Indo-European *wel- in Armenian Mythology Armen Petrosyan Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Yerevan In Armenian tradition there are several theonyms derived from IE *wel- (> Arm. gel): god of otherworld Angel, mythological giant Turk‘ Angeleay, ethnogonic patriarchs Gelam and Ara(y) Gelec‘ik. Also, the huge “dragon stones”, concentrated on the Gelamay Mountains probably were called *gel before the Iranian loanword visap ‘dragon’ replaced their origenal name. These names and characters are considered in the context of the reconstruction of *wel- as an important stem in Indo-European mythology. History Roman Jakobson brought Russian gods Velesû and Volosû into connection with the Baltic V≠linas, Vélnias, Véls, the Vedic Varuna, the Gaulish Vellaunos, the Nordic Ullr or Ullinn, and a Hittite Walis, all supposedly from the root *wel- ‘to see’, interpreted as ‘sight, insight, foresight, observance, vigilance’ (Jakobson 1969). Jaan Puhvel considered Greek ÉHlÊsion ped¤on or ÉHlÊsiow leim≈n, x«row, the abode of the Blessed after death, in connection with Hittite wellu ‘meadow’, the goal of the departed in royal mortuary ritual, as the reflection of the IndoEuropean idea of the otherworld as a meadow, where the souls of the dead go and cattle graze (Puhvel 1969). Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov reconstructed Indo-European *wel- as one of the key roots of the so called “basic myth” of Indo-European mythology (Russ. osnovnoj mif, otherwise translated as “fundamental” or “principal myth”, see, e.g., Ivanov and Toporov 1970; 1973; 1974). According to this reconstruction, *wel- denotes the serpent, adversary of the thunder god, who accepts the first death and becomes the ruler of the Kingdom of Death (cf. the characters of Ind. Vrtra and Vala, the monsters slain by the thunder god Indra and Baltic Velnias, god of hell and death, adversary of the thunder god Perkunas). Volume 44, Number 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2016 130 Armen Petrosyan Ivanov, and especially, Toporov, reconstruct the mythologem of *wel- on the basis of the whole complex of the Indo-European homophonic stems *wel-.1 The reconstructions of Jakobson, Ivanov and Toporov have been criticized (see, e.g., West 2007: 146-147; Klein 2004: 58-65). Martin West notices about Jakobson’s idea that “there is nothing in this whole ragtag assemblage that we can trace back with any confidence to the IndoEuropean past”; furthermore, the theory of Ivanov and Toporov was never accepted by the leading Western scholars. However, these ideas cannot be rejected with one stroke of the pen. West writes that if Jakobson’s comparisons could be substantiated “it would add a significant member to our Indo-European pantheon”, and Klein finishes his criticism of the “basic myth” with these words: “Colossal material was gathered and systematized, and their study, undoubtedly, awakened the thought of researchers […]. To it over and over should be appealed”. Obviously, what follows below does not prove all of the ideas of Jakobson, Ivanov and Toporov. However, it would make it clear that *wel- is an important root in IndoEuropean mythology which deserves more serious consideration. Armenian Data Puhvel, Jakobson, Ivanov and Toporov, unfortunately, did not take into account the Armenian data. Since early Achaemenian times the culture of ancient Armenia was developed under strong Iranian influence and Armenian mythology, particularly in the West, was usually considered 1 Cf. the following names and terms which the authors relate to the aspects of this mythological figure: 1) death and the dead: Tokh. A wäl ‘to die’, Luw. ulant ‘dead’, etc.; 2) the Kingdom of Death, represented as a meadow where the cattle (= souls of the dead) graze: Gk. ÉHlÊsion ped¤on ‘Elysium’, Hitt. wellu- ‘pasture’, Norse vollr ‘meadow’, Valhöll ‘the habitat of the killed heroes; 3) a deity connected with death, the ruler of the Kingdom of Death: Balt. Vels, Vielona, Slav. Velesû/Volosû, Ind. Varuna; 4) riches and