linked to the Underworld:27 Of course these perceptions come from those fundamental phenomena which are to be seen in nature, such as:

The eruption of fire from the bowels of the Earth (volcanoes), The gushing out of freshwater from the bowels of the Earth (springs), The sprouting of seeds and emerging of shoots from the bowels of the Earth, The formation of human and animal foetuses and their emergence from the bowels

(womb). From these fundamental patterns, it was not difficult to deduce that life and the life-giving forces (water, fire) spring from the Underworld, the bowels of the Earth.

26 Nerigal’s dEr3-ra name form was written thus: = dARAD.RA, where =d (=div, dev, dig,

diq=”god” in armenian) is the “god” determinative. If we take the arda, urda, urdu, eru, eri3, war3 readings of

the ARAD cuneiform sign and also the rah reading of the RA sign, then we can have the following additional

appellations for the god Angeł=Nerigal:

dARAD.RA=darda/urda/urdu-ra=dArdar (ardar=the just)

dARAD.RA=deri3/eru-ra=dErir/Erur (eriwr=the creator, maker)

dARAD.RA=dEr3-rah=dErah (erah=the glorified)

dARAD.RA=dwar3-ra=dWar= God Var

This Var deity name can bear the meanings of each of the words var =“brilliant, burning, stinging” and var

=“arms and armour” because both of them correspond to the known character of the god Nerigal. 27 See: D. Katz, The Image of the Netherworld in the Sumerian Sources, CDL Press, 2003, concerning the

description of the Underworld and the gods living there.

19

In order to ensure the emanation process and the return route i.e. to ensure the Underworld-Earth link and interaction, our ancestors have also formulated the idea of gateways for entering and leaving the underworld. We will refer to the link between these gates and the image of the lion, below. The knowledge of these perceptions also helps us to understand the fact that in Armenia we come across large accumulations of rock carvings in actively volcanic locations with abundant water (the central mountainous mass of Syunik) and are not present in the absence of one or other of those two features (the lands surrounding Syunik: Artsakh, Utiq, and Gugarq which are also abundant in water but are not actively volcanic.) This fact in its turn testifies that the sculptors of the petroglyphs in Syunik were familiar with the above-mentioned perceptions of the bowels of the Earth. One of the future manifestations of these is the birth episode of Vahagn by Movses Khorenatsi:

The skies were in labour The earth was in labour,

And so was the crimson sea And in the sea a small red reed

Was also in labour

Vahagn was born from the Śirani Śov (Arun Śov) which is the sweet water Sea of the Underworld and corresponds to the Sumerian word zu-ab=şu2-ab=ծով(śov)=“subterranean sea of sweet waters.”

dEN.KI=dHaia=Hay God, the Egyptian creator God Atum and others were born from the primeval Sea in the same way. In the first lines of the book of Genesis in the Old Testament, God, beginning his acts of creation from the point of view of light, appears on a background of the Abyss (subterranean world) and waters. The author of the book of Genesis did not forget to include these in the act of creation but has omitted the episode of that God’s birth from the waters of the Abyss. Let us also remember that in the epic “Sasna Śrer”, Śovinar 28 becomes pregnant from the waters of the spring flowing from that Sea and gives birth to Sanasar and Bałdasar. Sanasar receives his fiery horse, weapon and armour from the shrine below the Sea and his strength multiplies from the waters of the spring in that shrine (compare: according to Sumerian sources, the palace of the Enki is located in the Sea (=zu-ab=şu2-ab) .

As far as the Ara Gełeşik legend is concerned, Khorenatsi (or his source), by re-

writing and ascribing the mythological subject to one of the Armenian patriarchs, presents

him with the corresponding characteristic of a mortal (the God descending into the

Underworld is presented as a mortal hero who is killed and buried in the abyss). There are

many such examples in the mythology of the ancient world.

We saw that the image of a lion was the ideogram for the Areg= “sun” component of

the deity name Areg Eregal/Erigal/Irigal=Areg Arageł. If we look at the deity name from the

28 . Śovinar is a deity name which is formed from (śovi), the genitive case form of the word śov=“sea” and the

word “nar”, which is identical to the Sumerian nir/ner/nur/nar3=“master”. Hence the name of the goddess

Śovinar literally means “mistress of the sea”. In Sumerian parallel to the reading of the cuneiform sign

NUN&NUN we can also reconstruct the ter=”master” reading: ne-er=de3-er=te4-er=der/ter=տեր(ter)=“master”.

This reading of ter is attested amongst the list of readings of the ŠENUN&NUN cuneiform sign.

20

point of view of pictography then we will also discover what character could be used in the

petroglyphs and subsequent pictography for the Aragel/Arageł component of the deity name.

Based on the principle of homonymity we can put the արագիլ(aragil)=“stork” bird name in

front of Aragel/Arageł, the deity name expressing an abstract meaning. Hence in order to

create the ideogram of the complete deity name Areg Arageł, the image of a stork must be

ligatured to the image of the lion. In order to make this pictogram more compact it is also

possible to ligature the wings of a stork to the lion, in which case we have the picture of a

winged lion.

Let us be satisfied with this much for now and turn to the God Nerigal’s Areg

Unugal=Areg Angeł name form. Here the word Angeł appears as the character of Areg, one

of the appellatives of the Sun God, Nerigal. Now our task is to etymologise the word

unugal(=underworld, grave)=angeł. We put the native Armenian polysemic word ankeł,

angeł=“fallen down, found below, finished, weakened, dead, bent, tilted, reached the edge,

extinguished, put out” which has the root “ang, ank”, in front of these. With the addition of a

word initial «հ» sound we have hang= “dwelling place, grave”. The Armenian root “ank, ang,

hang” bears those initial meanings from which we can derive the “underworld, grave”

meaning of the Sumerian word.

The “arew ank” expression in Armenian, which is the exact duplicate of the Sumerian

areg/w unugal, means “sunset”. Moreover, we have the word an-gi6, an-ge6=angi/ange in

Sumerian, which was used with the meaning of “eclipse (of the sun or the moon)” and

literally means “black sky” (sky(an)–black(gi6/ge6)).29 Of course this is the parallel to the

Armenian ank, ang, hang=“pass out, extinguish, fall down, set”. In ancient times the eclipse

of the sun or moon was perceived as their fall into the Underworld. Hence, the literal

meaning of the deity name Areg/Arew Angeł is “the sun god found in the underworld, in the

grave, below”.

Armenian allows us to give an additional interpretation of the deity name Angeł. In

this case we split the deity name into the “an” and “geł” components, the first of which we

consider to be the “an” negative prefix and we identify the second component with the

native Armenian root “gel/gil”. The noun glumn=“victory” and the verb glel=“win,

overcome, exceed, surpass” are from this. Therefore we can etymologise the deity name

Angeł as “invincible”, “unsurpassable”. In Sumerian mythology, this definition characterises

the god Nerigal. Later, during the Roman Empire, Miţra was called Deus Sol

invictus=unconquered Sun God. According to the interpretation above, this is the exact

duplication of the deity name dAreg Unugal=Unconquered God Areg/Sun.

Again we are faced with the ideographic problem of how to write the ideogram of the

deity name Areg/Arew Angeł; to be more precise, its Angeł component. I think that even

before the end of the question the reader who has the Armenian language thought processes

has already guessed that it can be done using the image of the vulture. And indeed the deity

name Angeł is homonymous with the bird name “angeł, angł, ankł”. Therefore we come to

the conclusion that we can ligature the “aryuś” and “angeł/angł” characters, in order to create

the ideogram of the deity name Areg/Arew Angeł.

29 . We think that the Armenian word gišer=”night” has the exact same structure: gi-šer= “black sky”. We find

the “sky” meaning of the word šer(n) in the word šernagoyn= “sky-colour” (cf. Hurrian še-er= “light, gleam”,

but the word *gi=”black” is unknown, and has probably been forgotten due to its briefness.

21

However strange it may seem, we even find this form of ideography of the deity name

Areg Angeł in late Christian pictography. As a striking example of this we point to the

Amenap‘rkiĉ (=All-Saviour) cross-stone which was engraved in the province of Urś30 and

then transported to the courtyard of Eǰmiaśin Cathedral.

The radiating sun’s disc which is pictured on the back of a vulture is in the upper left

corner of the cross-stone. The word ar-eg-akn=”sun” is engraved around these images and in

the weave of the ornamental designs; (the letters “A=Ա” and “R=Ր” are ligated). (see picture

10, first and second pictures).

Picture 10. The upper left corner of the Amenap‘rkiĉ cross-stone with the images of the

vulture and the sun’s disc and Aregakn=“sun” writing. On the right is a picture of one species of a

vulture.

The pictography of the sun’s disc+vulture accurately represents the ideogram of the

reading of Areg Angeł or Arew Angeł on this Christian cross-stone. This differs from that

discussed above in that the lion image is replaced by the equivalent sun’s disc. Therefore this

pictography of the Christian era first shows the existence of the continuing tradition of using

the image of the vulture to represent the ideogram of the deity name Angeł and proves that

1000 years after the adoption of Christianity, the Armenians still preserved the memory of

their old gods. That memory is not attested to in Mesropian literature, for understandable

reasons, but it is abundantly presented in the pictography of the Christian era. We will

become convinced of that during examination of every glyph coming from the petroglyphs

of Syunik.

Let us add that in the upper right corner of the All-Saviour cross-stone the moon is

pictured but this time on the back of a bull. We will touch on this when we examine

ideography using the bull image.

The description of Tork Angeł given by Movses Khorenatsi states that he whittled

planks from quartz stones with his nails and drew “eagles and similar things” 31 on them; this

is also a direct attestation of the existence of ideograms with the image of vultures on them.

Of course the image of the vulture must also be taken into account in the expression “eagles

and similar things” and Tork’s Angeł nickname must be interpreted by the Angeł deity name

ideographed with the image of a vulture, and not the word angeł=”ugly”, as Khorenatsi

states.

If we summarize what has been stated above, then we will have the following picture:

30 . We express our gratitude to Grigor Brutyan for the provision of the photograph of the cross-stone. 31 . Movses Khorenatsi, History of the Armenians, B.8

22

a. In order to ideograph the word Havari=“Mother river” it is necessary to ligate the

characters meaning “lion” and general “bird”.

b. In order to ideograph the deity name Areg Arageł it is necessary to ligate the

characters for “lion” and “stork”.

c In order to ideograph the deity name Areg Angeł it is necessary to ligate the glyphs

for “lion” and “vulture”. Henceforth we will call this picture angłaryuś=vulture-lion.

In all three cases a bird image is ligated to the lion image and the simplest version of

ligation is that the winged lion be pictured. As a result we come to the widespread

mythological animal in ancient world pictography – the image of the winged lion.32

Above, we discovered how and in what linguistic environment that picture would

arise. The other important problem is to discover where and when it originated. As was

expected (at least by me) we find the oldest images of the winged lion on the petroglyphs of

Syunik (see picture 11).

Picture 11. Images of winged lions in the petroglyphs of Syunik

In the first of the pictures presented, the winged lions are pictured in pairs (Areg

Angeł and Areg Arageł ?), and in the second picture the winged lion is ligated with the

ket=“point” glyph. We must read the latter homonymously Hawari get = “mother river, river

of the bowels of the earth”, the parallel of which as we mentioned above, is the Sumerian

writing ID2Hu-bu-ur=ID2Hubur=”mother river of the bowels of the earth”.

Therefore we can say that the get=“river” determinative ligated to the image of the

winged lion makes it possible to differentiate the readings of “havari” and “Areg Angeł”. In

the first case the “ket” character, the wavelike sign of water or the character “spring”, and in

Picture 12. Pictures of the winged lion from Western Asia (III-I millennia BC).

32 . In specialized literature the image of the winged lion is called the griffon, (gryphon, griffin) and they ascribe

its wings not to the vulture, but to the eagle. Experts base the interpretation of this picture on the imaginary

idea that since the eagle is the king of the birds and the lion, that of the beasts, then the picture of the winged

lion must express the idea of regal authority and strength, which of course is a spurious interpretation.

23

the second case, the determinative meaning “sun” or “underworld, bowel” (we will touch

upon these, as yet unfamiliar to us, glyphs in loci).

After the Armenian Highland’s Sunik petroglyphs we see the vulture-lion image at

the beginning of the historical period in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Palestine, and Asia Minor (see

Picture 12). They represented the God Areg Angeł=Nerigal.

Some time later (end II millenium – beginning I millenium BC) the vulture-lion

image spread from the Balkans up to the Indian peninsula and then to China (see Picture 13).

Of course in all these cases when the vulture-lion image appeared in foreign language

environments it lost its ideographic character and was perceived merely as a character and

was ascribed to any deity with a solar nature in the given pantheon.

Picture 13. Images of winged lions. Left to right: Greece, Iran, India, China.

Without doubt the image of the vulture-lion continued to be used as the ideogram for

the name of the God Areg Angeł in Armenia, i.e. in its native language environment. This is

attested by the numerous ancient materials with pictures of the vulture-lion belonging to the

Hurro-Urartian culture (III–I millennia BC) (see picture 14).

Picture 14. Pictures of vulture-lions from the Hurro-Urartian culture.

Picture 15. Section of the seal of

King Šuttarna II of Mitanni

( XIV century BC).

Moreover we learn from Hittite inscriptions that

the god dU.GUR=Nerigal=Areg Angeł was the supreme

God33 in the country of Hayasa (a state in the territory of

High Hayq XVI-XIII centuries BC). At that time, ligation

of the complete images of the lion and vulture can still be

seen (see picture 15):

33 . Г. Капанцян, Хайаса колыбкль армян, Историко-лингвистические работы, Ереван, 1956

24

The archaeological material of the Urartian period is also rich in pictures of the

vulture-lion. In addition, the vulture-lion was pictured with the head of a lion, vulture or

man. (See: picture 14, second row).

In the post-Urartian period, the God Mitra is a striking character bearing the image of

the vulture-lion. The only information that has reached us concerning this god, through the

literature of the Christian period, is the name Mihr and the fact that Mihr was the son of the

father of the Gods, Aramazd, the God of the Heavens.34 If, outside Armenia, Mihr=Miţra is

identified with Helios, Apollo or Hermes, then in Armenian literature Mihr has always been

identified with Hephaestus, the embodiment of the heavenly fire.35 We also see testimony to

that effect from the work of Philo of Alexandria (25BC to 50AD), which is preserved in the

Armenian translation.36

Picture 16. Lion-headed and vulture-winged Miţra (marble high-relief from Rome), statue of

Mars (First century, in the Capitoline museum) and its breast piece on which there is the image

of a pair of vulture-lions.

If we also take into account that Mihr=Miţra was worshipped as the god of fire and

sun and has frequently been pictured with a lion’s head and vulture’s wings, then it is

obvious that the worship of Mihr=Miţra is one manifestation of the worship of the god

Nerigal= Areg Angeł. On the breast of the Roman God of war Mars we see a pair of vulture-

lions which also exist in the petroglyphs of Syunik. In the Sumero-Babylonian period, this

was also Nerigal’s function and in pre-Christian Armenia, the god Vahagn was the parallel to

Mars/Ares. We will refer to the Mihr=Miţra and Vahagn and Nerigal link and manifestations

of worship in detail in the work “Hayots Astvaś(The God of Armenians)”. And here let us

take one more diversion and briefly stop at the misunderstanding that supposedly the name

and worship of the Armenian Mihr and the Roman Miţra are derived from the Indo-Iranian

Miţra.

34 . Agaţangełos: History of the Armenians, (In Armenian), Yerevan, 1983 pp. 444-445 35 . Ł. Ališan: Ancient belief or pagan religion of the Armenians, (In Armenian)Yerevan 2002 p.146; M.

Abełyan: Works, V.I (In Armenian), Yerevan 1966, p. 75 36 . Н. О. Эмин, Вахагн-Вишапаках армянской мифологии есть Индра-Vritrahan Риг-Велы, Исследования

и статьи Н.О. Эмина, Москва, 1886, ст. 81

25

INTERPOLATION IV (Bag- Angeł -Mihr-Nerigal)

In the Sumerian list of gods (Ananum Tablet) of the first half of the III millennium

BC, the dPAmi-it-ra-šu-U.GUD deity name is put in front of the dUD ideographic writing of

the Sun God (Ananum Tablet 3 104). In another early Babylonian list of gods (An;anu ša2 ameli) we learn, as was noted above, that the deity name dPA is one of the names of the god Nerigal (An;anu ša2 ameli 85): First let us refer to the U.GUD component of the above-mentioned deity name, which

is a ligature cuneiform sign, has arisen from the character and has the readings of ul ulu, mul

,

4 , of which mul4=“to gleam, to radiate, star” and is the parallel of the Armenian root, mul=“twinkling light, fire” which when repeated gives us mlmlal=“to glitter, to iridesce, to twinkle”. For the ul, ulu reading of the cuneiform sign, Armenian has the word ułp‘= “abundant light.” Therefore for the šu-U.GUD component of the deity name we will have the reading of šu-ul=šul. And since it refers to the name of the Sun god, then it is logical to identify the word šul with the Armenian word šoł= “sun’s ray, reflection, luminous, shiny, hot”.37

The form of the first component of the deity name (PAmi-it-ra) shows that it is

necessary to take the mi-it-ra=mitra reading for the PA ideogram. Here the it/id syllable is the reading of the A2 cuneiform sign, which also has the readings of ah5, ahi2 . Therefore we can also present the mi-ah5-ra=mihra>mihr=Mihr form for the deity name.

Consequently dPAmi-it-ra-šu-ul=Mihrašoł/Mitrašoł God and this deity name was

attested in writing at the beginning of III millennium BC. The first wave of Iranian tribes will only appeared on the Iranian highlands over 2000 years later (IX-VIII centuries BC). This picture can be seen from numerous words that are considered to be borrowings from middle Persian for which we find parallels in Sumerian and Egyptian of III millennium BC. The word bag=“god” belongs to that list and the word bagin=“temple, temple of idols” arising from it. The initial meaning of the word bag=“god” is “distributor of wealth, giver of possessions” and it is arises from the root bag=“part, portion”.38 If the initial word bag=“part,

37 . Sumerologists adduce the šu-du7 form instead of the šu-ul glyph, on the grounds that the U.GUD cuneiform

sign has both the ul, ulu , and the du7 reading. However, a comparison of the Sumerian and Armenian data

attests that it is correct to use the ul, ulu reading.

An example of such data is the following Sumerian variant on the appellations for east and west from

around the world:

Sumerian writing Akkadian Meaning Source

da-šu-du7 ša-du-u east Erimhuc II 68

da-nu-šu-du7 a-mur-ru west Erimhuc II 69

It is obvious that light breaks from the east and fades, disappears in the west. Therefore the concepts of šu-du7=

šul=շող(šoł)= “(with) light” and nu-šu-du7= nu-šu-ul=nušul=անշող(anšoł)=“without light” can be used as

features of the east and west, respectively. In the writing above, the da reading of the DA cuneiform sign bears

the meaning of “side” (compare with Armenian di/ti = “side” and the nu syllable is a negative particle and

corresponds to the Armenian “an” negative particle. Consequently:

da-šu-du7 = da šu-ulu = di šołoy = “side of light” =east

da-nu-šu-du7 = da nu-šu-ul =di anšoł = “side without light” = west. 38 . H. Ačaryan: Armenian Etymological Dictionary, see: sections on “bag”.

