Yerevan - 1971

During the last hundred years tens of thousands of rock - carved pictures and other monuments of archaic art have been discovered in the different countries of Europe, Africa and Asia, even in the lifeless sandy deserts now existing; they have reached us in great abundance from nearly all the hearths of the remotest history of human society, wherein has stepped the prehistoric hunter, the first thoughtful animalbreeder and husbandman.
The Armenian highlands as an integral of the ancient world, as one of the initial cradles of human culture, are extremely rich with marvels of prehistoric art, original and multifarious rock-carved images, about which numerous informations and reports have been published during almost 60 years. According to these, on the great many mountain peaks of Armenia, on the alpian slopes, in the caverns, on the bare mirror of the rocks and even on the flat surface of the volcanic protuberances in the lowlands, on tens of hundreds of kilometers, are spread extensive agglomerations of prehistoric rock-carved images, extending from the skirts of the Aragats to the Armenian Taurus, unto Assyria, till the frontiers of Palestine and Iraq. There are especially large groups of rock-carved pictures on the peaks and the slopes of the Gueghamian, Vardenis, Djermouk and the Siounic mountains. Among these are particularly remarkable the picture collections of the Gueghamian mountains, the great majority of which has been studied during the years 1966 - 1968 by a special expeditional party of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR.
The few dozens of volcanic crests and intermediate which configurate the Gueghamian mountains, from the sources of the river Hrazdan up to the peak Gundasar, border the high mountain barrier of the lake Sevan from the west and close the Small Caucasian ring over there. During the late quaternary and the Holocene periods their beautiful slopes get covered by alpian luxuriant grasslands and massives of large-stemmed trees. Dozens of small pends appear in the craters of the volcanis cones; rivers, creeks and frozen water-springs take their sources in the mountain - peaks. Owing to them, more and more animals, originated long ago, are raised on the Gueghamian mountains, new animals appear and multiply, the high-mountain ponds are filled with variegated flocks of water birds. While pursuing them, the prehistoric hunter, the early animal-breeder and husbandman move unto the summits of the Gueghamian mountains. Due to the natural and climatic, life giving conditions, to the luxuriant and profuse vegetation, as well as to the inimitable, contemplative beauty of the animal world and of the nature, these areas become important microregions of chalcolithic-bronze age economy and of prehistoric culture development, with specific types of archaeological remnants, summer resort settlements, small groups of sepulchres, huge caverns of dragon-fishes, assemblages of wonderful rock-carved images lying upon natural concavities and protuberant stones, all of which were the cherished sanctuaries of the prehistoric hunters and animal-breeders, (r)temples of ancient art and worship. In these sanctuaries, everything has been expressed by different men, in different times and for different purposes, by means of three to four thousand compositional, simple or complex figures representing humans or animals, isolated or assembled, which are remarkable for the adequately generalized expression of the distinctive particularities of the objects depicted, in spite of their geometrical, stylized forms and the diversity of their styles.

click on thumbnail(s) for large preview

These picture groups of the mountain sanctuaries give, by their wide scope and concreteness, a sufficiently clear idea not only of the main premises for the lasting and development of the local communities, i. e. the diversity of the opulent fauna, and hence of the natural and climatic conditions, and of the flora, but also of the economic life of that period: hunting, domestication and breeding of animals.
These are the circumstances according to which was being shaped the primitive management of production and wherefrom originated the rituals and ceremonials of the hunting-animal raising and of the first land-cultivating races, as well as the concepts referring to the star-crowded sky and the universe, and the ancestral cults of the sun, the heavenly bodies, the natural forces and fertility, together with a great many aspects of prehistoric spiritual life, with which we get acquainted exclusively by means of the rock-carved images. Within the pictures of the Gueghamian mountains are conspicuous, first of all, the enormous quantity and diversity of quite different species of animals.
These are:
the bison, the wild bull (or cow), the Caucasian noble deer, the gigantic reindeer, the elk, the roe and the djeiran, the horse (much later), the wild ass, the fox, the wolf, the wild boar, the lynx, the leopard, a number of small-sized animals, different species of dogs, various kinds of reptiles, the duck, the goose, the stork, the swan, the partridge, etc...
Some of these animals have definitely disappeared now from Armenia and their fossil remains are met only in animal burials having existed tens of thousands years ago, subsequently to their catastrophic annihilation. The perpetuation of palaeolithic, early quaternary animal figures on the rock-carved pictures of the chalcolithic bronze age evidently indicates, that climatic severe changes have not occurred during the late glacial period in Armenia, and that the herds of herbivorous big animals were preserved, serving as a basis for the further development of late-palaeolithic game-hunting, as well as for the transition from game-hunting to animal-breeding in a very early historical period. If we add to this the gathering practice developing on the basis of the existing numerous varieties of wild cereals, and the great possibilities for the transition to early agriculture, we may acknowledge that prehistoric Armenia, owning a great basis of production, became, together with Asia Ninor, the Trans-Caucasus and northern Mesopotamia, western Iran and Turkmenistan, Syria, Assyria and Palestine, one of the important hearths for the "moulding of the Hither Asian historical arena", which was impregnated within its natural borders outstretching from the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates to Mesopotamia, the valleys of the rivers Arax and Kour, from the Somkhetian and the Small Caucasus mountains unto the Taurus and the Anti-Taurus, by a great revolutionary process in the shaping of productive economy.

