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Page 8
The images of supernatural beings (double-headed snakes, hydres, dragons, dragon-goats and other fantastic creatures related with cosmic representations) are numerous on the rock-carved pictures of the Gueghamian mountains. The Hurrian, and later on the Armenian legends, riddles, tales about wicked dragons, wise snakes, dragon-killing heroes and deities have originated from here. Many rock-carved pictures, found in the Armenian mountains, represent the struggle between heroes and dragon-snakes, which find their parallels on the cobanian axes figuring the exploits of Amiran as well as in the legends of Artavazd and Vahagn. One of the huge rock-carved pictures of Vardenis is dedicated to the struggle of solar and thunderer divinities. The three groups of geometrical images represented here comprise large and beautiful solar symbols, crosses, the crescent and numerous half-spheric engravings representing the stars. Below these is found a marvellous composition, which seems to be the legendary interpretation of geometrical symbols. Here is shown the sun god together with the wheel, the horse and the crescent. In front of it the lightning divinities are standing amidst an incongruous mixture of enormous snake-lightnings, which represent the thundering sky-belt at the fierce struggle of the gods. Certain attributes and functions of the "Vardenisian divinities" have been preserved in the images of the Armenian gods Vahagn and Mihr and of the heroes of Sassoon. Some of the latter have the appearance of a terrible thunder-lightning (Sanasar and Baghdasar), the others that of a water-born fiery horse related with the sea and the sun, some of them are dragon-killing (Vahagn), others are figured holding serpentine lightnings and wearing a radiating head cover (Mihr). Many of them are sun-lightning divinities, half-divine and half-human images, luminous ancestors of Armenian or pre-Armenian tribes, just as was represented the legendary patriarch Haik of the succeeding epoch: as an ancestor and fearless hunter, surrounded by animals in n hunting scene, and as a shining and beautiful star, with its constellation. For that reason it is quite likely that many of the anthropomorphic figures of the Gueghamian engravings represent ancestors, sanctified and divinified by huntsmen painters, together with astral symbols. It is not possible that the Armenian races coming from the palaeolithic and having many hunting traditions should not have kept legends and memories of the exploits and the feats of their ancestral hunters, ancestors, which having left for their peculiar world, became mighty and influent spirits, protecting and helping the living generations. Logically it is quite clear that many of the anthropomorphic figures depicted in the hunting or mythical scenes, or separately, and reduced to a few simple lines (fig. 88 - 98), should represent ancestors or their spirits, associated with the starry sky. In the imagination of many peoples, and especially of aborigine Armenians, the specific world of the ancestors was the sky, where they were turned into constellations and miraculously influenced the fate of the living race and of each of its members.
As we saw above, the large rock-carved picture of Vardenis, representing an association of constellations and men, could also be connected with the concept of deification of the ancestors. The engravings of this type form a quite large group in Armenia and deserve particular study. Here we may present some of them.
Of the Gueghamian rock-carved pictures the one bearing the number 265 is a simple composition, consisting of two goat images and two schematic figures of women, which quite enough resemble the feminine idols of Jericho, Byblos; Yumuk-Tepe (Mersin), Crete, the Cyclades, Cnosoa and even the Neolithic feminine idols of faraway Portugal and of the Bronze-age of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaidjan. There is also a picture on the slopes of mount Aragats, which is altogether identical by its semantics. It also consists of goat pictures and four conventional human figures, which however, contrary to the previous ones, bear on themselves the marks of feminine profilicacy (the navel and the vulva).
The above mentioned rock-carved picture of Aragats has also other interesting details: small circles or astral symbols carved near one of the goats, and which unmistakably show the tie between the goats and conventional human figures with the sky-belt or simply the fact of their being luminaries. This is more clearly revealed in two rock-carved pictures of Vardenis, in one of which (fig. 292) the anthropomorphic and the goat erescentlike images are j uxtaposed with semy-spheric holes taken into oval circles (fig. 324): astral constellations (62 in number), while in the other (fig. 291) are pictured beautiful shining suns, a somewhat hydre-like creature and an enormous quantity of three-rowed stars instead of the goats. Finally one of the most interesting rock-carved pictures of Vardenis has a similar topic: a large solar disc with a cross-like core, and four anthropomorphic figures standing on it with their arms wide-spread. The composition includes also a conventional feminine double-idol and pictographic two signs, one of which is a crescent and the other an ideographic symbol, resembling the Armenian letter . The motive of double idols and of "sun inhabitating" men and women, which is specific to the early cultures of the East, happens in the prehistoric rock-pictures, as well as in the sepulchral ritual materials. The four anthropomorphic figures presented in a cross-like disposition on the bottom of Samara's decorated chalcolitic earthenware (V millennium B. C.) afford a great interest. They are not only "sun-inhabitants", but also anthropomorphic suns with spread arms and wide opened 3 fingers, and wavy long hair. Similar pictures are met also in pre-dinastic Susa. There are also many figures of "sun inhabitating" men or spirits in the Bronze-age rock- paintings of Europe, and particularly in the ornamental motives of the late bronze age sepulchral earthenware of a part of historical Armenia (the actual Azerbaijan).
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