Armenian Religion
ARMENIAN RELIGION. The Armenians' remotest ancestors immigrated to Anatolia in the mid-second millennium BCE. Related to speakers of the Thraco-Phrygian languages of the Indo-European family, they probably brought with them a religion akin to that of the proto-Greeks, adopting also elements of the cultures of Asianic peoples such as the Hittites, from whose name the Armenian word hay ("Armenian") may be derived. Thus, the Armenian divinity Torkʿ is the Hittite Tarḫundas, and the Armenian word now used for "God," Astuac, may have been the name of an Asianic deity, although its etymology remains hypothetical. The Armenian word di-kʿ ("god[s]") is an Indo-European cognate to the Latin deus.
The Armenians were at first concentrated in the area of Van (Urartean Biaina), a city on the southeastern shore of Lake Van, in eastern Anatolia, and in the Sasun region, a mountainous district to the west of the lake. The Armenian god Vahagn (Av., Verethraghna; cf. Sogdian Vashaghn), whose cult centered in the area of present-day Muş, appears to have assimilated the dragon-slaying exploits of the Urartean Teisheba, a weather god. An Urartean "gate of God" in the rock of Van was consecrated to Mher (Av., Mithra) and is still known in the living epic of Sasun as Mheri duṛn ("gate of Mher"), preserving the Urartean usage.
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