click on thumbnail(s) for large preview

In the afro-asian rock-carved images of that period, we meet almost everywhere with various game-hunting scenes, which testify to the highest development of that branch of economy. From that point of view, the Gueghamian rock-carved pictures hold a considerable place. Here the hunters are represented bare, in mobile and typical shapes, as well as dressed, wearing different kinds of head coverings, sometimes even high-pointed foot-wears, and also animal or bird - resembling masks. They are armed with big or small, seldom finely-shaped bows, clubs, spears, thongs. Nets and elementary pit-traps are shown in some of the pictures. Especially numerous are the pictures of hunters and dogs chasing (alone or in pairs) bisons, wild bulls, reindeers or their small herds. Often the lonely hunter is figured with only a rope against the wild bull, or amidst a big herd of animals, ready to send the arrow. However, we also happen to meet splendid and dynamic, large compositions, with dozens of animals, a multitude of hunters and dogs shrewdly encircling the game and depicted within consecutively connected scenes of premeditated game-hunting operations, wherein are figured panic-struck, headlong fleecing, deadly frightened, wounded or killed, or on the contrary, ready to attack, furious animals.
In such pictures, all the living creatures are very often represented impressively dynamical, quick-acting, with characteristic movements, causing an aesthetic pleasure to the observer. The herds of reindeers chased by the hunter, moving beneath their own exuberant and splendid corns, often give the impression of a thick forest, in the ramified panorama of which are scarcely noticed the hunter and the dog. In the rock-carved pictures of a later period horse-riding hunters are also met with. All of these pictures are so typical, characteristic and explicit for the hunting-animal raising mode of life, that they seem to be "canvases" reproducing the real facts. However, the geometrical symbols of the sun, of the moon and of the other heavenly bodies, the token-bearing figures of anthropomorphic deities, of fantastic animals and of men and women, definitively disclose the unreal, religious -magic nature of the game-hunting scenes. The main essence of these pictures lies in that the prehistoric hunter tries by means of simulative sorcery, to attain the real, calling for help his remote and close ancestors who were assumed to live in the sky-belt and were remembered in the legends as intrepid game-hunters and skilful animal-raisers.
The powerful forces of nature, i. e. the patronizing spirits and the divinities, were also called for help. The game-hunting ceremonials and the ritual dances are connected namely with these conceptions; they are not often, but with exceptional vigor represented in the rock-carved pictures of the Gueghamian mountains and have their precise analogues in the rock inscriptions of Asia and Africa, and in the ethnography of contemporary hunting races that still carry on a prehistoric way of life. The hunting races of the Lannes even nowadays continue to carve similar images for their secret rituals, ceremonials and immolations before going to hunt. They offer presents and sacrifices even to the "prehistoric" engravings and carve on their weapons the figures of those animals, that they want to kill.