26

portion” has been frequently attested in Armenian literature, it is missing in middle Persian. We also see this word in Sumerian, represented by the ba reading of the BA cuneiform sign, which has the meanings of “part, portion, half; distribute, give, share, halve” (Akkad. qiāšu; zâzu)39 and has been attested in the early dynastic period IIIb (XXVI-XXIV centuries BC). The word bagin=“temple, temple of idols, holy place” which is derived from the word “bag” is also attested in Sumerian. The former is syllabified in Sumerian in the form PA-GI=pa-gin =ba -gin =pagin/bagin=“temple, 6 2 6 holy place” (Akkad. māhāzu, mahāşu). In Armenia the primary centre of the worship of the god Mihr, the bagin, was in the Bagayarič township of the province of Derǰan (High Hayq). This place name is formed from the words bag=“god (=Mihr)”, and yarič=“village, township, settlement”. We have spoken above about the word “yarič” and its Sumerian parallel. The names of other important primary settlements of worship are formed with the word “bag”: Bagavan, Bagaran, Bagrewand, Bagu, Baguan, Bagur etc. The names of the settlements mentioned remind us that they have been centres of worship of the god Mihr. Information in Armenian literature also links the word “bag” with the deity name of Mihr, by using the deity Angeł as a bridge. This refers to the statement by Sebeos: “And Bagarat begat Byurat, and Byurat begat Aspat. And the children of Bagarat inherited their inheritance from parts in the west, and this is the House of Angeł. For Bagarat was also called Angeł, whom in those days the barbarous nations called a god.40 We discover two important facts from this. First we know that the patriarch of the Armenian tribe bearing the name of Bagarat, which is formed with the root “bag” and from whom the ministerial Bagratuni dynasty arose, bore the nickname of Angeł. Secondly, their ministerial estate was called Angeł home. In the name Bagarat, the second component “-arat” is identical to the Sumerian word arad= “servant, priest, slave”41 Therefore, Bagrat, the name of the eponymous patriarch of the

39 . The Sumerian word is syllabified in the ba=BA-E form (OB Diri Nippur Seg.9, 44; OB Diri "Oxford" 589):

Taking into account that E cuneiform sign has ig2, eg2, eki phonetic values, we can reconstruct the following

readings for the Sumerian word:

ba=BA-E= ba-ig2/eg2=բագ(bag)=“part, portion”

ba=BA-E= ba-eg2/eki=բեկ(bek)=“piece, portion”

ba=BA-E= ba-iĝ2/eĝ2=baĝ=բաժ(baž)=“part, portion” (for g>ž cf. tug(-anq)>tuyž=”fine, penalty” and so on)

ba=BA-E= ba-iĝ2=բայժ(baiĝ)=bayž=“horn”

The latter meaning in Armenian shows that the word bag/baž probably arose from the word bayž =”horn”,

since the horns of cattle or goats were used as a unit to divide portions of possessions between the members of a

family, the gods etc.

As far as the Akkadian word qiāšu=qi -a-šu-um or q a-šum=ke-e -sum =kes - is concerned, then it is

identical to the Armenian word kes=“the half part, the half”. The fact that the prototype (

2 i2- 4 5

) character

the cuneiform sign BA is the schematic picture of a spade, is important and the ba/pa reading of the cuneiform

for

2

sign has the meaning of “cutting tool” (Akk. suppīnu). The meaning of “axe” (Akk. pāštu, pāltu) is attributed tothe pa/ba reading of the PA cuneiform sign

art,

2 . Therefore we can prove that with the image of a spade and the ba-

/pa- acrophonic component of the “bah/bax/pah/pax” name, they have ideographed the words bag/baž =“p

portion, luck” and “ baxš/bašx=“portion, part, tax, luck” (bag>bax (+š augmentative)= baxš). 40 History of Sebēos, A 41 This component is also present in the personal name Spandarat=servant of sacrifice, pagan priest ; Ararat=

”( The land) of Underworld (god ) priests’” or “((land) of the priests of the Creator (God)” country name;

Ariarat=“first priest, head priest” king’s appellative, and other proper names (see: H. Martirosyan, The Pages of Ancient History of Armenia,Yerevan 2011).

27

Bagratuni ministerial dynasty literally meant the priest of Bag, the servant of Bag, and the god Nerigal=Angeł=Mihr was understood under the name of Bag. We also conclude that the Bagratunis had been the priests of that god. Because we already know that Mihr is that same god Nerigal= Angeł, then Bag must also belong in the god Areg Angeł’s list of names. In place of Bagarat Angeł as the master of the house of Angeł, Movses Khorenatsi mentions Turq/Torq Angeł. The name Turq/Torq is formed from the root tur= “gift, reward” 42 and in fact Turq Angeł means the devoted of Angeł: Angeł (God’s) Devoted 43. In this case the names, Bagarat=Bag’s servant/priest and Turq Angeł=Angeł’s devoted, become synomyns because Bag and Angeł are different appellatives of the same god. The deity Nerigal=Angeł=Mihr=Bag also appears in Hurro-Hittite mythology under the name of dŠuli(n)katte. Experts see the Hittite word katte=“king” in the -katte component of the deity name, however what the šuli(n) component may be remains incomprehensible to them. In reality, the full deity name corresponds to the Armenian Šołakaţ=“the drip of a ray of light, light, pourer of heat.” The latter is a widespread feminine personal name to this day44. Other names of the deity Nerigal=Angeł are also formed from the Sumerian word šul=շող(šoł)=“light, bright, shiny, hot”. One of these is the šullat reading of the PA cuneiform sign, which is syllabified in two ways: a. šu/šu11-la-AD= šula-AD, where the AD cuneiform sign has the meaning of “gem, unit of bead” and the reading of ad/at. The Armenian parallel of the latter is the word “hat” which has the basic meaning of “to cut, to cross” and in compound words appears in the form of “at” (cf. krnat=“hand cut”, glxat = “decapitated” etc). The polysemantic Armenian word “hat” has that very meaning of “unit of bead” and also that of “to reflect light”. Hence for the name of the deity we have šula-AD= šula-(h)at= šołahat, or if we take into account the meaning of ad/at=hat=”akn”(=eye), then šulat=šołakn. The following form of syllabification is evidence in favour of this. b. šu/šu11-ul-lat =šul-lat – here the syllable lat is the reading of the KUR cuneiform sign. However, the KUR cuneiform sign also has the readings of kin3, and gin3: The ZA-gin3

appellative of lazurite is written with the latter, where the glyph ZA is the ideogram for “stone” and the kin3, gin3 syllable corresponds to the Armenian akn=“gem, precious stone” . Consequently we can also transcribe šul-lat=šul-kin3/gin3=šul-kin, and by connecting these two syllables with the “a” conjunction, we get šul-kin = šołakn. In Armenian this word is mainly used as the a characteristic of the Sun. Sumerologists have taken the lat reading since the previous syllable (-ul-) ends with the l sound; however, this is not an obligatory rule

42 M. Abełyan: The legend of Angeł Turq, Works, v. 8, Yerevan 1985, p. 162 43 In the manuscripts “A History of the Armenians” by Movses Khorenatsi we come across Torq Angełeay and

Torq Angełay (see: Movses Khorenatsi, A History of the Armenians” by M. Abełyan and S. Yaruţiwnean, Tp‘łis,

1913, p.114). The latter form is the genitive case of the deity name Angeł: Angełay= (of) Angeł. The Angełeay

form has arisen as a result of attempting to etymologise the name Angeł =”ugly”.

44 In the calendar of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the feast of Šołakaţ is dedicated to the foundation and

consecration of the Cathedral of Ēǰmiaśin and is linked to Grigor Lusavoriĉ’s vision. Because the Cathedral is

dedicated to the name of the Mother of God, the meaning of the name Šołakaţ was redefined and it became a

feminine name.

28

Picture 17. Images of the lion attacking the bull, from the petroglyphs of Syunik.

We have presented some information from written sources. The modern world understands the term Miţraism as the western worship of Miţra in the Roman Empire (from Great Britain to Palestine) as defined by the experts. If certain written material has come down to us concerning the Eastern worship of Miţra (Indo-arian and Iranian), then the western Miţra presents himself with hundreds of subterranean temples, in which archaeologists find only the famous image of the youth killing the bull, which is considered to be one of the greatest unsolved archaeological mysteries:45 Apart from that pictography, nothing else has reached us about the western Miţra. On the other hand, experts insist that no written or pictographic evidence is known concerning the Iranian Miţra and the killing of a bull.46We think this assertion is as a result of a misunderstanding. The misunderstanding is that the experts are trying to find the picture of a bull-killing Miţra in human form outside the territory of the Roman Empire, which really does not exist. The truth is that outside the Roman Empire, Miţra appears in the image of a lion, as Areg or Arew(=sun). Again, we find the oldest pictography of a lion attacking a bull and tearing it to pieces in the petroglyphs of Syunik (see: picture 17).

Similar pictures appear in Mesopotamia and neighbouring territories (Western Iran, Elam) in the period of inception of the Sumerian culture (see picture 18): We also saw above

Picture18. Early Sumerian-Elamic seals bearing images of the lion attacking the bull.

45 The difference between the Western and Eastern worship of Miţra and other details, see: D. Ulansey, The

Mithraic Mysteries, Scientific American, 1989, №12: For the Russian translation of the same see: В Мире

Науки, 1990, №2; F. Cumont, Les mystères de Mithra, Bruxelles, 1900 46 Ibid.

29

that the deity name Mihr/Miţra in its Sumerian form appears practically at the same time as the creation of cuneiform writing. This information testifies that the worship of the lion (Aryuś Mher, Mihr, Miţra) sacrificing the bull has come down to Mesopotamia from the north that is, Armenia and that the worship of Mihr was in the pantheon of the founders of the Sumero-Elamic culture. The bull-slaying image of Aryuś Mher in the epos “Sasna Śrer” must also be considered a manifestation of the notions of the mythical worldview of the Armenians in the time of pictography and pre-history. Killing the lion keeper of the path, door, and gateway, Meś Mher kills the Black bull as a pre-condition to defeating the White Demon. We will touch upon the symbolism of the bull in the segments of the slaying of the bull, when we examine the bull pictures in the Syunik petroglyphs.

Parallel to this epic character of Mihr = Lion-form Mher, the pictography of the bull-killing lion, having reached the Middle Ages from the time of the engraving of the petroglyphs, continues its existence in Armenian Christian culture (see picture 19):

Picture 19. High-relief carvings of the bull-tearing lion

(Ţanade monastery-XIII century, Gełard-XIII century, Şaxaş Qar-XI century). This is one more attestation that generation to generation, one stratum of the educated monks who were descended from the ancient class of priests tacitly saw the ancient and powerful God Mihr-Nerigal-Angeł in the image of Christ.

After the fall of the royal dynasty of Van the next crucial historic occurrence in

Armenia was the spread of Christianity, which was proclaimed the state religion in 301AD.

Literary information (Evsebios Kesaraşi, Movses Khorenatsi) attest that the preaching of the

Christian faith had already begun during Jesus’ lifetime. It would seem that with the coming

of a new religion, all traces of the old one would have been totally erased. Agaţangełos

describes how Grigor Parţew, who spread Christianity in Armenia, was destroying the

temples of the native deities.47

Parallel to this picture the early chroniclers describe the christianisation of Armenia

with the word dardz=“return to the former”. Such a description suggests that the men who

were disseminating Christianity in Armenia saw elements of their former and familiar

religion in the pivotal ideas of Christianity (particularly in the trinity of Father God, Holy

Spirit, and Son of God, and in the incarnation of Christ).

47 Agaţangełay, History of the Armenians, Yerevan, 1983

30

The fifth century Christian vardapet Eznik Kołbaşi refuted the Persian Zoroastrian

religion, the Marcion sect and the Greek gods in his work “Refutation of the sects”, but he

does not mention any deity name from the Armenian pantheon49 and this, not for the reason

that the pre-Christian native religion had been uprooted in the fourth century, but because

of the simple reason that the old gods continued to be worshipped under new names.

Numerous elements of the native religion - the preliminary manifestations of which

we see in the petroglyphs of Syunik - were included in the Christian creed, and the line of

their succession reaches up to our times. During the examination of the goat picture we saw

that pictography was also used in the Christian period and is presented on the walls of

churches. The same phenomenon is also noticed in the case of images of the lion and in

particular the winged lion (see picture 20).

We see images of the winged lion in practical and ritual objects of the Christian

period (clay or metal plates, bowls, carpets and so on), in manuscripts, and on the walls of

churches in the form of high reliefs. The picture of the winged lion with the tail of a fish

(image 20) is special and important and we will touch on that during our examination of the

“fish” character.

If we summarize what was said above about the picture of the winged lion, then we

will come to the following conclusions:

I. The oldest pictures of the winged lion are the petroglyphs of Syunik which

were engraved in the Upper Palaeolithic period (not later than XII millennium

BC).

II. The image of the winged lion is the ligature of the “lion” and the “vulture”

characters which, based on Armenian homonyms, is read:

a) Areg Angeł, which is one of the names of the solar god Nerigal,

48 Sketches and photographs: A. Qyurqĉyan, H. Baze Xaĉerean, Armenian decoration, Yerevan 2010 49 Eznǝkay Vardapeti Kołbaşvoy “Refutation of the sects”, Yerevan, 1994

Picture 20 a) image of winged lion with human head (plate from Dvin,VIII century); b,c,d,)

pictures of winged lions from Medieval manuscripts; e) winged lion on wall Holy Cross church of

Ałţamar (915-921AD; f) fish-tailed winged lion from wall of Holy Cross church; g) winged lion from

the wall of Areni church (1321AD):48

dcba

ge

ե

f

31

b) Havari= “Mother river” which is the name of the mythological mother river

which springs from the bowels of the earth and from which all the rivers of

the world begin.

III. The picture of the winged lion or vulture-lion has been used as a character in

Armenia since the Upper Palaeolithic period.

Two of the primary characters of Nerigal=Angeł god are the staff with the lion head

Picture 21. a) The characters of the god Nerigal (lion-headed staff, twin lion-headed mace); b,c)

Twin lion-headed maces in high relief from the temples of Taţev monastery (XII century) and the

Cathedral of Ēǰmiaśin, respectively; d) an example of the picture of the twin lion-headed mace in

Armenian carpet making.

and the mace with twin lion-heads facing in opposite directions (see picture 21 a, b,).50 These

characters of Nerigal also have numerous manifestations in Armenian Christian culture (see

picture 21b, c, d).

If, in the case of the lion-headed staff, we can link the lion image to the sun god, then

the twin headed lion image is still unknown to us. This sets a new mystery before us. How

were the pictures of the twin lions read, and what meaning and idea had they expressed?

Before moving on to these questions we must mention that the images of twin lions are met

in numerous pictures in the petroglyphs of Syunik (see picture 22):

Moreover, the image of the twin lions crosses the “blackboard” of the goat (see

picture 23). And we already know that any god’s name or nickname is ideographed by

characters engraved on the “blackboard” of the goat. Therefore we must assume that, with

50 J. Black, A. Green, Gods, Demons and Characters of Ancient Mesopotamia, University of Texas Press, 2000

Picture 22. Twin lions in the petroglyphs of Syunik.

c a bd

32

the picture of twin lions, the sculptors of the Syunik petroglyphs have ideographed the name

or nickname of a very important god.

Our next guide to finding the answer to our question is the above-mentioned twin

lions discovered by

archaeologists near the

gateways of the temple of

the god Enki, who embodies

the subterranean sweet

waters. In the Sumerian

culture the twin lions are

also noticeable in passages

linked to the rising or

setting Sun. Frequently the rising (or setting) Sun God is pictured at the moment when he is

rising (falling) through the gateways. And the twin columns representing the schematic

picture of the gateways have lions pictured on them (see picture 24). Recent archaeological

discoveries attest that thousands of years before the

Sumerian civilisation, the builders of the Portasar

(Göbekli Tepe) temple complex had pictured lions on

columns symbolising the cosmic gateways.51 The well

known German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt excavated a

rectangular structure with thick walls up to 2 metres

high, inside which they discovered four T-shaped

columns, in the Göbekli-II layer (pre-pottery Neolithic

age). The structure has no door, no window and if we

take into account that it had had a roof then we must

Picture 23. Syunik petroglyphs. Twin lions on a goat

“blackboard.”

Picture 24. A section of a

Sumerian stamp (III ML BC):

51 The archaeological site of Portasar (in Armenian) or Göbekli tepe (in Turkish) is near the present day city of

Urfa (historic Urhay, Edessa) (see:՝ К. Шмидт, Они строили первые храмы, Санкт-Петербург, 2011). The

region, which is called Armenian Mesopotamia in ancient sources, is at the southern foot of the Armenian

Highlands. According to Movses Khorenatsi, Urha was strengthened and turned into a capital city by the

Armenian king Abgar. P‘avstos Buzand (V century) mentions an interesting episode in his work “History of the

Armenia”. He presents the following text of the letter from the Armenian King Pap addressed to the Byzantine

emperor (History of the Armenians, 32). “Ten other cities including Kesaria belonged to us, give them back.

Our ancestors also built the city Urha, therefore if you don’t want unrest to start, give it back, otherwise a great

war will arise between us.” Consequently, the Byzantine princes, Terent and Ade under the pretext of

negotiating, invite Pap to a feast and treacherously kill him.

The interpretation of the appellative, Urhay of the city confirms what King Pap says. The name of the

city is formed from the components “ur” and “hay”. The first of these is identical to the native Armenian roots

ur= “son” and որ(or)=”man, aristocratic man”. The second component of course represents the “hay” eponym of

the Armenians. Therefore the city name Urhay literally means “The city of the people of Hay (God)” or “the

city of the sons of Hay (God)”.

The oldest examples of the Urhay structure are to be found in Sumerian cuneiform sources, in the form

of personal names: Ur-dHa-ia3 (or Ur-dEN.KI). For example, a scribe is known who calls himself son of Ur-dHa-

ia3 (Ripon College 1999=EC .74. 1 7). In Sumerian, the word ur means “man” and “attendant, servant”, and still

Y. Karst has identified it with the Armenian word or=“man”. Therefore the scribe’s father’s name meant “man,

attendant of the Hay God.”

The Urha city name could have equally well arisen from either the word որ=“man” or from “ur”=“son”

(the o>u conjugation in Armenian is a regularity).

33

think that is was built as a copy of the subterranean world. In the historic period, such were

the temples (subterranean) of Mihr=Miţra.

The mentioned structure of Portasar stretches in an east-west direction and four T-

shaped columns are located in pairs in the eastern and western sections of the structure. On

the facades facing each other of the twin columns in the eastern section, there are lions with

their faces towards the west (see picture 25a). Without doubt, as it was in Sumerian

pictography, here too the pictures of the twin lions are linked to the gap between the two

columns, which has been presented as the eastern door of the subterranean world.52

Correspondingly the twin columns of the western side formed the gap symbolising the

western door to the subterranean world.

In this case it is logical to assume that the roof of this subterranean structure probably

had aperutures with ritual

meanings in its eastern and

western sections as routes

for the Sun to rise out of

the subterranean world

onto the earth and also to

set.

In an even older

layer of Portasar (III layer,

C structure) Klaus Schmidt

has discovered a U-shaped

doorway, on the right peak

of which the engraving of a

lion is preserved but the

similar carving on the left

side has been broken and is

lost (see picture 25b). Here again we see that the idea of the door is accompanied by the

picture of twin lions, the most ancient examples of which we see in the petroglyphs of

Syunik.

52 The image of a woman giving birth is drawn on the stone slabs in front of the lion-bearing columns. We

discussed the former together with similar images present in the Syunik petroglyphs (see the section devoted to

the goat images, picture 26). In the context of the interpretation of the subterranean structure given above it is

necessary to present the woman giving birth as the picture of the Sun Mother, based on the grounds that the

newly born sun is rising from the eastern door. Not being familiar with the information on the Syunik petroglyphs, K. Schmidt, in discussing this

picture in his above mentioned work (pp.230-232), writes that there is no analogy to the birthing mother in the

Neolithic period in the Near East. In reality, similar pictures were inscribed on the Syunik petroglyphs during

the Upper Palaeolithic period.

Pictures 26. Twin lions symbolising a gateway (II –I millennia BC) (left to right: Hatusha, Mycenae , Phrygia, Jerusalem)

b

a

34

During the historical period, the images of twin lions as symbols of doors and

gateways spread and were used throughout Western Asia (see picture 26). However,

although this tradition continues to exist and today it is possible to see twin lion statues

decorating bridges, gateways, and entrances to private houses in many corners of the world,

today no one can say what symbolism they bear. The ancient ideogram, leaving the language

environment it was born in, first became a symbol of a gateway and then, became a

decoration.