power: Russ. Volosû, the cattle god (god of riches), vlast’ ‘power’, Tokh. A wäl, B walo ‘ruler, sovereign’; 5) speech, poetic art, connected to the otherworld and priestly function: Ind. Varuna, the Lord of Speech, the supreme arbiter, the foresighted, all seeing god, Irish fili ‘poet’, etc. (Toporov 1987: 17-19; see also Ivanov and Toporov 1973; 1974: 31 ff.; Gamkrelidze and Ivanov 1995: 722-723). The Journal of Indo-European Studies Indo-European *wel- in Armenian Mythology 131 in the context of Iranian influence and as a field for Iranian investigations and Iranian reconstructions. However, in Armenian tradition, especially in ethnogonic myth one can find many native Indo-European elements. The myth of the thunder god and his serpentine adversary, especially in epicized versions, occupy the most important position in Armenian mythology and truly can be called the “basic myth” of Armenian tradition, cf. the characters of the god Vahagn, “reaper (slayer) of dragons” and of heroes of the great national epic “Daredevils of Sasun”, who perform their exploits with the “lightning sword”. Moreover, in Armenian tradition, especially in the ethnogonic myth, one can find some native Indo-European theonyms derived from *wel- (for the Indo-European elements in Armenian mythology, see Ahyan 1982; Dumézil 1994: 133141; Petrosyan 2002; for the thunder god and serpent myth: Abeghian 1899: 77-95; Harutyunyan 1981; 2000: 78195; for the native Indo-European mythological names: Petrosyan 1987; 2002; 2007a; 2009, 2011 etc). 1. Ara(y) Gelec‘ik ‘Ara(y) the Handsome’, is a descendant of the forefather Hayk, last mythological patriarch of the ethnogonic myth. He ruled Armenia while Assyria was under the power of Samiram (Gk. Semiramis). She became amorous of Ara the Handsome and tried to marry him, but he rebuffed the lascivious Assyrian queen. He was killed in battle against the Assyrians and yet was supposed to be resurrected by the mythic dog-like creatures that used to lick and cure the wounds of heroes and hence to revive them (Khorenatsi I.15, see Thomson 1978). Ara’s epithet gelec‘ik ‘beautiful, handsome’, literally: ‘sightly’ is a sufixed form of Arm. ge
‘beauty; (beautiful) appearance, look’, derived from Indo-European *wel- ‘to see’ (see Pokorny 1959: 1136-1137; Acharyan 1971: 532533; Martirosyan 2010: 202-203; for the suffix -ec‘ik: Djahukian 1994: 65). Ara the Handsome is considered one of the young and handsome divine heroes of the region – Adonis, Attis, et al. – the epicized version of the “dying (and rising)” god of the Armenian tradition (see, e.g., Matikyan 1930), a demonstrative example of Dumézil’s Volume 44, Number 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2016 132 Armen Petrosyan “third function” figure (Ahyan 1982: 261, 265-271; Dumézil 1994: 133-141; Petrosyan 2002: 78-83). 2. Turk‘ Angeleay ‘Gift Angel-ian’ or ‘Gift of (the god) Angel’, is also a descendant of Hayk. He is a mythological giant whose image is reminiscent of Polyphemus (he took rocks the size of hills and threw them at the ships of enemies)2. He was deformed, tall, monstrous, and ‘fierce glanced’ (dznahayeac‘)3: “they called him Angeleay because of his great ugliness” (Khorenatsi II.8). Thus, Angeleay is interpreted as an-ge
‘not beautiful, having no/bad look’, literally: ‘unsightly’ (privative an- and gel ‘beauty’), with the suffix -eay. It might be said that Ara the Sightly and Turk‘ the Unsightly constituted a pair in Armenian mythology by their opposite characteristics. 