click on thumbnail(s) for large preview

The similar sights occurring everywhere within the elevated regions of Armenia emphasize, by their religious-cultural, magic essence, the significant place hold by game-hunting in the development of primitive husbandry during long millennia. It is not incidental that the excavated skeletal remains of the wild animals depicted on the Gueghamian mountains - the deer, the large roe, the bison, the leopard, the goat, the fox, the partridge, the duck, the goose, the swan - are also encountered in the excavations of the settlements of the Ararat plain, dating the 5 - 1 millennia B. C. This means that the early cultivator and animal-breeder of the Ararat plain had gained possession of the alpine meadows of the Gueghamian mountains, had created wonderful sanctuaries on the mountains and left their traces on all the mountain-paths and since they were definitively established in the fertile valley of the Arax, with their adobe habitations and their irrigated land-parcels, the possibilities of using the meadows and the hunting places, and of perpetuating the sanctuaries of the Gueghamian mountains grew everlasting, becoming root and stalk for the effective development of primitive husbandry and of the prehistoric traditions of social and spiritual life. The abundance of the rock-carved pictures of the Gueghamian mountains, the wideness of their scope, their gradual development, numerous nuances and styles, their particularities should be explained by these crucial circumstances of socio-economic order.
The most distinctive and particular aspect of the hunting scenes of the Gueghamian sanctuaries is that the prehistoric hunter often strives not to kill the victim, to isolate and spare the youngs, to hunt them with a club or a rope, without weapons, by means of traps, etc... Two tendencies of the development of primitive economy are combined in such images: hunting and preserving the game from ruthless destruction, with the potential aim of creating an everlasting and reliable source of food.
This tendency of economic development is distinctly noticed in those rock-carved pictures, in which large groups of animals are juxtaposed to astral symbols proclaiming their celestial origin. In such compositions, the animal families made up by a corresponding number of males, females and youngsters, now and then move towards the water aligned tail-to-tail, or quietly graze, mixed together, free and widespread, sometimes forming heterogeneous groups of cows, bulls, goats and other cattle, looking like communal herds of domesticated animals. All this reveals man's perilous and difficult struggle on the secular pathways of domesticating and raising animals, at a time when the prehistoric hunter and animal-breeder recurred not only to his skill, his knowledge, his ingenuity and his primitive technique, but also to the ancestors, the spirits, the gods, sorcery, etc... A considerable number of the Gueghamian rock carved pictures represents strap-hold animals with their forefect and posterior fect tied together, or fettered goats leading their herds, tall men guarding the animals, little boys and watchdogs, or men pulling the hunted animals by the muzzle, the beard, the tail or the corns with the aid of strips.

click on thumbnail(s) for large preview

In one of the magnificent dynamic pictures of this group, the besoarian goats, moving from left to right, are figuring within the environment of dogs, stellar symbols and pictographic emblems. In the center of the composition is the image of an anthropomorphic creature in a bewitching position, on the left side of which is figured the sun. This picture probably represents a celestial shepherd, an animal-protecting deity or the worshipped image of a pastoral ancestor. In some of the similar compositions of a religious-cultural-magic nature are also pictured celestial mighty bulls, with jets of water thrusting from the mouth. Bull - headed similar bas-reliefs are found on the famous dragon stelae, that can be interpreted as monuments enshrining the concept of the natural elements and of fertility. In the popular mentality, the concept of the dragon is identified with that of the storm, the thunder and the lightning, together with transformations of the bull, the fish or a beast of burden, all this combined with the mighty forces of nature and the concept of fertility connected with them.
There are many pictures directly expressing the concept and the cult of fertility and in which are represented animals feeding their little ones, groups of animals with their youngs, magical procedures performed for the prolification of animals, the whole within an environment of men, women, solar and lightning divinities, all of which emphasize the importance of fertility.
In many religions, especially in prehistoric times, everything was inferred to the concept of fruitfulness, prolificiency, life reproduction, revival, perpetuation and flourishing of the animal and vegetable world. Namely for that reason the ceremonies and the rites dedicated to the cult of fertility were not confined to the mountainous sanctuaries of the animal-breeders, but were continued through the winter and the prevernal heavy season in the sacred assembly rooms or in the holy corners of ordinary habitations in the other localities of Armenia, where we find numerous fertility-dedicated statuettes of animals or of women. The custom of making statuettes continued in Armenia during the late bronze and early iron ages, the ancient times and Christianity. By cooking, on the New Year days, animal-resembling pancakes and feeding them to animals, people believed in the possibility of realizing general welfare.
Thus the above mentioned rock-carved pictures show, in spite of their religious-cultural nature and essence, not only the material possibilities, the means, the premises and the ways of edifying a productive economy, but also the development, as a result of the appropriation of the mountainous pastures in the post-glacial period, of early semi-nomadic animal husbandry, which served as a solid basis for the development of secondary trades, the accumulation and the exchange of surplus products and thereby for ethnical consolidation. The development, during the chalcolithic bronze age period, of a culture essentially united by its form, its nature and its geographic expansion results in the concentration and the shaping of ethnical large agglomerations in the Armenian highlands. The great and thorough development of prehistoric art, the extensive distribution of rock-carved pictures, their remarkable generalities and the wide scope of their chronologic relationship are conditioned by these same circumstances. From the Aragats to the Siounic mountains, i. e. within a territory extending 180 - 200 km in straight line, we can see remarkably alike, if not identical, rock-carved pictures connected with the early development of game-hunting-animal domestication and breeding, which have been the result of the All-Armenian economic thorough changes.