We imperceptibly formulated the problem. Previously the picture of the twin lions

was used as an ideograph denoting the word “door, gateway, aperture, entrance, path” i.e.

with the image of the twin lions, using homonymy, we have to read and vocalize a word

which has the meaning of “door, gateway, aperture, entrance, path”. Now we will try to

identify which word bearing the mentioned meanings has been ideographed, and in which

language.

First let us point out that the picture of the twin lions had been used to give double or

plural meanings to the word being sought, (the doubling of the simple root of a word in

order to give the word an intensifying or plural meaning and so on, is a wide spread

phenomenon in Armenian: xorxorat, śorśor, barbarel, tołtołal, mtmtal etc.), therefore the

singular form of the word we are looking for must be a homonym in the given language of a

word meaning “lion”. These conditions suggest that the word being sought may be “aru”

which is homonymous to the “aroy(-ś) nameform of “aryuś”=lion.

We have spoken about the meanings of “aru” above, “current, rivulet, brook” and “

aperture, channel, means, door”. Since flowing water simultaneously hollows out its own

aperture, channel, door then naturally the noun “aru” includes the meanings of “current” and

“aperture”. With such an approach, it must be conjectured that previously “door, gateway”

was understood as that aperture, hole, crack, hollow, path that the water opened for itself

and poured out of the bowels of the earth.53 Hence with the picture of the twin lions we can

53 The classical Armenian form of “darpas” is “darapas”. Linguists consider the Armenian word a loan word, as

H.Ačaryan writes “from an unknown Pahlavi form”. (H.Ačaryan, Armenian etymological dictionary, see:

section on “darapas”). All the examples brought from Iranian languages are attested several centuries later than

the Armenian word “darapas”. The word in the Iranian languages is etymologised with the roots as dar=”door”,

and āwaz, apaj, apāč=“open”.

It really is obvious that the word “darapas” is formed from the “dar” and “apas” components. The

primary and main meaning of the root “dar” is “fissure, opening” which we see in the Armenian word daran=

“place to hide, cave, lion’s den”. This word is also consider a loan word from the middle Persian non-existent

*daran form. These incorrect opinions are refuted firstly on the grounds that over 1000 years before the

beginnings of middle Persian, the word “daran” is attested as a placename (URU Da-a-ra-ni), in one of king Argišti

I’s inscriptions which was discovered during excavations on a hill close to present-day Abovyan (Ē. Xanzadyan.

Ēlar -Darani, Yerevan, 1979, p. 10). The initial meaning of the root “dar” really is the “fissure, opening, passage”

meaning, which we also see in the reading of the Sumerian DAR cuneiform sign dar= “fissure, opening, passage,

aperture.” The Armenian root čeł/ čoł / čił / čiwł is also sitting in the Akkadian words šalāqu, šalātu which are

brought as synonyms of the word dar (cf. čełq and šalāqu).

Contrary to the opinion given above, the “-apas” component of the word “darapas” is the plural

genitive form of *ap = “water” (apaş/apas). Because of its shortness, the “ap” root in Armenian has only been

preserved in compound words and it corresponds to the Sumerian ab/ap, aba/apa=”much water, sea” and cannot

be a loan word from Iranian languages which appeared much later in the region. The Sumerian ab/ap-

zu=aba/apa-zu=ab/ap-su2=aba/apa-su2=apsu/apasu word which is identical to “apas”, bears the meaning of

“waters of the bowels of the earth, subterranean waters” (Akk. apsū). If we add the word dar=”fissure, hole,

opening” then the compound word dar-apasu becomes a homophone to the Armenian word “darapas”, having

35

ideograph the plural or repeating forms of the word “aru” and ascribe the meanings of

“current, rivers (twin)” and “ aperture, doors” (the classical Armenian “drunq”).

In order to substantiate what has been said, first let us touch on the characters bearing

the meaning of “door, gateway” in Armenian logography, Sumerian pictography and

Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. The following signs of interest to us are presented in the

Armenian “Book of Knowledge Signs”.54

lion

,

durn (=door) , ,

drunq (=doors)

,

The similarity between the “lion” and “doors” characters is immediately visible. The

picture of the Greek capital Ω and the characterwith the meaning of durn are also identical

with these. The latter represents the complete diagrammatic picture of the female sexual

organ (internal and external) and was used in Sumer and Egypt to ideograph the name of the

Mother Goddess.55 Here we only mention that the female sexual organ was also perceived as

a door through which the newborn exits from the uterus, “the bowels”. This concept gave

the idea of “door, gateway” an additional importance. In the Babylonian epic “Enuma eliš”, it

says that Marduk turned the thighs of Tiamat (the Mother Goddess embodying the primeval

waters) into the supports for the heavens. (Enuma eliš V, 61). In this picture Tiamat’s two

thighs and the female organ between them (see picture 27a) are identified with the two-

peaked mountain we frequently come across in Sumerian pictography and the opening

between the peaks from where the Sun rises (picture 27b) (remember the picture of a woman

giving birth in front of the

eastern door of Portasar

temple’s). One of the

manifestations of this

perception is the Mother

Goddess Kibela’s nickname of

Mother Mountain. ,

We also see the mother-door

the literal meaning of “orifice of the waters of the bowels of the earth, door of the waters of the bowels of the

earth”.

As a result we can prove that the initial meaning of the word “darapas” was “fissure of the waters of the

bowels of the earth, door of the waters from the bowels of the earth” and that at the beginning it had been the

synonym of “spring, source”. Subsequently the range of meanings of the word expanded and included the

general meanings of “door, gateway”. This in its turn allows us to say that the word probably existed before

man had arrived at the concept of making doors. 54 H.Ačaryan, The Armenian letters, Yerevan, 1984. See last addendum to the book: A. Abrahamyan, Letters and writing of the Armenians, Yerevan, 1973, p.236 55 H.Martirosyan, Pages of the ancient history of the Armenians, Yerevan, 2011, p.105

If we differentiate between the characters Ω= Śin and =drunq(doors), the latter can also be the schematic

image of an entrance to a cave. The cave has always been perceived to be the entrance to the bowels of the

earth. In Armenian we have the word ayr=”cave” (gen. ayri) which could be homonymous with the word

“ariw(ś)”.

Picture 27.a) female thighs and sex organ,

b)the sun God rising from between the twin mountains.

b

ba

36

identification in Sumerian where the schematic picture of the female sex organ ( ) and the

cuneiform sign SAL derived from it has the meaning of “female sex organ” (Akk. bişşūru,

ūru) and also has the meanings of “door, gateway” (Akk. abullu) and “fissure, path” (Akk.

birītu).56

Thus we see that parallel to the homonymity of the Armenian words aru=”fissure”

and aroy(ś), the meanings of ideograms used in Armenian logography are also identical. The

modern perception of the word “aru” (a brook to irrigate a plot of land) corresponds to

another sign ( , ), which is the ligature of a picture of a rectangle of land being

cultivated and the route of water running through it.

The characters mentioned in the Book of Knowledge signs above with the meanings

of “fissure, door, gateway” have also been used in the Syunik petroglyphs.

, , , , , ,

, , , , ,

In Sumerian, the IG, KA2, KA2.GAL cuneiform signs have mostly been used for the

the meaning of “door, gateway”. The “door” meaning is ascribed to the ek/ik/eg/ig/iga

readings of the first of the above (Akk. daltu) The Armenian parallel for this is ek= “the

arrival, the coming, the entering” (also, “eg-, ig,”- in some dialects). The gal2 reading of the

same IG cuneiform sign has been used as an element in the formation of composite verbs.

The Armenian parallel of the latter is the gal=“to come” verb which constructs its forms from

the root “ek” and, being used with various words, constructs their verbal forms, just as the

Sumerian gal2, does.57

In Sumerian, the word ek/eg is homonymous to the eki/eg2 reading of the E

cuneiform sign which has the meanings of “come out, arise” (Akk. aşū) and “enter”

(Akk.erēbu). It must be considered that the meaning “door” must have arisen from the

meanings of arise, come out and enter, in the same way that the compound word “elewmut,

elamut” (which is formed from the Armenian el= “come out from inside, go up” and mut=

“come in”) has the meaning of “door”. For that reason, for the meaning of “door”, the

Sumerian word ek/eg has been used more frequently with the giš=“wood” determinative

(gišek) so that an indication is given that it refers to a means of coming in and going out - a

The original versions of the Sumerian IG cuneiform sign (

door.

, ,

) represent schematic diagrams of doors of woven young twigs (the given pictures

show a 90o turn of the original sign). The side column to which the woven door is secured

56 In Mesopotamian pictography, the gateway is frequently pictured using the ideogram ( ) for the name of

the Goddess Inanna, This is perhaps a key that indicates that the DAR/TAR component of the DIŠ.DAR,

U.DAR, IŠ.TAR forms of writing the name of the goddess must be interpreted as meaning “fissure, hole, door,

gateway”. 57 H.Ačaryan, Armenian etymological dictionary. see: sections on “ek” and “gal”.

37

has an arrow on one side which shows that one side had been sharpened to be jabbed into

the ground.

The akan2 reading (Akk. bābu) of the KA2 sign was the most frequently used in

Sumerian for the meaning of “gateway, door”. This is identical to the Armenian word

ակն/ական(akn/akan)=“hole, door, source of the spring”. The Sumerian word akan2 has been

ka , aka , kan readings of the KA2 cuneiform sign:58

syllabified in the a-ka-an form (OB Aa 239;1). The akn/akan=akan2 parts of the word are the

2 4 4

The word abul= “gateway, door” (Akk. abullu) is written by the ligation of the KA

and GAL cuneiform signs (

2

). It is syllabified in the a-bul -la form, where the final -

la syllable is a phonetic complement and the actual word is compounded from the roots

a=”water” and bul The Armenian parallel to the Sumerian word bul is p‘oł = “narrow

passage”.

5

5. 5

59 Therefore the literal meaning of the word abul is “narrow passage for water,

narrow tube” and again we see that the concept of gateway is linked to the current of water

and springing from the bowels of the earth. Armenian does not have the simple noun “abul”,

however there are place names derived from it. Let us mention the water-rich Abul

mountain in Ĵavaxq and the lake and village of the same name at its base.

Finally, in Sumerian the words IGI.KUR.ZA=ga-an-ze2-er=ganzer and

IGI.KUR=ganzer3 (Akk. bāb erşetim) (see OB Diri Nippur 138, 140)60 bear the meanings of

n

58 The Sumerian word akan=akan2 also has another form. This refers to the DA.GAN2 form, which the

sumerologists read as da-gan2=dagan=“doorway, door opening”. In reality because the DA cuneiform sign has

the ax reading, we can read the same writing as ax-gan2=ax-kan2=agan/akan=ական(akan)=“door, fissure,

opening”. It is this word that is used as the deity name Dagan/Dagon (dDagan). The interpretation of the deity

name by the Hebrew words dāgān=“cereal” or dāg/dâg=“fish” is unacceptable because of the difference in

meanings. The same readings and meaning of dagan=“doorway, door opening” are attributed to the

KI.URUxMIN writing. Here the reading URUxMIN=uru/eri-min=uru/eri-menx=urumin/urumen/erimin/erimen

is also used as a deity name and represents the name Armin/Armen, which we will refer to below. And

KI.URUxMIN literally means “place (of the God) Armen, country (of the God) Armen”, that is, it is a place

which is connected to the cosmic gateways through which the gods embodying water, fire, heavenly light (Sun,

Moon, stars), enter and exit. 59 The Sumerian word bul5 is the reading of the LAGAB×SUM cuneiform sign, to which the meaning of “to

blow” is given. The Armenian word “p‘oł ” has the meanings of both “to blow” (cf. p‘ołel= “to blow”) and

“hollow”, and the simple root is *“p‘u ”, the parallel of which is the bu14 reading of the cuneiform sign

LAGAB×SUM. The Sumerian word bul5 is also the appellation of some kind of fish, the Armenian parallel of

which is p‘ołoš =“a kind of fish” (for the “-oš” particle, cf. mokr-oš, dod-oš and so on). 60 . The word NE.SI.A= ga-an-ze-er= ga-an-ze2-er =ganzer2= “ignition of fire, flame, spark” has been turned into

their homonym by incorrect reading. The GA cuneiform sign has the meaning of “milk” and the reading of ka3 ,

and for the AN cuneiform sign it is necessary to take either the a11 reading or attribute the ix reading. As a

result, NE.SI.A= ka3-ix/a11-ze-er=kaizer=”sparks”, which is the plural of the Armenian word kayś = “fire,

bonfire, flare, spark”. This meaning comes from the NE cuneiform sign for which the imperfect reading of izi

has been reconstructed for its “fire, flame” meaning. The attested complete form of writing for this word is

KI.NE=ki/ke-izi/izu=kizi, kezi, kizu, which are identical to the Armenian words “kez, kiz”, and these Armenian

words have just that “to burn, to roast, to scorch” meaning. In addition, the Sumerian pictograph of the NE

cu eiform sign ( ) is the schematic image of a man’s head with pronounced spiky hair. That means that the

word meaning “fire, flame” must be homonymous with the word meaning “head hair”. Armenian is able to

form many such ideographs: The words “kiz, kez” are homonymous with the words kiz(n)= “wool, fleece” and

ges = “long hair”. The latter is groundlessly considered a loan-word from middle Persian even though alre

Karst has pointed out the link between the Armenian “ges” and the Sumerian ges/gis= “hair”. The pair,

her=“head hair” and hur=“fire, flame” also belong to the list of mention

ady Y.

ed homonyms.

38

“bowels of the earth, underworld” and “gateway to the bowels of the earth, gateway to the

underworld.” The Armenian parallel to the Sumerian word ganzer is the word ganjak

(gandzak)=“belly, bowels of the earth” which is formed from the root «ganj» and «-ak»

particle. The Sumerian word ganzer=գանձեր(ganjer) is the plural form of the root “ganj”,

and corresponds to the fact that in Armenian the words meaning bowels of the earth, depth,

underworld are used in the plural form. H. Ačaryan unjustly considers the Armenian word

“ganjak” to be a loan word from the middle Persian non-existent word *ganjak. He bases the

supposed existence of the latter on the new Persian word ganjae=“pouch” about which he

writes that “it has lost its secondary meaning of ‘bowels of the earth’”.61 Of course the

primary meaning is “bowels of the earth” and not “pouch” and H. Ačaryan wittingly “errs” so

that he can justify his groundless opinion on it being loaned. In fact the middle Persian word

lready

pointed out in 1711.62

As a result of this brief examination we clarified that the Sumerian cuneiform

expressing “door, gateway” and “current, channel, river”, unlike the Sumero-Elamic

“ganj” is the loan word from Armenian, which the German linguist Schröder had a

Picture 28. a)A fragment of a jug from Dvin (IX-X

centuries); b) Twin lions on the wall of the fort of

Talin; c)Makaravanq (1205); d) Twin winged lions

from a cross-stone in Ĵuła (1601թ)

language in its present form does not demonstrate any link between the lion name and words

61 H.Ačaryan, Armenian etymological dictionary. See: section on “ganjak”. 62 Schröder, Thesaurus linguae armeniacae, Amsterdam 1711: reference according to the above-mentioned

work of H. Ačaryan. 63 The destruction of the Armenian mediaeval cross-stones in the territory of the Autonomous Region of

Naxiǰewan was organised and committed by the sanctions of the by the Azerbaijani government. This most

recent incidence of vandalism took place in 2005-2006 when the Armenian cemetery in the town of Ĵuła, with

its thousands of cross-stones, was destroyed. The cross-stones were smashed with the use of heavy construction

equipment and the area was turned into a military rifle range.

II

Ēǰmiaśin); g) images

of a fox and twin lions on the wall of the Akhtamar

63; e) manuscript

from Glajor university (XIII century; f) picture of twin

lions and birds on a carpet (carpet woven in Shushi, kept in the Cathedral Museum of

Surb Khach church (X century).

ba c

d ef

g

39

pictography (seals, bas-relief, the twin lions at the entrance to the temple at Eridu, etc.) In a

little while we will see through specific examples that that link between words is not

manifested because of the incorrect choice of phonetic values for the c

of the carving of the Syunik

and it is natural that they also used the coat-of–arms including the twin

lions, i

is pictographed with the

image

these when reviewing the corresponding signs.

However there is an important question which we must clarify here. What is the role of the

uneiform signs.

Unlike Sumerian, the

homonymy existing between

the words aroy(ś) and aru in

Armenian establishes a link

between the lion image and

aru=“current, rivulet” and

aru=“passage, opening, door”.

This linguistic link,

beginning to be manifested

pictographically in the period Picture 29. The co of the Armenian at-of-arms on a coin

kingdom of Kilikia.

petroglyphs, has reached down to the present (see picture 28).

Moreover, the image of the twin lions was the coat-of-arms of the kingdoms of the

Bagratunis (IX-XI centuries) and the Armenian kingdoms of Kilikia (XI-XIVcenturies) (see

picture 29).64 The kingdom of Kilikia was created by the Rubinyan princely dynasty, a branch

of the Bagratunis

n Kilikia.

In the Middle Ages, the image of the twin

lions was also present on the coat-of-arms of the

Mamikonyan ministerial house and its

successors.65 We see probably the most obvious

and complete picture of this in the high-relief

carvings of the Gełard cave church (see picture

30), where the meaning of twin aru=”twin

current, twin river”

of twin lions.66

The bull is the emanator of the waters of

the bowels of the earth, and the name and

essence of the God Ea/Enki is ideographed with

pictures of the eagle and ram. We will talk about Pictur s of

the Mamikonyans in Gełard

e 30. The dynastic coat-of-arm

64 R. Matevosyan, The Bagratunis, Yerevan 1997, (in Armenian) 65 R. Matevosyan, Armenian coats-of –arms: the Bagratunis, the Zaqaryans, the Mamikonyans, Yerevan 1994

(in Armenian). 66 The interpretation of the name Gełard is connected to the Christian tradition that, allegedly, the lance

belonging to the Roman soldier who pierced the side of the crucified Christ was brought and preserved in

Gełard as a relic (the lance from which this tradition was born is currently preserved in the Cathedral Museum

of Ēǰmiaśin). We can etymologise the actual name of Gełard both as geł +ardn=”large lance” (geł/gał=gal

(Sumerian)=”large”+ardn=”lance”), and also as geł +ard= “secret order, secret law” (geł/goł/gał =gal

(Sumerian)=“secret, clandestine, hidden”+ard=”order, law”). In this case, as a place name the Gełard appellative

of the cave church means “(place) of the secret order”. Perhaps the picture of the Mamikonyan’s coat-of-arms,

the image of the goat on the wall facing the altar and the other characters that have nothing to do with

Christianity, can be considered evidence in favour of this interpretation.

40

lions’ collars in these pictures? Could they also be characters or just formal elements linking

the bull and twin lions to each other?

In order to answer these questions it is necessary for us first to find similar pictures in

One example of these is brought in irst image). That is the handwritten

INTERPOLATION V (Interpretation L2 deity names)

If the rope is not a random element and if the other images on the high relief of Gełard a

e

ideogram in Sumerian has the meanings of “tribe, dynasty, nation,

illātu.

order to be convinced that this is not a singular phenomenon. Firstly, we find a large number

of pictures in the Syunik petroglyphs of lions with ropes around their necks (see first three

images of picture 31). Let us prove that again the oldest examples of the pictures of interest to

us are in Syunik. We see that the picture in Gełard is not a singular phenomenon in

Armenian medieval Christian culture. There are also pictures of twin lions tied with ropes

around their necks in medieval manuscripts.

Picture 31. Images of lions tied with ropes from the Syunik petroglyphs (first 3 pictures) and

picture 29 (f

twin winged-lions tied with neck-leashes from a mediaeval manuscript (Gladzor University,

XIII century)

illuminated manuscript from Gladzor University in Syunik (XIII century). On one of its

altars, the twin lions are tied with chains to the central cruciferous element.