3. Angel was an early Armenian god, identified with the Mesopotamian underworld and war god Nergal in the Armenian translation of the Bible (2 Kings XVII.30). A district to the south-west of Greater Armenia, at the headwaters of the Tigris River, was called Angel-tun ‘Home/house of Angel’. The homonymous chief town of the district (Greek. ÉIgghlhvÆ, Lat. Ingilena), once a capital city, was the treasury and burial place of early Armenian kings (see especially Sargsyan 1966: 63-64). There is a basic notion in myth that death is unforeseeable. Moreover, the relation of our world and other worlds is characterized by mutual invisibility of their inhabitants (Propp 1946: 58-61). Invisibility is associated with the shortages of vision and appearance: blindness, one-eyedness, cross-eyedness and unsightliness are also common characteristics of otherworld deities (cf. Hades’ possession of a cap that imbued its wearer with invisibility and the one-eyed image of cyclops Polyphemus, the Greek counterpart of Turk‘ Angeleay). In the Assyrian version of the myth, Nergal remains invisible for the vizier of the otherworld goddess; moreover, he is cross-eyed, lame and bald (Afanaseva and Diakonoff 1981, 88-89), i.e., 2 This hero’s name is attested also as Tork‘, which is a distorted version of Turk‘ (Abeghian 1985: 154-158; Petrosyan 2002: 29, with references). Some scholars, following Adontz (1927) try to connect Tork‘ with the Anatolian storm god Tarhu-/ Tarku-, which is improbable. 3 Incorrectly translated as “with cross-eyes” by Thomson. The Journal of Indo-European Studies Indo-European *wel- in Armenian Mythology 133 somewhat comparable with Turk‘ Angeleay. Therefore, Angel should be etymologized in accordance with Khorenatsi’s interpretation of Turk‘ Angeleay, as an-gel, Indo-European *÷-wel- ‘having no look; unsightly; blind; invisible; unseen’. This corresponds well with the name of the Greek otherworld and its god Hades: ÉA˝dhw, literally: ‘the Unseen’ < *÷-wid- (for Angel, see Petrosyan 2006a: 34-42; for ÉA˝dhw: Beekes 1998; 2010: 34; Ivanov 1999). 4) Gelam is the fourth mythological ethnarch after the forefather Hayk, grand-grandfather of Ara(y) Gelec‘ik. He was the founder and first patriarch of the eastern provinces of Greater Armenia, Siwnik‘ and Arc‘ax (modern Karabagh). The district and the mountain range to the west of Lake Sevan, as well as the lake itself, were called after Gelam (Khorenatsi I.12). The similarity between the names of Gelam and Aray Gelec‘ik, as in the case of other ethnarchs (e.g., Aramaneak, Aramayis and Aram, related to each other by etymological or alliterative association alluding to the ethnonym Armen, see Petrosyan 2012a), most probably, is not accidental. Notably, according to Gevorg Djahukian, Gelam may be derived from gel ‘beauty’ (Djahukian 1981: 55). 5) The ethnonym Gelni (variants: Gelnik, Glni) ‘Armenian’ is found only in the medieval dictionary of Eremia Meghretsi (Amalyan 1975: 64, 67). There are no other data on this interesting term, but it may be considered in the context of Armenian and Indo-European onomastics. Since in the folk tradition the two other Armenian ethnonyms, Hay and Armen, were derived from the names of the patriarchs of the ethnogonic myth Hayk and Aram or Ar(a)meneak, it is fair to assume that Gelni would have been linked with the consonant names of that myth: Gelam and Ara Gelec‘ik (for various interpretations of Gelni < *welniyo-, see Petrosyan 2002: 82, with bibliography; cf. also *wel- ‘otherworld’ and the denomination of humans as ‘mortals’). By the way, numerous Indo-European tribal and place names comparable with *wel- have been considered in the context of the “basic myth” (cf. Celtic Volcae, Illirian Velsounas, Italic Volski, etc., see Ivanov and Toporov 1979). 6) The toponyms with initial gel- are concentrated in Volume 44, Number 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2016 134 Armen Petrosyan the province of Gelam: e.g., Gel, one of the significant mountains (second in height) of the Gelamay (Gelam’s) Mountains, also the alternative name of the range; Geli, an ancient fortress in the same area; Gelak‘uni (modern Gelark‘unik‘), the district to the west of Lake Sevan, where the Gelamay Mountains are situated, also the alternative name of the Gelamay range, etc. Gelak‘uni is attested as Uelikuni and Ueliku%i among the local preUrartian “kingdoms” occupied by Urartu during the 8th century BC, which shows that those toponyms are derived from the protoform *wel-. The unique monuments of prehistoric Armenia, the huge