click on thumbnail(s) for large preview

The creation of the material basis for the development of social life and the formation of ethnical great unions was favoring, in its turn, the shaping of the early laud cultivating-animal raising mentality and of the religious beliefs and worships. Incited by the most practical needs of domestic life, the prehistoric herder and land-,tiller turned to the starry sky, the high tide and the low tide of the rivers; they were the first unsophisticated "investigators" of the climatic changes, who interpreted these phenomena in their own way, supported by a brilliant imagination that turned them into beautiful tales and legends. Many of the rock -carved pictures of the Gueghamian mountains are directly related with myths and legends originating from the cult of the starry sky, the moon and the luminaries, the other elemental deities and the worship of ancestors, a considerable part of which has reached, from the Hurrian-Armenian crater, the actual stage of Armenian folklore. In the prehistoric sanctuaries of the Gueghamian mountains we may come across an extremely great number of geometrical carvings figuring the sun, the moon, the lightning, the stars, as well as whole complexes of symbols, which bear in themselves the concept of the stellar system. The apprehensions and the worships connected with these survived until the early middle -ages, particularly among the sectarians, who worshipped the sun as a deity, representing it as a radiant wheel, and explained the very existence of all living creatures by its almightiness, since they are all dependent of its nature, as the rays are dependent of the wheel, since "... it is itself a wheel and a multiplicity of rays". This is easily connected with the idea of the chariot. For that reason it is likely that the pictures of the variously shaped carts met in the engravings of the Gueghamian mountains and elsewhere may be connected with the cult of the sun, since the bulls drawing them and the surrounding other animals are nothing else than celestial bodies. In the art of the 3-rd millennium B. C. we find a multitude of carts and chariots drawn by oxen or bulls having stellar symbols on their fronts; the pictures of anthropomorphic solar deities and of war -chariots or carts were also common among the late bronze age and Urartian objects of art and worship. On one of the Urartian imprints is figuring a wonderful cart, over which is shining the sun; it is followed by the priest with his arms extended (or by the solar deity itself) and also by the fantastic griffin-goat offered to the sun and bearing a solar mark on its chest. In another imprint is figuring a boat (instead of the cart), a figure of a man, surrounded by animal and astral figures. In the Armenian popular mentality the sun and the moon are always together: on a cart or in a boat. In allusion of the sun-and-moon concept the Armenian riddle says "There's a sea, brother and sister are travelling together in a boat". Here the "brother and sister" are assumed to be the solar and lunar divinities, while the "sea" is interpreted as the purple sky belt. In the Gueghamian rock -carved pictures the cult of the firmament and of the heavenly bodies is often related with the birds. In the center of one of the pictures representing a constellation the sun is figured as a radiant wheel, upon which is shown a large bird, its beak pointed to the "blazing" globe.
Similar pictures related to middle-late bronze age are often met with in the art of that period and have their parallel in the following popular enigma "A bird flying across the sky, a hooked bill and a golden pan". In another riddle the sun, the moon and the stars are represented as birds "I have a poultry-yard, with two brood-hens and their chicken". In the Gueghamian rock-carved pictures there are unique group-images of aquatic birds accompanied by anthropomorphic ghosts and stellar symbols. Another group of pictures symbolizes the thunder-lightning or the natural elements. There are goats standing alone, with crosses and swastikas carved on their bodies, between the corns or upon the head and, which is the most important, with little beads ranged in circle and in rays, that give the impression of flashes emitted from their waist. These pictures of "sparkling" goats seem to have been done for illustrating the Armenian popular riddle "Itself a goat, with a sparkling waist". This riddle is the Laconic interpretation of the lightning.
By depicting animals our ancestors meant to represent not only the sun, the moon and the lightning, but also the whole of the star-adorned sky or the universe.