Hence, we can again state that the image of the lion tied with a rope around its neck

has been used continuously in Armenia from the time of the Syunik petroglyphs to the

present. In order not to leave the issue ambiguous and with the aim of completing (to a

certain extent) the interpretation of the Gełard high relief, let us briefly pause on the “collar

rope” character.

of dEN.KI and dEN.LI

re ideograms which vocalise a certain word, then we must assume that the image of the lion with a rope tied around its n ck is also an ideogram which sounds out some word or other. We will clarify the name of that ideogram, its homonymous reading and its meaning, with the help of Sumerian.

The IGI.NAGAR.BU army, caravan” (Akk. illātu, illatşābi) and “dog’s leash” (Akk. illat kalbi). It is

syllabified in the il/el2-du form, which is probably a reflection of the Akkadian word illat,

41

Without going in depth into the intricacies of the correlation between the reading and vocalisation of the word, let us immediately note that all meanings of Sumerian ideogra hic w

e” ”

Thus w nterest in the meanings of the Sumerian ideogram “dog collar” and “lo e Armenian word “ałx, ax”. Therefore we must f

me meaning for the Sumerian IGI.NAGAR.BU writing

dnin-IGI.NAGAR.BU (Ananum Tablet 2 157), which Another dictionary notes e sweet waters of

.nin and means “lord” and dE2.A- is one of

of water or

= “master woodworker, carpenter” which is derived from the root “hiws” is omon

r that God caused o

i g

kk. īnu):69 The IGI

p riting carry the Armenian word “ałx, ax”. ałx, ax =“tribe, race, nation”

=“multitude of travellers, caravan” =“assets, goods for sal=“lock, ring, chain for locking doore see the object of our ick, ring, chain for locking door” of th

ind a homonym for the words “ałx, ax” and IGI.NAGAR.BU which will express the corresponding abstract meaning of our topic.

For the Armenian word “ałx, ax” we see the homonym ułx, ux=“abundantly flowing water, inundation, torrent”. If we find this sa

, then we can argue that the word “ułx, ux” has been ideographed using the picture of the lion’s “ałx, ax” collar.

The IGI.NAGAR.Bu script was also used in Sumerian as a deity name:

literally signified “lord god of IGI.NAGAR.BU” (nin=”lord, lady”). that, that Lord God was Ea=Hay God, ruler of th

the bowels of the earth: dumun- IGI.NAGAR.BU = dnin- IGI.NAGAR.BU = dE A (Emesal Voc. 142) Here the word umun is the synonym of the word

2

the ideographic name forms of Hay God and literally means “god of the palace temple of water”. We spoke above about the homonymity of the words “hiws” and “hos”. In Armenian the word “hiwsn”h ymous to these. And the NAGAR cuneiform sign has just that hiwsn=“master woodworker, carpenter” meaning.67 So it is to be expected that the NAGAR cuneiform sign will also have the meaning of hos=”flowing, current, river”; and so it does. Firstly, the NAGAR cuneiform sign has the reading of haia, haya which is identical to the dHa-ia3=dHaia name form of the god Ea=Hay. Secondly, the mother riveto spring up in Eden, is called Nagar in the original Hebrew text f the Old Testament.68 Of course it is necessary to substitute this appellative of the river, which has entered the Old Testament from Mesopotamian cuneiform sources, with the haia, haya read n of the NAGAR cuneiform sign and the Haia appellative of the mother river of the Earth will correspond to the most ancient mythological perceptions of the region. The Armenian word akn=“eye, source of the spring” corresponds to the igi, igu, igax, ge8, gi8 readings and “eye” meaning of the IGI cuneiform sign (A

67 We will refer to the NAGAR character, cuneiform sign and its readings in detail in the work “The Hay God.” 68 The appellation of Eden in the Old Testament originates from the Sumerian word edin /eden (H.

” in

s.

e examination of the reading of

Martirosyan, Pages of Ancient History of Armenia, Yerevan 2011. see section “Earthly and Heavenly Eden”).

Eden was also called NI.TUKki=Dilmunki and aš-gana2=as3-kana2= աս կանա(as kana)=“perfect garden

Sumerian sources. The Armenian endonym Asqanaz(-ean) arises from this askana: asqanazn=asqana(perfect

garden)-azn(family)=“family of perfect garden”, that is, nation of Eden. 69 The dUTU-ši writing present in all cuneiform languages, including Urartian, is a striking attestation of thi

Here UTU is the ideogram for the name of the Sun God and we saw in th

42

c rm sign also has the meanings of “first, former, face, visage”. The Armenian words ereş=“first, preliminary, former, elder, big”, and eres=”face, guise, surface, eye” correspond to these meanings. From this it follows that th IGI cuneiform sign will have the readings of er/ar, ere/ara, eres/ereş. The er/ar reading of the IGI cuneiform sign is also attested by the ar, ara

uneifo

e

lating the readings and meanings of the IGI and NAGAR

uneifo

fore we have IGI.NAGARget2, in which the

take the meaning of IGI=ereş=“first, primary, former, elder,

g of the BU cuneiform sign in this writing as git2/get2, he git ). The

asic m i ī

8 reading of the IGI.RI ligature. The readings of the BU cuneiform sign, which play a unique role as determinatives,are the guides in the process of isoc rm signs that we need. The sir2/ser2 reading has the meaning of “to connect,

connection” (Akk. rakāsu), parallel to which in Armenian we have the words ser=“love,

friendship, familiarity”, serek=“leather tie of the lid of a dish”, siray=“cord, rope” and the homonym ser, ser=“tribe, dynasty, nation, birth, generation”. Therefore we can write

IGI.NAGAR.BU = IGI.NAGARser2 and understand, that we must read the IGI.NAGAR

ideogram as ałx, ax=”connection, chain”. The git2/get2 and kit10/ket10 readings of the cuneiform sign correspond to the

Armenian get=“river, current”. There

IGI.NAGAR writing must mean ułx, ux=“abundant flowing water, deluge”. In this case, the name of the God Hay will be read as:

dumun- IGI.NAGAR get2 = dnin- IGI.NAGAR get

2 = Lord God (of the ) Ułx

or if we read it as an ideogram andbig” (Akk. pānû), then we have:

dumun- IGI-Haia get2 = dnin- IGI-Haia get

2 =Lord God of the primary Hay River”.

Sometimes instead of the readint /get, gid/ged reading of the KID cuneiform sign is used (Ananum Tablet 6 35

b eaning of this sign s “wind, breath, soul” (Akk. zīq qu), and the character ( ,

) and the cuneiform sign derived from it ( ) represent net, sieve. Sumero s adduce the reading of lil =li-il for the “wind, breath, soul

h is a mistake. The thing is, that in place of t i r ading of the LI cuneiform sign, the gub

logist2 ” meaning of the cuneiform sign,

whic he l e

I

nonym is şanş=“net”. The şanşar=“stupid, idiot” meaning of the cuneiform sign comes from this (Akk. lillu). Probably this Akkadian word is “to blame” that the Sumerologists have taken the reading of lil2 for the

2/gup2 reading should be taken and the reading be adjusted accordingly, because the word gub2/gup2 is syllabified in the gu-ub and gu-um (Proto-Ea 683) forms, but the gum/qum reading derived from the latter has been ignored by the sumerologists. f we take into account that the GU cuneiform sign has both gu and qu3 readings, then we will have gu-um=qu3-um=qum and taking into account that the we can also read the cuneiform “u” as “a”, then we have qu3-um=qum=qam. Turning to the lil2 reading, we will have lil2=LI-il/el2=qum-il/el=qamil/qamel=քամիլ/քամել(qamil/qamel)=“making liquid flow out by squeezing”, which corresponds best to the KID cuneiform sign and character. The qumx=qam reading of the KID cuneiform sign necessarily comes from the qam(-iĉ)=“sieve” appellative of the object, for which the Armenian sy

meanings of “wind” and “stupid”.

PIRIG= “aryuś ” above that it corresponds to the Armenian Areg appellation. Ši is one of the readings of the

cuneiform sign IGI which, being replaced by the word igi=akn=”eye”, gives us dUTU-ši=dAreg-igi = dԱրեգակն

(dAregakn)=God of the Sun, and one more imperfect reading in cuneiform disappears.

43

The reading of interest to us, git/get, gid/ged=”river” has also been included in thereadings of the KID cuneiform sign because the Armenian word qami=“wind” is homonymous to the word qam=“river”.

After all this, if we turn to the well known

with the meaning of “God Lord of wind”.

fneration”. In this case we have:

r

primary,elder, b

d N

= EN.QUMx= Lord God of the Wind, we will also

he God Hay, sons of the Hay

ame n

ferentiate between the gods dEN.KI և dHa-ia3. We will substantiate their onenes

o

nimals”; “living being” to the niĝ2-

word ki/ke in it. The niĝ2/nig2 component of the above script is the reading of the

dEN.LIL2 deity name, then it is necessary to bring it to the dEN.QUMx form

Because the GI.NAGAR.BU writing must have the ałx, ax=“tribe, race, nation” meaning, the sir2/ser2 reading of the BU cunei orm sign becomes identical to the Armenian word ser, ser=“tribe, dynasty, nation, birth, ge

IGI.NAGAR.BU=IGI.NAGAR ser2 = ałx, ax=“t ibe, race, nation,”

and in the case of reading it as an ideograph, again using the IGI=ereş=“first, former, ig” meaning (Akk. pānû), we have:

IGI.NAGAR.BU=IGI.NAGAR ser2 =ereş hay azg=“primary Hay nation”, “big hay

nation”, or “first hay nation”, and the name of God Hay is read: get getumun- IGI. AGAR 2 = dnin- IGI.NAGAR 2 =Lord God of the primary Hay nation.

Because we touched upon dEN.LIL d

d

2

briefly touch upon the EN.KI name form of Hay God, in this context. The similarity between the “hay” endonym of the Armenians and the Hay deity name attests the Armenians must have considered themselves a race born of tGod. There are many examples in the ancient world when the God and the tribe bear the s ame.

The interpretation of the deity name dEN.KI as “Lord God of the Earth” is widespread among sumerologists, based on the KI=“place, earth, ground” (Akk. mātu) meaning. This is an imperfect interpretation which does not correspond to the character of Hay God who appears in Sumerian mythology as a God who is a creator, life-giver, creator of man (some sumerologists dif

s in our work dedicated to Hay God). The KI cuneiform sign with the meaning given above corresponds to the Armenian root “kay, ke-” with the meanings of “place, station, the place found”. From this, with the “-an” particle, we have kayan=“the place to dwell, abode”, and the verbal form is kal=“to dwell, to stop, to live, to stay”. In Armenian the root ke=“life”, the verb form of which is keal=“t live”, has a restricted link with this “kay, ke-” root. From this, with the collective affix “-an” we have “kean” which, with the addition of the plural suffix “-q” gives the colloquial non-singular “keanq” form.

A. Deymel justifiably notes that the Sumerian reading ki/ke is the short form of the word kin/ken:70

The ki, ke reading of the KI cuneiform sign also carries the meaning of keanq=“life” which has been left in the shadow and out of the Sumerologists’ fields of vision. Sumerologists attribute the meaning of “animals, herd of aki, nig2-ki writing (App 2 to Hh XIV 433, Uruanna III 258, Hh XIV 401a etc.) and pay no attention to the

GAR cuneiform sign and means “something, object, substance”. This word is usually used to prompt that the following word expresses an abstract nature. It is syllabified in the ni-ig3 և ni-ig forms in which the NI cuneiform sign has the reading of i3, and the IGcuneiform sign has the reading of iq. Consequently ni-ig3=i3-ig3=ig and ni-ig=i3-iq=iq. These

70 A. Deimel, Šumerisch-akkadisches glossar, Roma, 1934, s. 145

44

phonetic forms and the above mentioned meanings remind us that the Sumerian word is identical to the plural form of the Armenian “i” root: “iq”=“something, existence, is, there is, being.” 71 Therefore we can say that in the expression niĝ2/nig2- ki/ke=“living being,” the meaning of “living” is attributable to the word ki/ke, the Armenian duplicate of which is the root ke=“life” in the word kendani=“living”.

It is interesting that for the meaning of “living being” the parallel Akkadian writing nam-maš-tu/tu2/ti is given, in which the word nam is the synonym of the word niĝ2/nig2 and in fact here the “life, living” meaning is borne by the word maš=”goat” (in reality, some word homonymous to it).

If we return to the deity name dEN.KI and attribute the meaning of “living” to its KI compo

n

tianity is. We saw above how, in medieval pictography, the Father God was ide

G A

, ground”, for which we have th

If we return to the high relief of Gełard then we must read the images of the neck chain and lions togethe

phrates, which spring from Armenia, from Eden.

Let us return to the wo

ś

o efers to the PAP.E ligature

which is a determinative for those meanings.

nent, then the deity name is etymologised as God Lord living. This is the “The bread and the wi e, to the Lord Living” formulation of the characteristic given to God (Lord Living) from the Armenian national epos “Sasna Śrer”. Also it becomes clear as to who the Father God of Chris

ntified with the God Hay, who makes waters gush out. Let us add here the section in Matthew’s Gospel (XVI; 16-17) where Jesus asks of his disciples, “Who am I?” Simon Peter answered and said.“ Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

A further confirmation of what has been said is the dDam-ki-na, dDam-ke-na name form of od Enki/Hay’s wife where the D M cuneiform sign carries the meaning of “husband”.72 Therefore the word ki-na, ke-na must express Hay God’s Ken, Kean=“life”name.

One of the main meanings of the KI cuneiform sign is “lande Armenian ken=“fallow, uncultivated land”, which is an accurate homonym for the

word ken=“life”. See where our interpretation of the beast has led us.

r as ułx aru=”abundantly flowing current, abundantly flowing river”. The twin lions with collars (the ułx arus) represent the twin abundantly flowing rivers, the Tigris and the Eu

rd “aru” which is homonymous with the appellative of “aroy(-

)” and look for its existence in Sumerian.

Let us immediately say that we find the identical Armenian word “aru” among the list

f words signifying the meaning of “stream, canal, conduit”. This r

= PAP.E=pa5(=aru)-E(=irrigation)

Sumerologists have reconstructed the pa5 reading for the meaning of “aru” based on the pa-a

syllabogram form. They have taken the pa reading of the PA cuneiform sign, ignoring the

am=

71 The initial n- sound in Sumerian can be considered the “n” prefix, which is used in Armenian and Sumerian. 72 Above, we saw that we must use the ax reading for the DA cuneiform glyph in the DA.GAN2 script. By

doing the same in the case of the word da-am=dam meaning “husband”, we get the word da-am=ax-am=

“adjacent, together, taste”, with which the native Armenian word amusin = “woman’s man or man’s woman” is

formed.

45

aru reading of the same sign. The E cuneiform sign has the meaning of orog, arog=

“irrigation water, spring”.73 Hence if we compare these facts, we have:

is the A.DU ligature,

the meaning ater(=A)+to

as the meaning of “to go, to leave, to

flow” which is exactly identica nian cognate, gnal=“to go, to

e is syllabified in the a-ru-u, u -ru, a-ru-ru-u forms and

is iden

what was stated above, the image of the twin lions frequently encountered on

PAP.E= aru-‘u4 E= aru arog, = “irrigation current, conduit, canal”,

where ‘u4 is the reading of the A cuneiform sign which, as an ideogram, suggests that it refers

to water and, as a syllable, indicates that the syllable before it ends with the u sound.

Another variant on the writing of the word “aru” in Sumerian

of which is unknown to sumerologists. This literally means A.DU=w

go, flow(=DU)=“the flow of water, flowing water”. If we put the corresponding syllabic

values to the A and DU cuneiform signs, then we have:

A.DU=a-ri6/re6/ra2=ari/are/ara,

which present the first syllables of the classical Armenian forms of the appellatives of lion

and mean “flowing water” i.e. “aru”.

The gin/gen reading of the DU cuneiform sign h

l to the “gin” root of the Arme

flow”. In cuneiform dictionaries, the Akkadian words alāku and āru are placed in front of

the Sumerian word. The latter of thes 2 2

tical to the Armenian word “aru” in both forms and meaning and sound. A. Deimel

also adduces the Akkadian word arū=“aryu(ś)”. Of course these words, which have their

exact parallels in Armenian, āru=առու(aru) and arū=aryu(ś), have entered Akkadian from

Sumerian.

We think that these few etymological examples are sufficient for us to be convinced

that all the linguistic bases were present in Sumerian for the word aru=“current, river” to be

ideographed with the lion image, based on the homonymy of the words aru and aroy(ś).

Apart from

74

stamps of the early Sumero-Elamic dynastic period, may serve as substantiation (see picture

32).

Picture 32. Pictures of twin lions from Sumero-Elamic stamps.

The lions are pictured with long and intertwined necks. We also see similar pictures

in medieval Armenian miniatures. This unnatural image of the lions has been created to

emphasise the d explain the

troduction of this additional detail into the pictography of the twin lions on the basis of the

ir link to the twin rivers, twin currents. We can justify an

in

homonymy of the Armenian words hiws, hus, hos, hews=“to knit, fabric” and hos=“the flow,

the run, current”; that is, it is possible to ideograph the words, “the flow, the run, current”

73 See the meanings of the E cuneiform sign and the list of Armenian homonyms: “H. Martirosyan, Pages of Ancient History of Armenia, Yerevan 2011, p. 73 (in arm.) 74 . P. Anton Deimel, Akkadisch-šumerisches glossar, III Teil, Band 2, Rom, 1937, s. 27

46

with the intertwining (woven) image. We will talk in detail about this during our review of

the sign “hiws”.

Picture 33. Examples of the ligature of twin lions and the “hiws” sign

from Hurro-Hittite stamps.

The image o rrio-Hittite

ictography (see picture 33). He esented with wings; that is, the

ord Hawari=“the Mother river” is ideographed.

f the twin lions and “hiws” character has frequently been used in Hu

re the twin lions are often prp

w

Picture 34. Pictures from Sumerian stamps of the Ea/Hay God who makes twin rivers

spring from the bowels of the earth.

els

of the earth were pictured in the form of water jets and

were s the shoulders of the Hay God or from vessels in his hands, (see

picture

of the Christian Father God from Armenian medieval culture (see picture 35).

On the

In the late period of Sumerian pictography, the twin rivers flowing from the bow

a more simple and direct manner, in

hown to spring from

34).

In addition, the Ea/Hay God is frequently pictured within a gateway (picture 28, first

two pictures). This pictography of the Ea/Hay God is comparable to various examples of the

pictography

stone-crosses of Ĵuła, the twin rivers springing from the shoulders of the Ea/Hay God

have been portrayed as wave-like lines beginning from the shoulders of the Father God.

47

Let us return to the link between the image of twin lions and the gateway. In contrast to

cuneiform Sumerian, where no link is discerned between the lion appellative and words

meaning “door, gateway”, the information

on the Egyptian hieroglyphic is

exceptionally interesting.

First let us touch upon the forms of

writing the lion appellative in Egyptian. In

the Egyptian hieroglyphic system of

writing there are several tens of

hieroglyphs75 of lion images and

representations of its body parts. We see

parallels to a significant portion of these in

the Syunik Petroglyphs (see the appendix

at the end of this book). The most

frequently used of these in Egyptian is the hieroglyph picturing a recumbent lion ( -

E23 hieroglyph according to A. Gardiner’s classification). The following are alternative

readings of this hieroglyph (let us recall that Egyptian is considered a consonantal script):

Picture 35. Engravings of the Christian Father

God on the cross stones of Ĵugha (XVI

century).

a. ar = = “lion” where the =a=”arm, elbow (armuk in arm.)” and

=r=”mouth(rex/erax in arm.)” sounds are the phonetic supplements of the “lion”

ideogram and represent its reading.76

b. rw = = “lion”.

c. ri = =“lion”.