click on thumbnail(s) for large preview

Gueghamian many picture-groups have their astral symbols which apprise that unimorphic or polymorphic animals were luminary bodies. The ancient Armenians also figured out that the firmament was such. The riddle says "The kurd wearing a white turban and standing amidst a herd of sheep, day and night looks at the world". Here the sheep represent the heavenly bodies, whilst the shepherd (the Kurd) represents the sun or the moon. In the prehistoric rock-carved pictures, as also in the above mentioned riddle, together with the herds of animals are represented anthropomorphic, large, prominent figures, with wide-extended arms, a crescent like or radial unfolding, sometimes entirely lying in the glow of lightning rays, which reveals that they are solar, lunar or lightning deities. The above-mentioned celestial divinities are often represented together in the rock-carved pictures, as the sun and the moon are very frequently mentioned together as "brother and sister" in the Armenian riddles. Many of these god-images are depicted with an accentuated male organ, even in the magic process of fertilizing the earth, as if to emphasize once more the natural tie existing between the sun and fertility. In some other cases, the anthropomorphic deities of the sun, the moon and the lightning are represented as forces protecting the animals and leading agriculture to flourish; their analogue is represented in the European rock-carved pictures with a sickle in the hand, as the Armenian goddess of fertility, with its "sickle-bearing" or "bull-herder" surnames. The importance of these pictures (profoundly significant as to their composition and their semantic role) was so great, that they continued to be carved until the late-bronze and early-iron period and decorated the walls of the sacred earthenware of Dvin (9 - 8 centuries B. C.) and unsequently spread throughout Urartian glyptic and Ancient art in the form of bronze statuettes or incised "ornamentations". Very interesting is the fallic image of the anthropomorphic sun-deity, with radiant extremities, or that of the life-tree and of the radiant celestial Pegasus, which is represented in the role of land-fertility (and not animal fertility) destower.
On both faces of another Urartian seal are represented, on one side, the thunder-lightning deity standing on a bull with its "radiating" arms upholded, on the other - the anthropomorphic figure of the "radiating" sun god kneeling before the winged disk of the Sassouryan sun deity. This second glyptic figure shows that in Urartian religion the elemental divinities are not only conceived and depicted as reciprocally related (as in the rock-carved pictures), but also wear traditional "rock-carved" picture forms, together with genuine Urartian or Assyrian additions. The difference lies in that the thunder-lightning "walking" deity of the local races here is riding a bull and is named after the Minor Asian god of the elements, Teshoub, while the equally ancient, local sun-deity is known under the Moussassyrian name of Ardin. The semantic affinities or Urartian glyptic art with the rock -carved pictures are also revealed by other comparisons of seal-incised, linear figures of dragon-snakes, reindeers, goats, mask-wearing archers surrounded by pictographic and ideographic stellar symbols.
Among the late bronze age and Urartian monuments of art and worship the analogues of the rock-carved pictures of the Gueghamian mountains clearly indicate the homogenous character of the land cultivating-animal breeding ideology that progressed on the basis of millennial traditions, upon a background of socio-economic, political and ethnical changes Absolutely identical images of solar and elemental divinities, endowed with astonishing vitality, are met everywhere - in Mesopotamia and the Iranian plateau, in Azerbaidjan, Central Asia, Siberia, in many countries of Europe and Africa, in the contemporary African creations of art and on the Armenian earthenware of the 19th century.

click on thumbnail(s) for large preview

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).