The comparison of these writings shows that the Egyptian appellative of lion began

with the a=ա sound, followed by the r=ռ and w=ւ consonants. The third variant on the

writing of the lion appellative suggests that there must be an e or i vowel between the r and

w consonants (the e vowel is more probable from the point of view of Armenian, because

that is what the word =”reed”=եղեգն(ełegn) begins with). Therefore the complete form of

the Egyptian appellative for lion will be arew or ariw, which are the exact duplicates of the

“arew(ś)” and “ariw(ś)” forms in classical Armenian. If we take into account that the w

sound in Egyptian hieroglyphics can be read u or o (w=u=ո), then we also get the third -

classical Armenian -variant for lion of aru=aroy(ś).

Examples of Egyptian lion

image heiroglyphs Examples of the ideography of the Sun God using the lion

image

75 J. Hallof, H. van den Berg, G. Hallof, Hieroglyphica, Utrecht, Paris 2000 76 We will touch on a review of the comparison of the Syunik rock carved characters with the Egyptian

hieroglyphic characters, their readings and meanings in our next work.

48

As further substantiation of what has been said, we also present the fact that, as in

Armenian and Sumerian, the appellatives of the sun and the lion were also homonyms in

Egyptian and the lion image was the ideograph of the name of the Sun God (see table).

This brief information is already enough for us to return to our main concern, the

homonymy of the Egyptian appellative for lion and words meaning “door, gateway” and

“current, river, canal”.

The striking attestation to the use of the lion image in Egyptian to ideograph the word

“current, river, canal” is the existence of the ligature of the hieroglyph representing the

determinative of the meanings of = “current, river, canal, lake” and the image of a

lion ( ). This form of writing shows that the word meaning “current, river, canal” was

ideographed and vocalised with the image of a lion. Based on the readings of the aryuś=“lion”

hieroglyph given above we can say that this is the ideograph of the word aru=“current,

rivulet, canal”, homonymous to the aru= aroy(ś) appellative of lion. And hieroglyphs with

images of winged lions serve as examples of the ideograph of the havari=“mother river”

( , ):77

Consequently, if the name of lion in Egyptian was also written and vocalised as aru=

aroy(ś)=“lion” then it can be expected that the Egyptians, ligating the determinative of “door,

gateway” to the same image of a lion, could ideograph the word aru=“aperture, path, door.”

And indeed Egyptian displays examples of the ligation of the lion image and different

determinatives of the word meaning “door, gateway”.

For example, one of the determinatives meaning “door” in Egyptian was used in that

way ( ). This virtually does not differ from the Sumerian pictograph with the same

meaning:

= ar = “lion” and = ar = “door”

In another case, for the same determinative, we have:

= rw.t or ru.t =“false door-monument”.

(here the t sound is a particle indicating the feminine gender). The lion image was also used,

with other determinatives, as the ideograph of this word.

= rw.t or ru.t=“false door-monument”

= rw.t or ru.t=“false door-monument”

= rw.t or ru.t=“false door-monument”

We see the same picture for the ri reading of the aryuś=“lion” hieroglyph.

= ri =“lion” and = ri = “door, doorway, entrance”.

77 The image of the lion is also ligatured to the image of a hawk ( , ). Since the ideograph of the

name of the Egyptian god of the Sky Hr is represented by the image of a hawk, then the hawk+lion hieroglyph

can be read haw+ar=հաւառ(hawar)=“sky”=Hr.

49

We get the same ar, rw/ru, ri readings for the hieroglyphs signifying “door, gateway”, as

the aryuś=“lion” hieroglyph. Therefore the complete reading of these hieroglyphs will also be

aru=առու(aru)=“aperture, door”, which is homonymous with aru=aroy(-ś) . Thus, the Egyptian information is added to that of the Syunik petroglyphs and

Sumerian pictography. These facts give us grounds for us to argue that, based on existing

homonyms in Armenian, at the dawn of the Sumerian and Egyptian civilisations, the

ideograph of the the word denoting “door, gateway” with the image of a lion was already

widespread, at least in the Near East.

The picture of another Egyptian hieroglyph meaning “door” also helps us to find the

intermediate link for the dissemination of that form of ideography from Syunik towards

Mesopotamia and Egypt. This refers to a hieroglyph in the shape of a Latin capital letter T

( ), which also has the meaning “door, entrance, twin frames of door” and the rw/ru

reading:

= rw.ti=“twin frames of door, entrance, door”,

= rw.ti=“twin frames of door, entrance, door”,

= rw.ti=“twin frames of door, entrance, door”,

where the =ti is a plural suffix and is identical to the Armenian “-ti” plural suffix (cf.

şnşoti=şunş+ti=“tattered clothes”, mankti=manuk+ti=“infants” and so on). Although there is

no attestation of the ligation of this hieroglyph-determinative and the lion image in existing

texts, however its rw/ru phonetic value shows that the hieroglyph with the lion image

could, in principle, have appeared as the phonetic supplement for that determinative.

There is no doubt that the Egyptian hieroglyph = rw and the Sumerian glyph

=ME are identical both in their drawing and “passage, door, gateway”, meaning. However

the aru reading of the Sumerian ME cuneiform sign has not yet been discovered in Sumerian

sources. However if we look at it from the point of view of Armenian homonyms then the

ME cuneiform sign must have such a reading. The thing is that the ME cuneiform sign has

the meaning of “underworld, bowels of the earth” (Akk. erşetu), the Armenian of which is

«ar, eri/ari”; it also has the meaning of “male” (Akk. zikaru), the Armenian of which is

aruժ“male”. In particular the latter is an exact homonym of the word aru=“aperture,

opening, door” the ideograph of which is the image of a lion and it must be amongst the

readings of the ME cuneiform sign meaning “aperture, door”.

Let us finish the Egyptian material with a brief reference to the God Aker.

50

INTERPOLATION VI

(Egyptian Akr and Angeł)

The worship of this god is considered to be one of the oldest in Egypt. According to interpretations by Egyptologists, the ideogram of his name is formed from the “earth, soil, ground” hieroglyph ( , ) which has a lion’s (sometimes man’s) 78 head on either

side of it, both looking in different directions ( , ). As in Sumer, also in Egypt, the heavenly bodies (sun, moon, 5 visible planets, stars,

constellations) were the embodiments of certain gods. These gods (heavenly bodies) arose from the Underworld and, travelling along the canopy of heaven, performed their daily functions and again returned to the Underworld (set). In order to protect this celestial order, it was necessary that the gateways providing the connection between Earth and the Underworld worked unfailingly. The god Akr was the embodiment and guardian of those gateways. Frequently the disc of the sun was drawn on the hieroglyph depicting him

( ). For that exact reason Akr was frequently called Rw.ti, which, as we saw above, can be read “lions” or “gateways”.

Corresponding to these perceptions, Akr is pictured in the form of twin lions sitting rump to rump, which express the sacred gateways of the sunrise and the sunset (see picture 36).

Picture 36. Pictography of the god Akr in Ancient Egypt.

The first image in picture 36 gives a more general image of Akr’s essence. At the top is the “sky” hieroglyph ( ), the edges of which rest on the heads of the lions (the gateways) and below the sky and between the lions is the “horizon” hieroglyph which is a

ligature of the “sacred hill” and “sun” hieroglyphs ( = + ). Finally, the two lions who serve as the base and support of the Earth and the horizon, represent the ideogram of

the deity name Akr ( ).

The phonetic writing of the deity name Akr is formed from =A= angł=“vulture”,

=k/g=gav=“cup” and =r=aryuś=”lion“ hieroglyphs or A=angł”, k/g=gav and

=r=rex, erax=”mouth”hieroglyps (( , , ) and sometimes the

, = “god” determinative ( , ) is added. Frequently the Akr

ideogram ( ) is simply used in place of the “god” determinative.

78 The equivalence of the images of man and lion is explained in Armenian by the homonymity of the word

ayr=”man” (genitive ar(n)) and the first syllable of the word ariwś/arewś.

51

Now let us try to re-read the deity name Akr ( ), using the possibilities that Armenian gives us.

= անգեղ(angeł)=”vulture” =>ան=an reading

= գաւ(gaw)=”cup, vessel with a handle” => գ/կ = g/k reading

= ռեխ, երախ(rex, erax)=”mouth”=>ռ/ր=r or =r=առիւծ(aryuś)=”lion”.

The Egyptian hieroglyphic script does not have a separate hieroglyph for the sound l/ł and it was expressed with the hieroglyphs for the sounds r or n. Therefore, here we can substitute the r sound with the լ/ղ=l/ł sound.

As a result, = an - g/k - ł = Angł, Ankł= Angeł, Ankeł and the Egyptian God Akr is identified in name and essence with the Mesopotamian Nerigal God and the Armenian Angeł God and becomes a junction in the Armenia-Sumer-Egypt triangle.

Apart from the facts discussed above, the existence of the root “ank, ang” in Egyptian, which we used above to etymologise the deity name Angeł, is an important fact substantiating this identification. The word Aq, Ak in Egyptian means “to fall, to suffer a

setback; reach the end, the edge; die, be killed”. = an-q/k=anq, ank (the q sound present in Egyptian is identical to the anqnek word in the dialects of Muš and Bulanǝx

meaning “wheat scattered during harvest”). The same word is also written ,

= an-q/k-an = անկան-ել(ankan-el)=”to fall”. These words also have the meaning of “weak, feeble”, which corresponds to the Armenian dialectic ang= “infirm, paralyzed”.

Let us return to the Egyptian T-shaped hieroglyph ( ). This character is also present in early Sumerian pictography, however its meaning is unknown (see picture 37). In the last image, on the tower on back of the lion, is the gateway formed by twin characters, the pictograph of the name of the goddess Inanna. Another pair of these characters (of a larger size) is pictured on

the damaged left side of the stamp. Between the twin gates formed by the Inanna character is

the pair of characters representing the double Egyptian “door” hieroglyph. It is natural to

assume that the mentioned characters on the Sumerian seal also signify “door, gateway”;

however, they represent another, special gateway.

Picture 37. The Egyptian “door” hieroglyph on early Sumerian seals.

The Egyptian = “door” hieroglyph and its Sumerian duplicate can perhaps be

compared to that Sumerian character ( ), from which the ME= cuneiform sign was

derived. The factor interfering with the identification of these characters is that the

Sumerian dictionaries do not directly attest the “aperture, fissure, door, gate” meaning of the

52

ME cuneiform sign. However, the ME cuneiform sign has the meanings of “underworld,

bowels of the earth” (Akk. erşetu)(OB Aa 71:8; Izi E i 2) and “grave” (Akk. parşu) (OB Aa 71:1; Proto-Izi II Bilingual Section A iv 3′) and this already gives us something to cling on to

while continuing the search. For now, let us just remember that throughout history the

grave has been perceived as the door to the underworld.

And it is now time to look for help in the Armenian “Book of Knowledge Signs”. Here

we find our character, with a slightly modified design and with the meaning of “grave”.

, = “grave”.

And in the “Book of Knowledge Signs”, the duplicate of the Sumerian ME glyph has the

meaning of mace.

= “mace”.

The ligature of the latter with certain signs directly means “abyss, underworld, hell”.

= abyss

=of the underworld (door?)

, . = hell, underworld.

The latter are also present in the Syunik petroglyphs ( , , ).

The adduced characters represent the ligature of the “mace” character ( ) with

the , , characters (infixed or ligated) and are identical to the Sumerian DUN3

character ( ). Sumerologists separate the cuneiform sign = = LAGABxME - the

meanings of which are unknown, from this. Both the Armenian characters and the Sumerian

DUN3 and LAGABxME characters portray closed areas (= , , , = bowels of the

earth, underworld) and the = mace, grave, ME character, which is infixed or ligated to it,

which logically must express the way to exit from a closed area or the way to enter into it,

that is, the concept of a door.

In Sumerian pictography the God Ea/Hay, who makes sweet waters flow from the

bowels of the earth, is frequently pictured with a clay water-flowing vessel (see picture 38).

In the old pictographic systems

of writing, the pictures of some

pottery items were used as

ideograms. If we look at the

Ea/Hay God’s clay vessel, that is

if we view it as an ideographic

sign, then it can also be

presented as the ligature of a

character representing a closed

area and the character.

(Picture 38) Water-flowing vessels from Sumerian

pictography.

= +

53

= +

Therefore the ideogram image of a pot must be read in such a way that it expresses the idea

of the Ea/Hay God making water flow out of the bowels of the earth.

The following meanings are given in dictionaries for the dun3/tun3 reading of the

DUN3= cuneiform sign which is derived from the Sumerian character:

a. dun3=“abyss, depth, underneath” (Akk. šuplu). This is the *dun=“under, floor, depth” root

of the Armenian word “andund” that has by duplication and addition of the “an” negating

particle, given rise to the word andund = “bottomless.”

b. dun3=“lip” (Akk. šaptu=“lip”, suqtu=“jaw”). This is of course the Armenian word dunĉ= “nose, mouth and jaw together”, formed from the root “dun” and the “-ĉ” suffix. c. dun3=“axe” (Akk. pāšu). The Armenian parallel is dan= “knife, scissors, large knife”

If Armenian provides this list of homonyms for the mentioned meanings of the DUN3

cuneiform sign, then the word corresponding to the following meaning must also be

Armenian.

d. dun3=“passage, hole, cavity, spring” (Akk. huppu). The Sumerian word is syllabified in two

forms: du-un (Aa VIII/1 106; Ea VIII 41) and du-u (Aa VIII/1 101; Ea VIII 40). Since the U

cuneiform sign also has the un2 reading, and the UN cuneiform sign has the reading of u12,

then both forms of syllabification can result in dun3 or du5 readings (the latter is another

reading of the DUN3 cuneiform sign): du-u=du-un2=du-un=dun3 or du-u=du-u12=du5.

However if the Sumerian cuneiform sources (in this case Aa VIII/1 and Ea VIII Sumero-

Akkadian dictionaries) bring the two forms of syllabification side-by-side and the words

have different meanings (huppu and šuplu), then it is possible that they will also have

different readings. Thus, if instead of the du reading of the DU cuneiform sign to take its

ar6/ara6 reading, then we will have du-u=ar6-u=aru2=aru, or u-un=ard

6-u12=aru2=aru.

Therefore the dun3 reading stands for the previous three meanings and for the “passage, hole,

cavity, spring” meaning we have aru2=առու(aru). We put the index 2 next to this reading

because the PA cuneiform sign also has the meaning of aru.

The aru2=առու(aru) reading of the DUN3 cuneiform sign is logical and justified in the

sense that the Armenian word expresses both the “aperture” and “spring, source” meaning of

the Sumerian word.

Our next guides are the examples of the usage of the actual ME cuneiform sign. Let us

take dME.NI, a deity name from the list of gods of the III millennium BC, discovered in

Šuruppak (present-day Tell Fara). We are informed from dictionaries that the actual deity

name me-ni=me-i3=me-hax=mei/meh has the KA2.E2.GAL=akan2-E2.GAL=bāb ekalli=akn

tačari/palati=“gateway of the temple/palace” meaning (the E2.GAL ideogram has, literally,

the meaning of “large house”; that is, “temple,” or “palace”).79 The deity name form mei/meh

is identical to the Armenian base “meh” from which the Armenian word mehean=”temple” is

formed; mehean=meh+ean(=pluralising particle).80

79 The Assyrian Dictionary, vol. 2, Ed. by A. Leo Oppenheim, The Oriental Institute, Chicago, 1998, p. 14 80 H.Ačaryan, following Meillet’s suggestion, writes that the word “mehean”, “Is a loan word from the

northern Pahlavi word *meh, which is the God Mihr (–ean Armenian particle)” (H.Ačaryan, Armenian etymological dictionary. see section on “mehean”). In reality not only did Mihr not have such a name, but there

is no middle Persian attestation of such a word. This is yet another manifestation of pro-Pahlavi predilection

54

There is no question here that “-ean” is the Armenian plural-collective particle.

However the presence of this particle in the word “mehean” suggests that mehean is

composed of many identical elements, each of which is called “meh”. Here we attribute the

meaning of “door, gateway” to what is considered to be the main element of the temple, this

“meh”. Now the question arises as to what the meh elements of the mehean looked like. In

order to find the answer to the question we must refer to the structure of the only still-

standing (expertly restored) mehean in Armenia: the temple of Garni.81 In Picture 39 we see

the overall appearance of Garni temple (image 39a), the floor plan of the temple (image 39b),

the main part of the interior (image 39c), and a segment of the cornice of the temple (image

39d).

Picture 39. The general appearance of Garni temple, the floor plan, interior and a segment of

the cornice.

ba

dc

A false door of polished stones which ends with a triangular pediment is set inside the

temple on its southern wall (see picture 39c). First of all, let us remember that the bull-

and baseless and awkward etymology. Below we will see that the appellatives Mihr/Mher and mehean really

are synonyms, but in their meanings in Armenian. 81 The exact period of construction of the temple of Garni is unknown. Different authors date it between the

III BC -IV centuries: see H.M. Barţikyan. The Greek inscription of Garni and Movses Khorenatsi Historical-Philological Journal, 1965, № 3, pp. 229-234, A.A. Sahinyan. The time of the construction of the antique temple of Garni. Historical-Philological Journal, 1979, № 3, pp. 165-181

55

slaying Mher/Mihr (Miţra) was frequently portrayed on just such a door. On the floor in

front of the false door there a water basin shaped hollow with chiselled walls which can also

be considered a unique door.82 This is also seen in the pictography of Miţra. These are the

only interior elements of the temple.

If we turn to the external appearance of the temple, then we will immediately notice

that the identical elements in large numbers that we are looking for, the mehs, are the

columns surrounding the temple. These are many in number and are all absolutely identical.

Therefore let us attribute the appellative of meh/mih to one of them; then many of them will

be called mehean=meher.

Each of these stands on a base, and bears a scroll-shaped capital. The origins of the

scroll-shaped capital are linked to Armenia.83 More primitive forms of the capitals are

preserved in houses in the villages of Armenia (see picture 40 b, c, d).84 Their precursory and

simplest form is the T-shaped column (see picture 40a) which can also be seen to this day in

rural constructions.

Picture 40. Initial appearance of a column with a capital (a) and subsequent forms which have

been preserved in Armenian rural constructions.

a c b d

The “abc” and “grammar” of architecture cannot explain the functional necessity of

the capital and base of a column. In this case we can only presume that columns with capitals

had a certain symbolism and were previously used only for temple constructions and only

subsequently began to be used in secular buildings. The above examination gives us grounds

to say that the symbol of the T-shaped column (column with a capital) is that it expresses the

idea of gateways connecting the underworld and earth.

The lion heads are engraved on the cornice of the temple of Garni at the top of each

column and in intermediate sections between them (see picture 39d), thus above mentioned

conclusion becomes more complete. This picture is identical with Sumerian pictography (see

picture 41) where there is the lion image on each column (leaf) of the gate and the image of

the Sun God arising from the gateways of the bowels of the earth between each column. The

lions on the columns of the temple of Garni show the kind of gate and the third intermediate

lion image represents the rising sun.

82 We identify the appellative of this hollow with the native Armenian word sal= “winepress, hollow carved

into a monolithic stone”. This is homonymous with Sal, the Armenian appellative of the planet Mars, the

meaning of which is unknown. Mars is considered to be the embodiment of the god Nerigal/Angeł/Mihr. 83 . M.V. Grigoryan. Scroll-shaped capitals in Armenian architecture, Historical-Philological Journal, № 2-3,

1959, К. В. Т р е в е р. Очерки по истории культуры древней Армении (IV в. до и. э., II в. н. э.), Москва—

Лкнинград, 1943, О. Ш у а з и, История архитектуры, Москва, 1935, ст. 234 84 . M.V. Grigoryan. Scroll-shaped capitals in Armenian architecture, Historical-Philological Journal, № 2-3,

1959, p. 262, pic.8

56

Let us conclude the topic of capitals with a brief analysis of the images of gates in

Sumerian pictography. In picture 41 we have summarised data of several dozens of Sumerian

and Early Babylonian seals bearing images of gates.

, , , , , ,

Picture 41. Images of leaves of gates from Sumero-Babylonian stamps.

a b c

The first group of images (picture 41a) represent the character meaning “door” from

which the IG cuneiform sign has arisen. The second group represents the image of a

sharpened pole with a semi-circle ligatured to it, which is another version of the former

character. We saw above that these two characters have their parallels amongst Armenian

characters. The third group represents the image of a door leaf woven from cane or rods. We

can not differentiate these three groups and consider them to be variants of the character

meaning “door.”

Nevertheless, the images 41b and 41c are different from each other. The reader will

easily notice that other characters ( , , , , ), are ligatured to the upper part

of the column (leaf) of each of them, amongst which we also see the lion image( )and

the ME character ( ). If we read the door character ig, gišig=“door”, then the characters

ligatured to it doubtless represent descriptions determining the kind of door. For example, if

there is the ME character on the leaf of the door, then we must understand that we are

speaking about the gateway of a meh/mih.

This form of writing has also passed from pictography into cuneiform script where

the word gišig=“door” appears as a silent determinative, which is followed by the name of the

corresponding door.

Thus: gišig-KA2 = akan2=ական (akan) gišig-KA2-E2.GAL = akan of a palace/temple gišig-KA2-gal = large akan gišig-KA2-tur-ra = small akan, and so on.

In the given examples, KA2=akan2= ական(akan)=“hole, fissure, door” is placed after

the determinative gišig=“door”. This is followed by any descriptive word (large, small, temple

and so on). We saw above that KA2-E2.GAL is also called ME.NI=men/mei/meh= “door,

gateway of the temple/palace”. Therefore for the second example given, we can write: gišig-

KA2-E2.GAL=gišig-meh=մեհ(meh), where gišig appears as a silent determinative and shows

that the word “meh” following it, is the appellative of gateway. This form of cuneiform

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accurately corresponds to the pictography of the ME character which is ligatured to the leaf

of the door. Picture 42, shows the images of Sumero-Babylonian stamps, in which ME

characters are ligatured to the leaves of doors.

Picture 42. Images of gateways bearing the ME

character from Sumero-Babylonian stamps. The

top two pictures show the Sun God rising from

the gateways. Below is the gateway of the Ea/Hay

God, surrounded by currents of water.

We saw above that the Egyptian ( ) duplicate of the Sumerian ME character has the

“door, gateway” meaning and rw reading. We also saw that the latter simultaneously also

means “false door”. “False door” is an archaeological term which describes recesses which are

hewn into the rock face and which resemble doors.

Egyptian monuments of the III millennia BC

representing false doors, which were mainly

located in mausoleums.

Sumerian false doors (of III

millennia BC). The second picture

shows a sacrificial ritual taking

place in front of the false door.

False doors hewn into rocks (Peru,

South America).

Picture 43

Images of false doors appear in early Sumerian and Egyptian archaeological material;

however it is difficult to date their origins precisely. False doors hewn into rocks also exist on

the American mainland, although the question of whether they are local or introduced has

not been studied.

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There are also numerous gateways hewn into rocks in Armenia. Based purely on the

fact that the gateways of Haldi, Ţeyšeba and Šivini are mentioned in Urartian inscriptions,

scholars date those rock-hewn recesses from the Urartian period. Such dating has no factual

grounds and cannot be acceptable. If the images of false doors appear in Sumer and Egypt in

archaeological materials from the second half of IV millenium BC, then we think that the

Armenian rock-hewn false doors must also be dated from that period at least, if not earlier.

Picture 44. False doors on a rock in Van.

The basis for such an opinion is firstly the fact that only the homonymy of the

Armenian words “aroy(-ś)” and “aru” allows for the ideographing of rw=“false door” by the

lion image. Moreover this fact gives us grounds to think that the idea of doors linking the

Underworld to Earth and their pictography must have originated in an Armenian language-

mentality environment: that is, Armenia. One obvious attestation to this is the presence of

the Sumerian DUN3 character bearing the meaning of “abyss, passage, hole, cave; spring”, in

the Syunik petroglyphs, which we talked about earlier. Below we will also talk about the use

of the Sumerian character =ME and the Egyptian hieroglyph = “door”. We will discuss

more characters (up to ten) with the afore-mentioned ideas which have been used in the

Syunik petroglyphs, in their turn. Let us just add that in Armenian ethnographic materials,

there is a great deal of material concerning the doors linking the Underworld with Earth,

amongst which there are many as yet un-researched archaic perceptions. In particular, the

hero in Armenian mysterious legends enters into the Underworld (Dark world) through a

deep well and emerges from there onto Earth (into the world of Light) with the help of an

eagle or vulture.

The archaeological material in Armenia has a feature relating to false doors which is

not known elsewhere. We are talking about the T-shaped rock-hewn false doors (see picture

45).

It is possible to think that these are those moulds in which Portasar’s T-shaped

columns were “cast”. At the same time these false T-shaped doors represent the cuneiform

=ME character and the Egyptian =“door” hieroglyph.

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Picture 45. T-shaped false doors hewn into the rock face in Van (first two pictures)85, T-

shaped false door in the temple in Armavir (reconstructed)86 (last picture).

Armenian folk-lore and the “Sasna Śrer” epos link the false doors of the rocks of Van

with the name of P‘oqr Mher (Mher’s door) and call the rock Agravaqar(=Raven rock). We

will refer to the etymology of the name Agravaqar when we examine the image of the

“raven”. Mher is the epic image of the god Mihr/Miţra, and Mher’s doors are those gates

through which the Sun God descends into the Underworld and arises from it.

In Urartian inscriptions the rock hewn recesses of Van were called Haldi’s gates.

These two appellatives (the Armenian traditional and the written Urartian) are grounds to

assume the identicalness of Mher/Mihr and Haldi.87 The high relief of Arśke (VII century

BC) contains important information from the point of view of elucidating this issue. The

high relief represents the picture of the twin doors which are separated from each other and

the exterior environment by columns (see picture 46):

Picture 46. The high relief of Arśke

Three longitudinal grooves, which are reminiscent of the grooves on the columns of

the temple of Portasar are carved out on three exactly identical columns. At the lower end of

the groove on each column, there is the image of a slender tree, probably a conifer, in a plant

85 . O. Belli, Monumentale Felszeichen im Bereicht urartaicher Festungsanlagen, AnAr, 1989, XI 86 . Г.А.Тирацян, Урартский Армавир (По данным археологических раскопок), Культура Востока:

древность и раннее средневековье, Ленинград, 1978, ст. 106 87 . И. М. Дьяконов, К вопросу о символике Халди, Древний восток, 4, 1983, Ереван, ст. 190-194

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pot. We will refer to each of the other main signs on this high relief (tree, six-pointed star,

step-pyramid etc.) in their turn but for now let us just concentrate on the images on the

main doors.

Within each groove, three ME characters with their perpendicular segments more

emphasised than their horizontal segments ( ) are pictured above each tree. There are a

total of 9 ME characters in the three grooves. Sumerian sources link the 9 gates to the name

of Marduk.

ka2-gal dAsar-lu2-hi = 9 a-bu-ul dMarduk (Kagal I 10)

Therefore it must be assumed that Marduk or another God bearing his essence must be

depicted on the high relief of Arśke.

Twin images of a winged deity standing on a lion are portrayed face to face on the

two doors (leaves) to the right and left of the central column. They are identical mirror-

images of each other. The deity holds a small scale image of the above mentioned tree

( ) or the schematic image of a bunch of grapes in one hand. A bowl ( ) is

portrayed in his other hand. It is possible to assume that these are pictograms which

ideograph one of the deity’s names. Placing a great deal of importance on this deity name, let

us touch on the reading of the “tree/grape” and “bowl” characters on the high-relief of Arśke.

INTERPOLATION VII (The Son God)

We saw above that the name of the Sun God of the Underworld (Areg Angeł) is

ideographed by the ligature of the images of the lion and vulture. Here the vulture ligatured to the lion is replaced by the image of a winged deity in human form. Therefore we must assume that this depicts a solar Sun God. And since the image is in front of doors he is also probably the sun of the Underworld. The fact that the image of a roof, barrier, structure is set above the heads of each of the deities attests to this ( ) The chain of 8 Sumerian LAGABxHAL= “subterranean cosmic waters; river” ideograms stretches above this

(

.

, ). The engur reading of this cuneiform sign is the synonym of the word zu-ab=Śov=”sea”, which is the appellative of the sweet water sea of the bowels of the earth. Below that sea is the Underworld where the twin deities of the Arśke high relief are in effect portrayed. Taking this overall reasoning as a base let us try to read the images of the tree/grape and bowl. Firstly, let’s take the “tree” alternative for the first image. a. There are Armenian, we have the words mayr/mar/mēr=“mother, parent”, mayr=“tree, cedar, forest” and mayr=“dark, darkness”. The word mayr=“tree” is objective and portrayable while the others express abstract meanings and can be ideographed by the image of a slender tree. The context of our task dictates that the reading of the image of the tree in the hand of the deity on the Arśke high relief be mayr=“dark, darkness”. Let us turn to the image of the bowl. In Sumerian, the character depicting a vessel, DUG and the dug, duk, duq, tug3, tuk3, tuq3 readings of the cuneiform sign DUG derived from it mean “clay pot, vessel, pottery” and were used as determinatives for pottery items.

61

We point out the Armenian word “ţug” which is mentioned in Eremia Meghreşi’s dictionary and to which he attributes the meanings of śag=“rise” and śak=“hole”, as parallel to the Sumerian word. The Armenian words śak=“hole, hollow, cavity” and śag=“edge of the beginning, particularly the end” are also homonymous and we have verb. śagel=“the coming out, rising of the sun” from the latter. The “hole, hollow, cavity” meanings of the Armenian “ţug” can serve as the appellative-descriptions of elementary, simple clay pots because the first clay pot was a hollow made in wet clay which was used as a container after the clay had dried. The presence of the word śuk=“urn, vessel” is another attestation to this. In Armenian “śak” and “śuk” are vowel alternations, (compare the style “śak u

śuk”).

Let us also take into account that the process of rising necessarily assumes the existence of a hole, fissure, passage, or door since the process of rising up, emanating, coming out, sprouting takes place through a hole. Consequently we can read the images of the tree and bowl as mayr+ţug and if we join these components with an “-a-” conjunction we will have Mayraţug>Maraţug, Maraţuk. On the one hand this is the name of the son of Ea/Hay God and the supreme God of Babylon, and on the other hand the name of the sacred mountain at the beginning of the “Sasna Śrer” epos (Maraţuk, Maruţa, Maruţken, Maruţka, Maraţuq) on which the monastery of Maruţa Surb Asdvaśaśin stands. The mountain Maraţuk is in the mountains of Sasun, near the source of the Sasun river and stands at a height of 2967m.88

Our version of the reading exactly corresponds to the dMar-dug, dMa-ru-dug written forms of the name of Marduk89, where the dug component is the reading of the cuneiform sign DUG which is the determinative of pottery items. There will be some who insist that in the southern regions of Armenia there was a large mass of people who bore the Assyrian-

Picture 47. Left: A group of pilgrims at the partially ruined church of Maruta S. Astvaśadśin on the Maraţuk mountain (July, 2012). Right: The church, which was completely destroyed

at the orders of the Turkish authorities, several days after the pilgrims’ visit.

Babylonian culture from whom the Armenians have borrowed words, the worship of certain gods and other civilizational values. This is a very old and unfounded hypothesis which was put forward by H. Gelzer, amongst others. 90 In reality our research has shown that the

88 . Ţ.Hakobyan. St. Meliq-Baxšyan, H.Barsełyan, Dictionary of topographic names of Armenia and neighbouring regions, v. 3, Yerevan, 1991, p. 745 89 . A. Deimel, Pantheon Babylonicum, Romae, 1914, p. 173 90 . H. Gelzer, Study of Armenian mythology, Venice, 1987

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culture of the natives of Armenia - the Armenians is at the source of the Mesopotamian, particularly Sumerian civilization.91 One link in this is the deity name dMar-dug, dMa-ru-dug which cannot be etymologised by Sumerian or Akkadian data. Armenian allows the components of the deity name to be interpreted with the roots mayr=“dark, darkness” and ţug =“the coming out, rising of the sun” and reconstruct the meaning of “rising from the darkness”, which best corresponds to Marduk’s solar essence.

b. Now let us analyse the “grape, bunch of grapes” reading of the image. In order to read this word, of the synonyms for the word grape in Armenian, we take the word orţ=“grape vine, grape”. In Armenian, the following words are homonyms for this “orţ”:

օrd, orţ =“basket, hamper”, orţ =“calf, the young of large horned animals” ord(n)=“worm” yord=“abundantly flowing water” ord(i)=“son, child” Since we are speaking about deities in human form, such as the one portrayed on the

high relief of Arśke, then the word “ordi”, formed from the root “ord-” and the “-i” particle, is the most appropriate from this list of homonyms.

So let us clarify: Armenian allows us to ideograph the ordi=“son” word expressing an abstract meaning, by using the objective image of orţ (=of a branch of the vine, of a bunch of grapes. As far as the bowl image is concerned, the former reading of ţug=dug, duk stands.

The combined reading of the two characters gives us:

orţ + ţug=որդուկ(orţug, orţuk) We get the word orţug/orţuk, which we can understand with the meanings of both

orţuk=“calf” and as orduk=“son”, and which is formed with the “orţ/ord” root and “-ug/-uk” particle of endearment.

Now let us turn to Sumerian where the more usual form of writing the name Marduk is dAMAR.UTU, which is usually interpreted as “calf(=AMAR) of the sun=UTU), bullock(=AMAR)”.92 In specialised literature different authors present this appellative of Marduk in different ways (dAMAR.UTU, dAMAR.UD, dAMAR.U4, dAMAR.PIR ), where the readings UTU, UD, U , PIR belong to the same UD cuneiform sign which, as we saw above, has the meaning of both “sun” and “lion”. This cuneiform sign also has the ug reading which we take as the second component of the deity name.

2

4 2

4

The AMAR component of the deity name has “calf” (Akkad. būru) and “son” (Akkad. māru) meanings:93 Consequently instead of the AMAR.UTU writing we will have orţ+ ug4=”calf” , and ordi+ug4=”son” and it is natural that for the AMAR.UTU deity name we get God Son.

We saw above that the words orţ=“calf” and ordi=“son” are homonyms of the Armenian and only Armenian can ideograph and vocalise the word “ordi” with the image of a calf and its appellation of “orţ”. And as to how we can include the reading of wurdi=ordi in

91 . H. Martirosyan, The etymological connection between the Armenian petroglyphs and the origins of ancient writing systems. Bazmavep, 2008, p.198: H. Martirosyan, Pages of Ancient history of Armenia, Yerevan 2011 92 . J. Black, A. Green, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, Austin, 2000, p. 128 93 . The e-dictionary of Pennsylvania University adds the meanings, “generation, race, youth, chick”. Let us take

this opportunity to mention that, in Armenian, the names of offspring of animals (pup, lamb, calf, chick, lion

cub , etc.) are also used metaphorically with the meaning of “son”.

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the readings of the AMAR cuneiform sign, we will refer to in detail in our next work, during the analyses of Sumerian characters. At present, as a first approximation, let us mention that the word amar is syllabified in the form a-mar where the A cuneiform sign has the reading of burx. which we can read wur=vor/vur. The image of the MAR character is an oar and has the meaning of թի(ţi)=“oar, shovel”. Consequently a-mar=vor-ţi, which represents the exact pronunciation of the Armenian word “ordi” (vurţi in certain dialects). In Armenian, an initial “v” is sounded when words with an initial ո(=o)=vo sound, are vocalised. Let us bring one more unetymologised appellative for Marduk.

dURUxMIN+IGI = ma-ru-tu-uk (OB Diri Nippur Section 10 44) This form of writing of the deity name shows that the MIN and IGI cuneiform signs are infixed in the URU cuneiform sign that is familiar to us. We clarified above that the iri, eri, ulu4, er4, ir4, uru, ere readings of the URU cuneiform sign correspond to the Armenian

ar/ara, er/era/eri roots. The min, men

x, mina readings of the MIN= cuneiform sign were used in Sumerian as the appellative of the numeral two. The former correspond to the Armenian word մին/մեն(min/men)=“number one”. We have also spoken about the

conformity between the igi=“eye” reading of the IGI= cuneiform sign and the Armenian word ak(n)=“eye”.

Consequently for this appellative of Marduk we have uru/ere/eri-men/minx-igi = ar/ara-min/men-ak= Armenak, Aramenak. Again the chain is closed in Armenian; the fact that this appellative for Marduk is also interpreted in Armenian is important but the fact that this cuneiform name of Marduk, the son of Ea/Hay God is identical to the name of the eldest son of Hayk, Armenak (Aramaneak, Armaneak, Aramenak, Arameneak) is even more important.94

Thus both the tree+bowl and grape+bowl alternatives of the characters on the high relief of Arśke can be read based on Armenian homonyms and in both cases, as a result of the readings, we have the names of Marduk. The dAMAR.UTU appellative form of Marduk is mentioned in Urartian texts on a fragment of an inscription by Rusa II discovered in Karmir Blur (….-še dAMAR.UTU-še .....): 95

Taking this opportunity, let us refer in a couple of words to the spiritual-religious meaning of the word “son” and end this long interpolation with that.

The above list of homonyms shows that it is possible to ideograph and vocalise the words ordi=“son, child” and yord=“abundant waters” using the images of ordi (=worm), calf, grape vine and basket. We see examples of the word “ordi” ideographed by images of the basket from the over 12000 year-old temple complex of Portasar (Göbekli Tepe) (picture 48a) to Urartu and then in the Neo-Babylonian period (picture 48b); from the spatial point of view, it has reached the Americas (picture 48c).

The surface of the Portasar column is divided into several layers, in the top layer of which the images of three baskets are depicted. The image of an animal is portrayed next to each one of them, with which the names of three Son Gods are ideographed. A crane is pictured next to the first basket and the other two are difficult to determine from the photograph. Other animals are depicted in the lower levels of the column.

94 . Moves Khorenatsi, History of the Armenians, X, 5 95 . Н. В. Арутюнян, Новые урартские надписи Кармир блура, Ереван, 1966, II, строк. 3-8

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The blocks of rock on which the petroglyphs are engraved are the prototypes of the design and pictography of the surface of this column. The following stage, which is the stage preceding Portasar, are the višap(=gragon)-stones (menhirs), up to 5 metres in height, on which the first high-reliefs appear. Thousands of years after Portasar, the Kassite kudurrus,

which are considered to be boundary stones, present the same picture.

The surface of the kudurru is divided into layers on each of which the names of gods are ideographed by means of images of animals or other characters (see picture 49). Almost all kudurrus have an important generality...the characters for the Sun, Moon and Venus are always portrayed in the level near the apex of the column. The ideographic characters for the deity names dAnu, dEN.LIL , 2 dEN.KI (frequently also dNIN.HUR.SAG) are located in the following level below the dividing line. The ideograms of the other gods of the pantheon are put in the next level. We think that the pictography of the Portasar column is also arranged according to this principle. The names of those three gods which were primary in the pantheon of the constructors of the Portasar temple and had the status of Son of God, were depicted by ideographic images of animals next to baskets, at the highest level on the column. This trinity of Gods are comparable to the trinity on the kudurrus: the Sun, Moon, Arusyak (Venus) or dAnu, dEN.LIL , 2 dEN.KI (see picture 48a). Because there is a feminine deity in the first trio (Arusyak), perhaps the dAnu, dEN.LIL2, dEN.KI trio is more

probable. or another trio equivalent to it.

Picture 48. a) Pictures of three baskets on one of the T-shaped columns of the temple complex of Portasar, b) the picture of a winged deity holding a basket on an Assyrian high

relief c) the Mayan deity with a basket.

Picture 49. Kassite kudurru

b caa

a

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The animal images in the subsequent separated levels of the column represent the names of the other gods in the pantheon. All those images are present in the Syunik petroglyphs and we will refer to them in their places.