click on thumbnail(s) for large preview

The latter are distributed concentrically around the openings of earthenware vessels and on their walls, bencath the meandrical radial sun, next to the swastikas and celestial goats, and represent spirits of the ancestral hunters or gods, as well as feminine, solar, point-filled figures with up-stretched arms and wide-opened three fingers also have their parallels of the shining, starry sky-belt and anthropomorphic stylized figures in the rock-carvings and on the early sepulchral monuments of Portugal, Spain and a number of European countries, a fact that indicates the diffusion of the concepts about the sky into the worship of sepulchres. The pictures of animals, the celestial symbols, the human spread-armed figures (Nakhichevan, Shamiram, etc.) carved on a number of pre-historic sepulchres, or the little feminine idols placed in them, bear evidence that the cult of the ancestors and of the dead was closely connected with celestial concepts, and that the sky and the beyond the grave world were understood as forming a unity, as two equal elements of the universe. In this connection Armenian popular beliefs and worships, which refer to the ancestors and the dead, as well as to the interrelations of the soul and the body, are extremely interesting. The analogous materials, investigated by M. Abeghyan at the end of the XIX century, in spite of their Christian touch, have retained traces of the pre-historic way of thinking, which help us to understand the essence and the meaning of the rock-carved pictures. According to Abeghyan Armenians believed that the human souls were identified with constellations, were thought of as related with the stars. Not only the soul, but also the body and the bodily strength, is related with the stars: "When a hero is in trouble", writes Abeghyan, "his star grows dim, when he fights with someone, then his star fights with that of his foe in the sky". The Armenians believed that the worshipped ancestors and their stars were aids, protecting spirits, holy beings, and for that reason they were swearing by them as by their father's grave and were turning to the stars for help. Even the Middle -age living menestrel turns to the stars, begging for consolation. The Armenian conceptions (studied by the same Abeghyan) that immaculate people are living on the stars in heaven, that the soul is light itself brilliancy, that it has the shape of a shining sphere within the living man, that the souls of ancestors appear in the shape of human specters, etc. etc., are also very interesting from the point of view of the interpretation of prehistoric rock-carved pictures. The similar conceptions of the contemporary primitives appear with more unmingled and immediate forms, though they do not essentially differ from the above mentioned. According to their belief, the ancestors have become constellations, they live on the stars and the suns, they collaborate with and influence the living races and their members through their astral existence.
The Chuckchees living in the northern part of the USSR often use to say about the dead, that they went to heaven and were turned into stars; they show the star-embellished sky and say: that is a people who was very numerous in the past, whereas now scarce. All these conceptions probably have not gone very far from the way of thinking of the neolithic Azilian races, which kept in the caverns cobble-stones decorated with astral or anthropomorphic conventional figures and believed that they are keeping and preserving the strength and the ability of their ancestors. Even to-day, the savages of Tasmania prepare wood-made tchurings resembling the Azilian, decorated, spheric pebbles. They carefully keep the tchurings in the caverns, believing that they bear the souls of the dead. When the Tasmanian is asked about the meaning of the tchurings, he answers that they are their far ancestors. The Arunta races of Central Australia also have holy tchuring caverns enclosing the souls of all the male and female ancestors. They believe that the tchuring is the embodiment of the dead, the soul and the features of which have passed into their present ower and tutor. The above-mentioned materials of the Gueghamian mountains, of Vardenis and Aragats, the data offered by the Armenian philology and general ethnography, seem to confirm the fact that in the most, noticeable areas of pre-historic sanctuaries the carved images of anthropomorphic figures and star decorated belts were drawn for worshipping the souls of the ancestors and of the dead. This is observed in connection with the rock-carved images discovered all over the world, and is common for the pre-historic beliefs and religions in general.
When speaking about the essence and the meaning of the Armenian rock-carved pictures, we should not forget a most important fact, which has often been mentioned above. That is, the presence of symbolized pictograms in different groups of engravings, which are worth being deeply studied.
These pictograms are widely spread among the pre-historic monuments of Armenia and Georgia, upon fragments of rocks, earthen- ware vessels, the walls of the Dmanikian sepulchral vast halls and upon various other objects and artifacts. They are also wide-spread among numerous ancient rock-images of Asia and Europe and the monuments of contemporary Australian art. Their extensive use in the rock-carved pictures, on the walls of sepulchres and on ritual earthenware allows to believe that pictographic writing existed in pre-historic Armenia probably since the V - IV millennia B. C., which might have served for magical purposes and became a basis for the so-called Mehenian writings.