It should be noted that the trinity of supreme gods is present in all the religions of the region (Sumer, Egypt, Urartu, Hinduism, Greece, etc.) and the data from the Syunik

Picture 50. Left: the pictures of the three baskets and their adjacent animal images on the Portasar column; right, top row: Sun, Moon, Arusyak trio; bottom row: the ideograms of the

gods dAnu, dEN.LIL2, dEN.KI on platforms depicting doors.

petroglyphs and Portasar testifies to their ancient origins. Moreover, the word meaning “basket” exists in the names of certain of the supreme gods in the mentioned pantheons. For example, the HAL cuneiform sign with which the deity name dHal-di is written is the name of a kind of basket. If that is the Armenian word orţ=“basket” then it becomes clear that the di syllable is the phonetic supplement necessary to obtain the word “ordi” (orţ-di=ordi=”son”).

Finally let us add that there are numerous pictures of baskets in the Syunik

petroglyphs ( , , , , , , ). The tradition of ideographing the word “ordi” with the image of a grape

vine is very old and it is expressed more vividly in Christianity in our times. Let us remember Christ’s words, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener”:96 Armenian allows us to prove that the expression “true vine” is equivalent to “true son”, which is frequently used in the gospels. “True son” is one of Jesus’ names in the gospels; that is, it is a deity name, the oldest written variant of which is the Sumerian dDUMU.ZID=God Son (DUMU=”son” and ZID=”true”): The image of the grape is missing from the Syunik petroglyphs.

The image of an ord=”worm”, which is more vividly expressed in

Egyptian hieroglyphic characters, ( , , , , ) has also been used to ideograph the word “ordi ”. These hieroglyphs mean both “worm” and “snake.”

Osiris, whose name is frequently ideographed with the image of a worm ( ,

, ), is one of the striking son of god figures in the Egyptian pantheon. Similarities to the Egyptian hieroglyphs are frequently met in both the Syunik petroglyphs and on the temple columns in Portasar.

96 . John: Chapter 15, verse 1

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Finally the other objective picture for ideographing the word “ordi” is the image of a calf. The ordi ~horţ=”calf” homonymy has been used in both Sumer and Egypt. We saw that Sumerian homonymy in the example of the AMAR cuneiform sign, which means both “calf” and “son” at the same time. We see hieroglyphs with cow and calf images

in Egyptian hieroglyphs ( , , ). However the word in Egyptian (jrt.t) which is homophonous to the Armenian “ord, horţ” was used with the meaning of “milk” and one of the words meaning calf (ḥz) corresponds to the Armenian word ḥiž=“the milk produced in the first 4-5 days after birth”. The word ḥzA is used for the general word meaning “milk”. However the word ms/mz was used in Egyptian which meant both “calf” and “son”. The word was ideographed with the diagrammatic image of an

apron( =ms/mz=“apron”). The Armenian parallel to this is the word mzar=“apron, tablecloth” which is composed of the root “mz-“ and the “-ar” particle. In Armenian, this “mz-” root is homonymous to the word “mozi” which bears the meaning of “1-2 year old calf” and “son”. After the Hiksos domination this word was frequently used as a component of the names of the pharaohs.97

Picture 51. A marble statuette of the Uruk Jemdet Nasr period from Mesopotamia and a mother and calf statue from Assyria

(Kalkhu, IX-VIII centuries BC):

In contrast to the previous objective pictures, the image of the calf is also presented in the form of statuettes in both Sumer and Egypt. And frequently we see cow and calf statuettes, high reliefs and pictures.

97 . The Egyptian word = ms/mz appears for the first time in royal names in the name of the XIII

dynasty (Hyksos) king Ra-dd-nfr Ḍḍw-ms

= Ḍḍw-ms

And the literal meaning of the king’s name is son of Ḍḍw. The mozi=“son” component later appears in the

names of the kings of the XVIII dynasty, together with the Ţoţ God name of the Moon, forming the well-

known Ţuţmos name form ( =Ţuţmozi=son of Ţoţ God). There are four known kings with this

name. In the name of the first king in this dynasty, the word mozi=“son” is ligatured to the Moon God’s name

currently read as Yah ( = Yahmozi=son of Yah god).

The names of the next, XIX dynasty kings, in contrast to the kings of the former dynasty who

considered themselves sons of the Moon God, are formed from the “arew” and “mozi” hieroglyphs

( =Armozi=son of the Sun God, Arewordi). The founder of the dynasty was Rameses I, the

grandfather of the famous Rameses II ( = Armozi). Several kings of this dynasty bore the name

Armozi or names compounded from it.

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A cow and calf statue stood at the entrance to the temple of Haldi in Musasir. This is also a substantiated attestation that Haldi was worshipped as the Son God.

Let us add that images of the cow and calf, which we will refer to during our examination of the pictographs kov=“cow”, horţ=“calf” are present in the Syunik petroglyphs.

The above mentioned information attests that from the beginning in the Upper Palaeolithic period up to Christianity, the worship of the Son God, whose cradle was in Armenia, was widespread in the Western Asia. In the last quarter of II millennium BC. the Jews rejected the worship of the Son God (the statue of the calf) and came out of this spiritual sphere and placed the cult of Moses as the basis for building their national identity. This created a monotheist religion in an artificial manner, in which the old gods are presented as angels, cherubim and seraphim.98 However the Jews injected an important aspect of the Son God into their new religion: the aspect pertaining to salvation. In multi-racial Palestine, the descendents of the Son God periodically tried to make the Jewish people return to the worship of the Son God, but were defeated by the followers of the sect of Moses. As a result of the last attempt, Christianity was born as a mixture of the worship of the Son God and the religion of Moses.

The second large sect in the region to have separated from the worship of the Son God was Zoroastrianism. We will refer to the relationships between the worship of the Son God and these sects in more detail in the work, “The Hay God”.

We have finally reached the main topic of this long interpolation. What doctrinal sacrament does the word “ordi” bear? Should we really understand it as literally “child” or does it have another, hidden doctrinal meaning? Armenian allows us to contend that, yes, it does.

We can consider the word որդի(ordi) as a complex and divide it into the որ=or and դի=di parts. The first of these is the root, or=“man”, (the –ear is the pluralising particle) of the word orear=“men, people”. The Sumerian parallel of the former is ur=“man” (Akk. amēlu). The second “di” component is the simple root of the word diq=”god”. It is the plural form of the Armenian “diq” which is used in Sumerian as the determinative of the concept of “god” (di-qe3-er, di-qer=,di-ge6-er=diqer/diger=diqer and is put in front of deity names )

99.

98 . For example, in the literature interpreting the Old Testament, and Apocryphal, Cabbalistic, Christian and

occult literature the God Nerigal=Angeł is presented as Ariel, (Ariel, Auriel, Oriel, Urial, Uryan) one of the 4

archangels (see for example, Book of Enoch, Book of Esdras, Book of Adam and Eve, etc.). The name of the

archangel is etymologised as God’s Fire, God’s Flame, God’s Light, God’s Sun, that is, the meaning of “sun, light,

fire,” is given to the ari/uri component and el=“god”; but the name God’s Lion is attributed to the true Ariel.

The truth is that Ariel literally means Lion God which differs fundamentally from the interpretation of

God’s Lion. We saw above that the Lion God is the God Nerigal-Angeł-Mihr/Mher. The second

fact is that the Hebrew word ari, aryeh=“lion” is a borrowing from the native Armenian words “arew(ś)/

ariw(ś)”, (also see appendix 1) and only Armenian homonymy allows the interpretation of “sun, flame, light”

which are the main aspects of Nerigal’s essence.

As far as the word el=”god” is concerned, then that is also a borrowing from Armenian. It is widespread

in Semitic languages and its oldest attestation is the Akkadian ilu= “god”. The word has no reliable etymology in

the Semite languages, because its origin is not Semitic but a borrowing of the Sumerian el3, il3, ilu, ili, ila=

“god.” The Sumerian word is etymologized with the el, ele2, il2, il5, ili5, the meanings of which are identical to

the Armenian el=”rise up, rising of the sun, emanation”. Therefore the “god” meaning of the word comes from

the idea of “supreme, to rise up, to dawn, to emanate.” 99 . The Akkadian word dabābu=“to say, talk” and banū=“to do, create, make, build” corresponds to the di

reading of the Sumerian DI cuneiform sign. The akkadian words correspond to the native Armenian root

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(In cuneiform transcription, the shortened d or D form is conventional); for example, dEN.KI or DEN.KI). Therefore we can attribute the me ning of “man-god” to ordi=Or Di which is one of mankind’s most ancient theological concepts. It was spread throughout the theological perceptions of the ancient world, amongst which the Christian teaching of “the incarnation of god”, the avatars of Vishnu and Shiva in Hinduism, and Messianic Judaism, are well-known from the aspect of eschatology.

a

Thus, OR DI=ordi is the God who, from the spiritual realms revealed himself into the material world in human form in order to defend the material world order and to help and support men.

The festival of Vardavar, which is celebrated to this day with great splendor and respect in Armenia is linked to the worship of the Son God. From the time of the introduction of Christianity, the church identified that festival with the transfiguration of Christ. This is what archbishop M. Ormanyan writes, “It is one of the five chief festivals of the Armenian church and is called the Transfiguration because Christ appeared brilliant and radiant, and also Vardavar from the name of the ancient pagan festival. The celebrated lordship is the splendid and luminous appearance of Christ….”100

The vardapets of old and present-day linguists link the appellative of the national festival Vardavar to the word vard=“rose” saying that during the festival, people wold throw rosewater on each other:101 To link such a splendid festival to the word “rose” and consider it a borrowing from Pahlavi is ridiculous. First of all the sprinkling of water or rosewater is a component episode in the festival and not its essence.

Let s try to outline the essence of the festival according to the characteristics given by Archbishop Ormanyan, who gives us the following series of facts:

a. Christ is the Son of God b. He is bright, vivid and luminous Consequently we can describe the festival with the words Ordi Astvaś(=Son God) and

“var” from which the Vardavar appellative of the festival is formed. If we add to this the fact that the Christian church – the Armenian Apostolic church more pronouncedly – compares or identifies Christ with the Sun, then it becomes quite clear that the festival is dedicated to the Sun God (Mihr or Vahagn) who bore the title of Ordi Astvaś.

As far as the Vardavar appellative is concerned, it was formerly written in the form of Ordivar or Ordevar which was pronounced Vordivar or Vordevar according to the law. Subsequently with the confusion between the almost identically pronounced words (especially in the dialects) “ordi” and “vard” the folk etymology or Christian commentators

ban=“speech” from which we also have banel=“to work, to make, to build”. The Akkadian words mentioned

above suggest that, having its own word dabābu=“to speak”, the word banū=ban(-el) has been borrowed from

Sumerian. The Armenian verb “banel” is a synonym of the verb dnel=“make, create, build” the root of which is

“di”. That is the reason why the word banū= ban(-el) appears in the readings of the DI cuneiform sign.

Therefore based on Armenian and Sumerian data we can say that the Armenian word diq= “god” has no

connection to the assumed dhēs root of the assumed proto-Indo-European language, but has arisen from the

native Armenian root di=“ make, create, build”. The root “ar” from which we have the “creator” characteristic

of God, has the same meaning as the latter.

These meanings of the Armenian root “ban” show the equivalence of speaking and making, which is an

important worldview concept, the striking example of which we see in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis:

the creation. 100 Archbishop Małaqia Ormanyan. Dictionary of Rites, Yerevan 1991, p. 6 101 . H. Ačaryan, Armenian etymological dictionary, see section on “vard”.

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changed the name of the festival to Vardavar. The Kharabakh (Artsakh) dialect has remained the most true to the original form where vard=varţ, ordi=vǝērţi and Vardavar=Vǝrţēviwr.

The native word “var” has the meaning of “set on fire, burning, inflamed” and the Ordivar festival took place in the summer at the time when the sun rose to its highest point. Naturally getting wet was one of the counsels given for protection from the burning sun. Previously the festival was celebrated on the summer solstice and entered the festive system in the period when the summer solstice point was in the lion constellation and symbolised the entry of the sun into that constellation. The summer solstice entered the lion constellation in IV-III millennia BC.

The Armenian language allows to attribute another doctrinal interpretation of the word “ordi”. The “or-” component is homonymous with the native Armenian ur=“son” which has been retained in the word urǰu=“step-son”. As a result the word ideographed “son” by the objective images above, can be read Ur Di=“son god” through homonymy.

The two interpretations are interconnected to other, have very old roots and have been manifested in different religions.

This interpolation was very long and probably the reader will need to look over and

see where we interrupted our main topic. Apart from the “tree/grape” and “bowl” characters

next to the winged deities standing on the lions on the high relief of Arśke we also see ME

characters in 5s which are identical in their depiction to the characters depicted in the

grooves of the columns. The ME character is portrayed in 3s in front of each deity and from

in 2s at the back.

The distribution of the ME character in such a numerical ratio reminds us of the

distribution of lion-images on the central frame of the shields of the Urartu kings (see picture

52).

Although the lions in the central ring of the shields are different in number, there are

three generalities:

a. The faces of the lions in the upper semicircle face upwards and those in the lower

semicircle face downwards.

b. There are equal numbers of lions on either side of the vertical diameter of the circle

which serves as the axis of symmetry for all of them.

c. the number of lions looking upwards is 4 for all the shields and they differ only in

the number of lions facing downwards (2, 4 and 6, respectively).

Picture 52. Central rings of Urartian shields

Argishti I Rusa II Sarduri II

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The distribution of the ME characters on the high relief of Arśke is identical to the

distribution of lions on the shield of Rusa II. The trinity of lions looking downwards

corresponds to the 3 ME characters placed in front of the deity and the twin lions looking up

correspond to the twin ME characters pictured on the rear side of the deity. The equivalence

of the ME character and the image of the lion comes of course from their meaning of

“aperture, hole, door.” And astronomy will prompt us as to which doors the lions on Rusa II’s

shield and the ME characters on the high relief of Arśke represent.

Back in time immemorial man

noticed 5 luminaries in the constellations

of the zodiac which, though externally

were almost the same as stars, were

different in their behaviour. If stars

maintain their positions constant in the

constellations, then these luminaries move

through the constellations of the zodiac,

like the sun and Moon. However their

visible movements differ from those of the

sun and moon and are similar to the

wanderings of the lost. It is because of just

those movements that they are called

astełq molarq=“planets”.103

Picture 53. The diagram of the geocentric

system according to manuscript №8973 in the

Matenadaran102

There are five planets visible to the naked

eye: Mercury,Venus, Mars, Jupiter and

Saturn (in order and distance from the

sun). The orbits of two of these (Mercury

and Venus) are between the Sun and Earth

(internal planets) and the other three

(Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) are outside the

orbit of the Earth (external planets).

As night luminaries, the inner and

102 . B. Tumanyan, History of Armenian Astronomy,Yerevan,1964, p. 264 103 . The oldest written attestation of this appellative is the Sumerian mul-UDU.IDIM. Here the word mul

means “star, give light, radiate, shine” and corresponds to the Armenian root մուլ(mul)=”iridescent, flickering”.

By repeating this we get mlmlot=”the iridescent, the flickering”. In Armenian, homonymous to this “mul” root,

is the root, մոլ(mol)=“to be furious, to rage, to be confused, to be frenetic” from which the word molar=

“planet” is formed. The UDU cuneiform sign is the determinative of small horned animals and its udu=“goat,

sheep” reading corresponds to the synonymous Armenian word “odi” (udu=u2-du=u2-di6=odi). The UDU.IDIM

writing has the meaning of “wild sheep” because the IDIM cuneiform sign has the meaning of “wild, mad”. The

readings of the cuneiform sign IDIM are ari2, uri4.. Consequently, UDU.IDIM =uduari2 = օդիառն(arn) = arn =

“wild sheep”. Therefore we can read the mul-UDU.IDIM rebus both syllabified and ideographed:

a. mul-uduari2 = mul-uduuri4 = mulari/muluri = molar/molor=”planet”

b. mul-uduIDIM = mol-arn= molarn>molar=”planet”

Therefore we can also state that the “molar” appellatives-characteristics of the planets have been given by

people with the way of thought inherent in the Armenian language. In ancient times (Sumer, Egypt, Babylon,

Greece, Iran, Rome etc) the five planets were identified with the five extra days outside of the year comprising

360 days. The five Roman deity names which we mentioned above are used nowadays. The reader can find the

Armenian appellatives in the work “The old belief of the Armenians” by Łevond Ališan.

71

outer planets do not differ from each other in practise. However, the visible movement of

the two internal planets is substantially different from that of the three external planets.

The reader can find details in any given textbook.

In ancient times, the universe was considered geocentric. A schematic diagram of

such perceptions is given in picture 53, where the Sun is drawn between 2 internal and 3

external planets. If we identify the deity standing on the lion in the high relief of Arśke with

the Sun, and the ME character with the planets, then we get this same picture.

And the astrologic data helps to understand what

exactly the ME characters represent. According to the

astrologists, each planet has its day time and night time

home or door from which it rises. The daytime and night

time doors are to be found in the antipode constellations

of the zodiac. In picture 54 the daytime and night time

doors of the planets are distributed according to the

animal constellations. The picture corresponds to IV-III

millennia BC when the unique points of the Sun were in

the bull, lion, scorpion and Aquarius constellations.

According to modern astronomy those are the

morning and evening points of maximum elongation of

the internal planets and the eastern and western

quadrants of the external planets. Consequently for the

five planets we will have ten special points. Within their observable movements, the planets

pause at those points and begin moving

in a reverse path; and where there is a

stop, there is a home and door.

In the astrological picture of the

distribution of the daytime and night

time doors of the planets, the diameter

line connecting the points of the

solstices (lion, Aquarius) corresponds

to the central column on the high

relief of Arśke. The two radii (halves of

the diameter) connecting the points of

the equinoxes (bull, scorpion)

correspond to the image of the deity

standing on the lion.

Picture 55 from the high relief

of Arśke shows the comparison of the

distribution of the daytime and night

time doors and the distribution of the

lions in the central ring of Rusa II’s

shield. The broken line shows the

position of the sun between the

internal and external planets. From

this comparison we are finally

convinced that the doors of the internal planets (Mercury and Venus) were represented by

Նկար 54. The daytime (right) and

night time (left) doors of the

internal and external planets in

the constellations of the Zodiac.

Picture 55. Comparison of the distribution of Me

characters, the doors of the planets and lions on

Rusa II’s shield and the high relief of Arśke .:

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two ME characters or by the image of the two lions and the doors of the external planets

(Mars, Jupiter, Uranus) were represented by three ME characters or by the image of the

three lions. The night time doors are presented on the left and the daytime ones, on the

right.

The lion-images on the shields of Argishti I and Rusa II propose a new puzzle. The

number of lions pictured on the external and internal rings of these shields is 36 and 34,

respectively. The same character is pictured on the rump of each of these lions. Furthermore,

the characters on the rumps of the lion facing to the left and that of its mirror-image facing

right, are also mirror-images and (see picture 56a).

The character is on the rumps of the lions on the right semicircle of the shields and

its mirror-image ( ) is on the left semi-circle. Such a change in the character attests that

this is the ligaturing of two simple characters and in order that the readings of the correct

character and its mirror-image be identical (the reading always starts from the direction of

the animal’s head) the positions of the components of the character must be changed in the

mirror-image.

We consider the correct form of the character to be the image on the lion facing

left and the reading from left to right. The fact that in Urartian hieroglyphs the character

Picture 56. a) Section of Rusa II’s shield, b) Urartian heiroglyphs

բա

is frequently used but its mirror-image is absent also serves as basis for this (see picture 56 b)

Based on the drawing of the character, we can separate it into the following component

characters in the following forms:

True character Mirror-image

Since all variants must have the same reading, it follows that the , , ,

characters (in the drawing, reading and meaning sense) are identical. Below we will use the

first character ( ):

This character and its components have frequently been used in the Syunik

petroglyphs. We will refer to them in detail when examining the abstract characters. Here

we adduce their possible readings and choose the reading necessary to us at this time. Firstly

let us decide what readings these two characters, as objective images, might have in

Armenian.

73

- the appellatives of armunk=“cubit, elbow” and ankiwn=“angle” in Armenian

correspond to this picture. The root of the first is “arm” and the second is “ank/ang”.