click on thumbnail(s) for large preview

How interesting the Gueghamian rock-carved pictures may be, they can not be reliable sources for historical investigation without scientific chronology and classification. Unfortunately, being deprived of immediate and absolute chronological sources, we are obliged to refer to the inherent possibilities of the rock-carved pictures: their formal, stylistical and topical peculiarities, as well as to the comparative method of historical analogues, through which it is possible to form an approximate, but, as yet, only general idea about the origin and perpetuation of monuments, which are interesting for us. The enormous quantity of the Gueghaminn rock-carved pictures, the double and triple superposition of the images, their stylistic and technical peculiarities indicate that they encompass a very long period of time, and that having begun from the aeneolithic they persisted till the iron age.
The diversified composition of the rock-carved pictures, including representatives of the quaternary fauna and their contemporary domesticated species, the great number and numerous species of dogs, the pictures related with the domestication of animals seem to establish the late neolithic-eneolithic stage of culture of the pre-historic races in Armenia. That was the epoch when new economic formations were created owing to an organized collective influence and on the basis of an opulent animal and plant kingdom, and favourable natural conditions. According to the data presented by the palaeozoologist S. K. Mezhlumyan, the skeletal remains of wild animals depicted in the rock-carved images-bulls, cows, goats, etc.- occur in the early agricultural-animal-raising settlements of the V - III millennia B. C. Once animals were domesticated and raised, the need of hunting their wild predecessors, was gradually restricted: the relatively scarce rock-carved pictures of bisons, wild bulls, giant deers were giving place to hunting scenes displaying smaller animals.
We may conclude from all this that the oldest group of the Gueghamian rock-images chronologically precedes the development of animal-raising in the IV millennium B. C. and in a certain measure proceeds in parallel with it, but not later than the III mil. B. C. The Hither and Central Asian, as well as the caucasian analogues of the early group of the Gueghamian hunting pictures relate almost to the same period. Among them are well dated the sanctuaries of the QI millennium B. C. discovered in the III, VII, VIIa layers of the Chatal-Huyuk settlement (the Iconia field), which are quite skin the engravings of the Geghamian mountains by a numher of their wall-paintings. There are many aeneolithic-bronze Age rock -carved pictures in the south-eastern regions of contemporary Turkey, in Armenian and Northern Mesopotamia (Adiaman, Demir-Kape), on the east-Mediterranean borders of the historical Assyria-Palestine, and on the Mediterranean littoral of Anatoly, which constitute, together with the pictures found in the Azerbaijanian Kobstan and Central Asia, the closest chronological and typological parallels of' our monuments. The types of solar and lightning anthropomorphic divinities depicted on the rock-images of the Gueghamian mountains and widespread all over the eastern countries, are quite characteristic of the decorated earthenware of Samarra, Susa, Yanic-Tepe dating from the V - IV millennia B. C. The similar fignres carved under gigantic bulls and numerous other pictures in the Azerbaijanian Kobstan, show the remoteness of these found in neighbouring Armenia.
The comparison of the ritual, decorated motives of the black-burnished beautiful earthenware of the III millennium B. C. with the engravings of the Gueghamian mountains permits to relate a considerable number of them to the early Bronze age. In this period the black-burnished earthenware of the Armenian Highlands spreads from the Iranian to the Soviet Azerbaijan and to contemporary southern Georgia, unto Kharberd, Malatia and the agricultural oasis of Van till the borders of Assyria-Palestine, Syria and the Northern Caucasua.
The pictures of animals and birds engraved on that earthenware are often met with in the Gueghamian mountains. Absolutely identical symbols, pictograms, geometrical figures, common for the whole prehistoric of that area, equally occur on the earthenware and in the rock-carved images. A certain number of the Gueghamian rock-images, and particularly some of the water-birds and bulls figured with streams of water ejecting from the mouth, may be related to the II millennium H. C. for their similarities with the painted earthenware and stonemade dragons of that period. All the above mentioned materials allow to conclude that the group of the early Geghamian rock-carved pictures may be related to the V - III millennia B. C., with the overwhelming prevalence of early Bronze-age engravings ( III mil. B. C.) .
The chronology of this group of rock- images, the motives of their hunting-animal keeping mentality, as well as the data obtained from the study of analogous materials and contemporary settlements, lead us to re-examine in the whole the opinions concerning the late formation of the half-nomadic form of animal-keeping, and therefore, the general periodization of Armenian culture, in the purpose of adjusting them to the chronological systems of the Hither Asian early animal-breeding and land-tilling cultures. However, the animal-breeding-land -tilling culture which had begun forever to develop in an early historical period, was progressing all the Armenian Bronze-age; the Gueghamian alpian pastures continued to fulfill their important economic function, and our ancestors did not leave their mountainous sanctuaries. For that reason the number of rock-carved, ritual, ceremonial pictures was gradually increasing during the early, middle and late iron ages. The essence and the significance of the images remain the same, though their forms, styles and compositional particularities bear definite changes. Now the caucasian noble reindeers and muflons are depicted (fig. 31, 88) just as the bronze statuettes of Lchashen and Tolors dating from the XIII - X centuries B. C. and the lineated images (of animals) found on the earthenware of Artic. Very often they prefer the entirely filled contours of dynamism-lacking images. The anthropomorphic dynamic figures of the early period with round big heads, straight-lined, powerful and disproportionate extremities are replaced by the images of entirely dressed, mask-bearing hunters (fig. 169) which correspond to those found on the bronze-made belts of Armenian and of the Caucasus dating from the XII - VIII cent. B. C. Even the arrow-heads of the hunters (fig. 175) correspond to the types occuring in great number in the sepulchral artifacts of the XI-X cent. B. C. Fantastic animals (fig. 133 - 135) are often represented in the rock-carved pictures of the II - I millennia 8. C., which almost entirely duplicate the images of the bronze-made belt of Kolakend dating from the VII cent. B. C.