- This is the character for the number one in all the old writing systems and so we

can take the readings of men/min=“one” and its homonym “ar/er”. This character can also

express the idea of standing and bore the ել(el)=“rise up, arise, emanate; aperture, hole, way,

course; end, finish” reading.

The reader can form the various possible readings of “armen/armin” and “ankel/angel”

for themselves. As we promised, we will refer to these during our examination of the abstract

characters.

Now we choose the variant and for that, we reconstruct ar/er (= =

ar,ar/er/eri) + an(k/g) (= = ankiwn ) = er-an(k/g), ar-an(k/g) = eran(q), aran(q), aran(g). The

initial meaning of the singular form of this word in Armenian (eran, aran) is “a narrow

aperture, opening, fissure between two objects”, which later gained the meaning of “thighs,

legs” because of the narrow canal between them. Finally it also took on the meaning of “male

sexual organs, testicles” because the latter are found in that narrow canal. The Sumerian

parallel of the Armenian word “eran, aran” is har-ra-an = ar3-ra-an = ir5-ra-an = aran, iran =

“canal, place of passage, passage”.104

Here we witness the fact that, as we saw in

the Syunik petroglyphs, also in the Urartu

hieroglyphs, additional characters are placed next

to the image of the lion in order to clarify in what

sense the image of the lion should be read.

Therefore, the =eran, aran=“passage, channel,

opening” character prompts us that it is necessary

to read the images of the lions on the shields of

Argishti I and Rusa II with the meaning of

aru=”aperture, opening, door”.

Picture 57. Canonical table,

the Gospel of John, 1297AD

Let us return to the ME character which is

homonymous to the “canal, door” meaning of the

lion image. The use of the ME character also

continues subsequently in Armenia reaching right

up to the literature of the late middle ages. First of

all they are the characters of the Book of

Knowledge Signs, which we have spoken about

above. It is frequently seen in the miniature

painting of the Middle ages, an example of which

is brought in picture 57.

A rectangular area filled with four-sided cross characters is portrayed above the doors

formed by three columns (cf. high relief of Arśke). The picture of a rectangular or square

belongs to the list of sacred characters. This is what Nerses Šnorhali (Nerses IV the Gracious; 104 Linguists consider the Armenian word “eran, aran” to be a borrowing from the Iranian word rān=“thigh,

shank”. That is unacceptable for two reasons. Firstly, the Iranian word only bears the secondary meaning of the

Armenian word and does not bear the primary “passage, opening” meaning. Secondly, the word existed with its

primary meaning in Sumerian more than 2000 years before the appearance of Iranian tribes in the region.

Therefore the word passed to the Iranians with its secondary meaning from any of the Mesopotamian

languages, or Armenian.

74

also Nerses Shnorhali, Nerses of Kla or Saint Nerses the Graceful, 1102÷1173) says about

it,“…all forms of rectangle shall be venerated”.105 In Sumerian pictography the rectangle is

an ideographs of one of the appellatives of the Ea/Hay God and is also mentioned as the

“sacred dwelling” of Ea/Hay God.106

The rectangle of cross-images is surrounded by 24 ME characters. This number again

takes us back to our unfinished topic of the temple of Garni. The thing is that the number of

the columns surrounding the rectangular shaped temple of Garni is also 24. 24 columns and

24 eran=aranq= “passage, opening, door”. There are 5 apertures formed by 6 columns on the

front (northern) and rear (southern) walls of the temple, and 8 columns form 7 apertures on

each of the side walls (eastern and western).

The God of the temple comes to Earth through the central opening of the southern

(rear) colonnade and enters the temple through the false door in the southern section (the

reader can become oriented with the images in picture 58).

The priest guides him with this ritual towards the water basin and then towards the

northern door from where the God passes though the central opening of the colonnade on

the facade and comes out.

The south-north orientation of the temple attests that the visible annual journey of

the Sun was at the base of the worship here. From its weak condition at the winter solstice

the Sun rises to the summer solstice point, reaches its highest point of strength then with a

reverse path returns to the winter solstice point. The rites performed in the temple would

have concerned special points on this journey. Within this context, it is also possible to

explain the east and west sides of the temple having 7 doors each. Of these, the 7 eastern

doors represent the 7 constellations of the zodiac included from the winter solstice

(December 22 – lowest position of the Sun) to the summer solstice (June 22 – The highest

point of the sun), in each of which the rising Sun can be found for one month. The western 7

doors correspond to the sun’s setting positions on that journey. In the second half of the year

(the descent from the summer solstice to the winter solstice) the 7 doors have been identified

with the constellations within that journey, in reverse.

Picture 58

North South

105 . Nerses Šnorhali, Encyclical, p.190, reference according to A. Mnaşakanyan, Armenian decoration, Yerevan,

1955, p. 167 (in armen.) 106 . H.S. Martirosyan, The Pages of Ancient History of Armenia, Yerevan, 2011, p. 20 (in armen.)

75

Such a picture allows us to interpret the colonnade with its 24 doors as the boundary

of the four sides of the Earth; the closed area of the temple is the earth proper, the roof with

a fronton which is vaulted on the inside and has a skyline-chimney in the centre is the Sky

and the stone-press which should have been filled with water, represents the underground

sea (Śov Śirani, ZU.AB).

In this regards let us refer to a fact from Sumerian sources. At all times, the temple

was considered God’s house on Earth. E2-dur2-meš, the Akkadian equivalent of which is bīt

šubat ilMarduk, is mentioned as one of the appellatives of Marduk’s temple. Here bīt means

“house” 107 and šubat is the plural form of the word šubtu=“residence, lodging”. The plural

form comes from the Sumerian word meš, mes3=“much, many”. The Armenian parallel for

this is the word meś=“large, many”. We also know that the E2 cuneiform sign is the

ideographic determinative meaning “temple, palace, house”. For us the DUR2 cuneiform

sign’s dur2 reading, which has the meaning of “narrow aperture, opening, slit” and is

identical in meaning and sound to the Armenian word դուռ(dur)=“door” (Ger. Tür, Eng.

door) is pivotal here. Thus, the literal meaning of the Sumerian appellative of Marduk’s

temple is “many-doored house”; that is, without clarifying the number of doors, it presents

the same picture that we presented when referring to the temple of Garni. It is appropriate

here to remember that according to the Babylonian “Enuma Elliš” epic, it is Marduk who

opens gates on both sides of the Heavens (Enuma Elliš, V,9).

Picture 59. The temple of Hephaestus in Athens and the ground plans of the temples of

Apollo (Delphi, Bassae, Pompeii, respectively).

The Armenian Mihr has always been identified with the fire-embodying Greek

Hephaestus and the Iranian Miţra with Apollo. On the whole, the temples of these Greek

gods have rows of columns of sixes, as does the temple of Garni. However, the number of

side columns is different from temple to temple (see picture 59.

If, the number of columns (doors) of the Garni temple is maintained as part of the cosmic

order, and later on is manifested in Armenian medieval literature, that pattern was not

107 . We think that the Akkadian word bīt originates from the Sumerian word bat3/pat3)=pat=“wall, four sides,

circle”.

76

preserved in Greek temple-building or was not known from the beginning and the columns

were used merely as decorative elements for the temple.

The architectural and symbolic sources for the temple of Garni probably must be

searched for in Urartian temple-building traditions. The facade of the temple of Garni is a

copy of the temple of Haldi in Musasir. Only an unsuccessful diagram of an Assyrian relief

portraying the facade of the temple of Haldi has reached us. One version of the

reconstruction of the temple is presented in picture 60.

Picture 60. Left: reconstruction of the temple of Haldi. Right: Temple of Garni

There are twin lion heads on either side of the entrance to the temple and a statue of a

cow and calf on the right side of the entrance. In this version of reconstruction there are 8

columns in the side colonnade, just as in the Garni temple. Of course the real picture will be

ascertained when the temple of Musasir is discovered and excavated but meanwhile we can

say that the architecture and symbolism of the temple of Garni presumably come from the

main temple of Haldi.

All that was said above concerning doors shows that in ancient mythological-

worldview perceptions, doors linking different worlds were amongst the most important

elements of the world order. In short, if there is no door, there is no way to communicate

with God. This mythological-worldview symbol of doors or columns forming doors had been

developed early on and we see its oldest sources in the temple complex at Portasar (Göbekli

Tepe) (X millennium BC) and the Syunik petroglyphs (before XIII millennium BC). Certain

facts indicate that different gods had different numbers and forms of gates.

Picture 61. T-shaped column (left) from the Protasar temples and excavated ritual stone

doors

We saw above that we can read the T-shaped stones of Portasar (picture 61, first

image) as objective ideograms with the meaning of “aperture, door, gateway”. We also saw

that much later, that ideogram was used with the same meaning in both Sumer and Egypt

77

( =ME character and =rw= “door” hieroglyphic). These and other facts concerning

Portasar presented above (the door cavity carved from monolith stone with lion carvings on

the columns, the twin columns of the subterranean temple with lion-images) attest that at

Portasar doors had an important ritual-religious significance and were linked to the worship

of specific gods.

Let us add to this the existence of single and double-leaved ritual doors hewn from

monolith stone which were excavated at the temple of Portasar (picture 62, second and third

images)

Certain images discovered at Portasar (snake, bull, fox, water signs and so on) give us

grounds to say that some of the temples were dedicated to the God embodying the sweet

waters of the bowels of the earth; that is, to the worship of Ea/Hay God. Not being familiar

with the local geology and based solely on these facts, we assume that during the roughly

two thousand years existence of the temple, abundant springs emanated from the slopes of

Portasar. If this assumption is substantiated by geological data, then it is possible to think

that the temple at Portasar was abandoned because of those springs drying up.

Another group of images (vulture, swan, lion, etc.) attest to the worship of the God

Nerigal-Angeł-Mihr. We saw above that the deity name Angeł was ideographed with the

image of a vulture. Archaeological data proves that the orgins of the worship of this God

belong to the Paleolithic era (see picture 62).

All the animal images and abstract characters discovered in Portasar that are clear to

us also exist in the Syunik petroglyphs. For that reason, we will refer to the manifestations of

the worship of the Gods, Ea/Hay and Angeł, and the readings of the deity names when we

examine each given animal image and abstract character.

After all this, it is now time to prove that there are numerous examples in the Syunik

petroglyphs of the use of the character present in Armenian medieval manuscripts,

Urartian hieroglyphs, and Sumerian and Egyptian systems of writing( , , ,

108 . J. Peters, K. Schmidt, Animals in the symbolic world of Pre-Pottery Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, south-eastern Turkey: a preliminary assessment, Anthropozoologica, 2004, 39 (1) 109 . S. K. Kozlowski, The Gods from Nemrik, Al-Rafidan, v. XVIII, 1997, 33

S. K. Kozlowski, Nemrik 9, a PPN Neolithic site in Northern Iraq, Paléorient, 1989, Vol. 15 N°1, pp. 25-31

Picture 62. a) A petroglyph from Syunik portraying the image of a vulture’s head (Upper Paleolithic era), b)

statuette of a vulture’s head, Portasar (Göbekli. X-VIII millennia BC.)108,, c, d) statuettes of vulture heads,

Nemrik (Northern Iraq , XI-VIII millennia BC.)109:

b dc a

78

, , , , ). The character is used on its own in the petroglyphs and also frequently ligatured to animal images and other abstract characters. Of the animal images, the character is usually ligatured to the lion image (see picture 63).

Picture 63. Examples of the ligature of the lion-image and character from the Syunik

petroglyphs

Here it appears as the determinative for the “vulture, aperture, door, gateway”

meaning and indicates that it is necessary to read the lion image with its aroy>aru= “aperture,

door, path of the water” meaning. Of the abstract characters, the character is usually

ligatured to the characters relating to water, current (see picture 64).

Picture 64. Examples of the ligature of the character from the Syunik petroglyphs.

Of these abstract characters, the character is also more frequently ligatured to the

=ket=”dot” character ( , , , ). If we take into account the

ar/ari/eri=“bowels of the earth, underworld” and aru=“aperture, door, path for water”

meanings of the character and remember that the words get(-in)=“surface of the soil,

ground” and get=“current of water, river” are ideographed with the “ket” character, then the

following readings are possible for the or ligature:

79

Reading of

character

Meaning of reading Reading and meaning of the or

character

= ari/eri bowels of the earth,

underworld

= get river, current

Ari get=“river of the bowels of the

earth”

Literally: “first river”

= aru aperture, crack, door

= get ground, surface of the earth

aru getni=“passage of the ground,

fissure, door of the earth”

= aru aperture, crack, door

= get river, current

arugeti=“hole where water emanates,

water’s door, source”

= aru current

= get river, current

get-aru =getar=“mother river”

The reading of this final alternative has frequently been written with the ligature of

the dot and lion (get+aroy=getar) which we have spoken about above. These readings are

differentiated from each other with the aid of other characters being ligatured to the

characters.

We saw above that in the oldest ancient mythological-worldview, in order to turn the

three-tiered structure of the world (Underworld, Earth, Heaven) into one entirety the

existence of doors and gateways between them was considered vital. We also saw that there

existed deities who embodied or protected those gateways. We saw the oldest attestations to

those concepts in the Syunik petroglyphs as

presented by lion-images engraved on the

“blackboard” of the goat (dig=“goat”+ aroy=

“lion”=Diq Aroy=“god of hole, aperture,

door”). Here also the lion image was

sometimes replaced by the character (see

picture 65).

We saw on the examples of the

temples of Garni and Portasar that the

temple proper was perceived as a system of doors and gateways through which the God of

the temple would appear from the Heavens or the Underworld in the space surrounded by

columns.110 Of course one of the vital preconditions of building a temple was the existence of

a developed religion. Judging from the information on the petroglyphs we can say that the

society of the Syunik petroglyph engravers had just such a religion and built temples. We

will refer to the topic of temples in the Syunik petroglyphs separately. Here we give just two

examples, in relation to the topic being discussed.

Picture 65. character on the “blackboard” of

the goat.

We bring the first example so that the reader can get a good idea of what we are

talking about. In the Syunik petroglyphs, we often see square or rectangular images which

are separated into 4 or more sections by straight lines. Characters are put in some of the

sections. The overall picture also has ligature characters and animal images (see picture 66a

and 67): In our opinion those images on the Syunik petroglyphs represent the floor plans of a

110 . We think that Karahunǰ, Stonehenge and similar megalithic structures are examples of such temples.

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temple.111 It is this opinion that we will try to substantiate with the example of one floor

plan (see picture 66a).

The rock engraving being discussed begins with two characters, the parallels of which

we find in Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Petroglyph

characters Egyptian

hieroglyphs

Meaning of the Egyptian writing

Large/elder ( ) + house ( ) = Large house

Of course this meaning, which we obtained with the help of Egyptian hieroglyphs,

refers to the temple.112 We know that the concept of “temple” is expressed in just the same

way in Sumerian: E2-gal=house (E2) + large(gal)=“temple”. Thus these two characters, as an

epigraph, point out that a large house, a temple, is portrayed below. Below these there are

two lion-images which as we saw above show that door through which God enters the

temple. The actual floor-plan of the temple is below the lion-images.

According to the floor-plan, the structure is split into four sections. The hieroglyph

= “god, idol” is on the = “water basin” hieroglyph in the upper left side and above it

that is the =“water” hieroglyph. The =”spring, source, well” hieroglyph is in the

upper right section.

If we interpret this floor plan with the meanings of the above mentioned Egyptian

hieroglyphs then without any question we will assert that the floor plan represents a temple

for the worship of water, which is built precisely on the source of the water. The images of a

goat and leopard (or female lion) are on the right side of the ground plan. The leopard image

Picture 66. a) Rectangular ground plan of a temple, Syunik petroglyphs, b) group of 7

characters, Syunik petroglyphs.

b a

111 . The bases for our statistical analysis were 802 petroglyphs or structures, contained 12 rectangles/squares (or

with partially curved corners) floor plans. In other words the number of rock fragments containing floor plans

was almost 1.5%. 112 . We will refer to the readings of Sumerian pictographs and Egyptian hieroglyphs (including these two),

their Armenian parallels and comparison with the Syunik petroglyphs in our next work.

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is the next topic we examine. However, here we feel it necessary to present the “ǝnj, ǝnś”

root homonymous to the native Armenian word for leopard inj, ǝnj, inś, the verb form of

which being ǝnjuil, ǝnśuil=“to spring, to originate”. If we read the image of the goat

homonymously as Diq=“god” then we get the other epigraph for the inscription: the name of

the god worshipped in the temple. Diq Ǝnśay, Diq Ǝnjay= “god originator, god generator”.

Picture 67. Ground plans of temples in the Syunik petroglyphs. The Egyptian = “god”

hieroglyph is present in the first three.

The oldest structures with rectangular ground plans are considered to be those

discovered at Mureybet (northern Syria, XI÷VIII millennia BC).113 If the data on the Syunik

petroglyphs is confirmed by archaeological excavations, then of course that opinion will be

reviewed.

Besides rectangular ground plans, there are also ground plans in which rectangular and

round structures are combined (see picture 68). It can be assumed that as well as the

dissemination of domesticated goats, pictography and other values of civilisation, the

inscribers of these ground plans also spread the science of building walls and building

rectangular and round dwellings. Apart from the information concerning this from the

petroglyphs, linguistic data also attests to this. The word “pat” in Armenian has the meanings

of both “wall, partition” and “turn, circle”114. The latter is the main meaning of “pat” and the

idea of “to build a wall, to encase” comes from the idea of preparing a high circular-shaped

barrier of stone around an enclosure. By covering the roof of this circular stone barrier with

twigs and grass they secured a haven, abode to protect themselves from the rain, wind, beasts

and other dangers. Such an abode where funerals were also performed, previously also had

the function of a sacred area, a temple.115

The Armenian word “pat” with the “wall” meaning (in dialects: pad, bad, bod) has its

parallels in Sumerian: bad3, bat3 =“wall”. In Egyptian, the “wall” meaning is expressed by the

սագ(sag)=“goose” or բադ(bad)=“duck” hieroglyph ( ). Egyptologists have decoded the

“son, chick” meaning of the sa reading corresponding to the “son” meaning of this

hieroglyph. The Armenian homonymous pair sag=“goose” and zag=“young of animals, chick;

metaphorically, young child” are suitable for such ideography. However, the pat/pad/bad

=“wall” meaning of the hieroglyph prompts us that it should also have the bad=”duck bird”

reading homonymous to the word pat= “wall, partition”.

113 . See CANeW project data (http://www.canew.org/) 114 . H. Ačaryan, Armenian etymological dictionary, see section on “pat”. 115 . E. B. Banning, Housing Neolithic Farmers, Near Eastern Archaeology, v. 66, №1-2, 2003

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These facts allow us to express an opinion that the architecture of stone structures and

particularly temple building originated in the region of Syunik at the time of the culture of

petroglyphs or earlier. Not only are the ground plans in the petroglyphs of Syunik and the

linguistic data evidence of this, but also archaeological evidence that the oldest (300.000

years old) round stone abode, with a hearth surrounded by stones, has been discovered in the

Hadruţ region of the Republic of Kharabakh, in the Azokh cave, neighbouring the Syunik

petroglyphs.116

Now let us refer to the

second image in picture 66. In

the upper part of this petroglyph

we see seven characters; that

is, a group comprised of seven

“mehs”. Bearing in mind what

was said about the temple above,

the existence of the floor plans of

temples in the Syunik petroglyphs

and the images of the T-shaped columns of the temples of Portasar, we have certain grounds

to assume that the group of seven characters is the image of a Portasar-type temple.

Picture 68. Plans of correlated rectangular and round

constructions in the Syunik petroglyphs.

We think that these facts give us sufficient grounds to assume that we must search for

the sources of Portasar’s temple complex (unique in its kind) in Syunik, by implementing

relevant archaeological research.

116 . T. King, Y. Fernandez-Jalvo, N. Moloney et al., Exploration and Survey of Pleistocene Hominid Sites in

Armenia and Karabagh, Antiquity, Vol 77, No 295, March 2003

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