click on thumbnail(s) for large preview

In this late period of rock-carving are reproduced images of solar and elemental divinities or of spirits, which correspond, by their stylistic peculiarities, to the samples of the white incrusted, lineally decorated earthenware of Khanear and Kilik-Dagh dating from the I millennium, as well as to the anthropomorphic pictures of the Bronze-made belt of Stepanavan dating from the same period, bronze statuettes resembling the divinities depicted in the rock-carved pictures of the late-Bronze, early-iron age and of the ancient periods are prepared in the inhabited sanctuaries, for worship. Similar pictures are also largely widespread in Spain, Portugal, the Scandinavian countries, Siberia and numerous other places.
By their neolithic-bronze age chronological scope and from a stadial, semantic and morphological stand-point the Andalusian engravings in southern Spain refer most of all to the Gueghamian rock-carved pictures; we can meet in them not only analogical figures of the solar and elemental divinities, but also compositions offered to the cult of the ancestors (table 253), which simply duplicate the picture groups of Vardenis, Aragats and the Gueghamian mountains (fig. 145, 291). Henry Breuil, an authority on prehistoric art, connects these pictures with those found on the earthenware in the same areas, and by a number of arguments shows that they pertain to the metals epoch. In such an analogy we must have in mind that the Armenian rock-carved pictures precede the Andalusian from the stand-point of absolute chronology, since the European neolithic age begins, in the opinion of the specialists, only in the III mil., when Armenian had entered already into the highest stage of development of the early bronze-age.
The images of horse-riding hunters undoubtedly pertain to the ritual monuments of the late period of the Gueghamian mountains, which are commonly met with in the motives of Armenian and Caucasian Bronze- made belts (Stepanavan, Treghk, Tly, etc). The riders figuring on the belt of Stepanavan closely resemble the Gueghamian rock-carved picture by the similarity of horses, the position of the men standing on them, the geometrical style of the figures and other details. This belt also pertains to the period of the widespread depiction of horses in Armenia, i. e. to the end of the II mil. and the beginning of the I mil. B. C. Such a chronological determination is confirmed by the chronology of the analogous pictures of the Caucasus, of Asia and of Europe, the majority of which does not go further than the beginning of the I millennium B. C. That concerns Kobstan, Temir-Kape and especially Daghestan. The European monuments of that type, which are found in Spain, Italy, the Carpathian and Scandinavian countries and elsewhere, do not pertain to an earlier period. It is interesting to note, for instance, that the rock-carved pictures of Camonica, in the Italian and Swiss Alps, are related to the Ig - III cent. B. C., the Daghestanian pictures - to the same or later period, while all of them resemble with all their details the above mentioned monument of the Gueghamian mountains. Here we must also take into consideration the pictures of the riding hunters found on the earthenware vessels of the prehistoric sanctuary of Dvin and encountered, as we saw above, together with the bas-relief figures of solar and elemental divinities, which bear the style of the rock-carved pictures. These ritual-ceremonial vessels have been discovered in a big sanctuary of a local sun-worshipping community, where have also been found the altars and other ritual objects. This remarkable prehistoric monument was lying in a quite deep layer between two levels pertaining to the early Bronze age and the Middle ages. Daggers, swords, objects of art, and other artifacts made for offerings; and sacrifices, and corresponding to the artifacts discovered in the Gharabaghian large burial mounds of the X - IX centuries B. C., have also been found in the same layer. The earthenware of the sanctuary of Dvin has also its parallels (as to its main types, technical peculiarities and morphological characteristics) in the layers of the pre-Urartian settlement of Karmir-bloor, which immediately precede the Urartian constructions.
We may add that certain pictures of the late group of the Gueghamian petroglyphs are remarkable for their compositional structure and their styles, similar to those of the late bronze-age belts.
Such are the Gueghamian images at first sight. Time and possibilities may afford to observe a great many aspects and details in them and to bring many factual and theoretical precisions.

click on thumbnail(s) for large preview