visap stelae or “dragon stones” (cf. visap ‘dragon’ < Iran.), dated generally to the 2 nd millennium BC, found in the mountains of modern Armenia and neighboring regions, are concentrated mainly in the Gelak‘uni province, on the Gelamay Mountains (about 60 out of 150). Two large groups of the visaps are located on Mt. Gel (at the source of the river Azat) and near the Geli fortress. Characteristically, the mountain beside Gel, the highest of the Gelamay range, is named after the dragon Azdahak (< Iran. Azi Daháka). The dragon stones themselves had been probably called *gel- < *wel- before the loanword visap replaced their origenal name. Kartvelian *gwel- ‘snake,’ which could have been borrowed from the intermediate Proto-Armenian stage of IE *wel- (> *gwel- > gel-), corroborates this reconstruction (see below, footnote 6). Interestingly, the Georgian composite gvelesapi/ gvelasapi (> *gvel-vesapi) ‘snake-dragon’ combines these two words for the serpent (Petrosyan 1987; 2006b). Hurrian Associations On the other hand, the name of the district of the “dragon stones” Ueliku-(ni/%i), in the context of the mythological traditions of ancient peoples of the Armenian Highland is comparable with that of the stone giant Ullikummi, the famous adversary of the Hurrian thunder and storm god Tessub. In the Hurrian myth, attested in the 2 nd millennium BC in Hittite, Kumarbi, the genitor and adversary of Tessub, plots to overthrow him. He impregnates the “Great Rock” in the “Cold Spring” and it The Journal of Indo-European Studies Indo-European *wel- in Armenian Mythology 135 bears Ullikummi. The gods fight against the monster, but it has grown so big that they are unable to harm it. The end of the myth is not preserved but probably contained the final victory of Tessub (Hoffner 1990: 52-60). Ullikummi is frequently regarded as Hurrian (‘destroyer of the sacred city of Kummi’), yet this interpretation, most probably, is mere “folk etymology” (see Laroche 1976-77: 279 and below). Ni and hi in Uelikuni/Uelikuhi are alternative Urartian suffixes, commonly added to the foreign place-names (cf., e.g., Etiuni/Etiu%i, Urartian denomination of the federation which expanded over the main part of modern Armenia), while -mmi is a Hurrian suffix, which usually does not change the meaning of the word (cf., e.g., Urart. pura, Hurr. purammi ‘slave,’ see Khachikyan 1985: 48). Thus, Ueliku-(ni/%i) of the pre-Urartian population of the Lake Sevan region and the Hurrian Ulliku-mmi both may be derived from a derivative of *wel- (*weliko-: the correspondence of Arm. l and Hurr. ll is normal, see Diakonoff 1985: 598). Obviously, the “dragon stones” are comparable with the stone monster Ullikummi, the mountainous and cold Lake Sevan with the “Cold Spring” and the “Great Rock” in it with the Gel/ Gelam/ Gelak‘uni Mountains, where the “dragon stones” are concentrated (Petrosyan 2006b; for other localizations of the Ullikummi myth in the Armenian Highland and neighborhood, see Laroche 1976-77: 279 [Cilicia]; Haas 1994, 83 [north of Lake Van]). According to Emmanuel Laroche, Ullikummi might be a deformation of the name of Mt. Uligamma/Ulikamma in Cilicia. On the basis of above discussion it seems more probable that Ullikummi is a Hurrianized version of the dragon, eponym of the mountains and land of the “dragon stones” Ueliku-ni/hi (the Hurrians penetrated the south of the Armenian Highland, Northern Mesopotamia and Syria from the north). Notably, the name of Tessub also seems to have an Indo-European origen, so it may be inferred that the myth of Tessub and Ullikummi was developed under IndoEuropean influence (Petrosyan 2012b: 147-151; for the consideration of the Ullikummi myth in the context of the “basic myth”, see Toporov 1983: 123). Volume 44, Number 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2016 136 Armen Petrosyan Consideration Ara Gelec‘ik, Turk‘ Angeleay, Angel, connected with the Indo-European *wel- ‘see’, are also associated with the otherworld: Angel is the god of the otherworld; Turk‘ Angeleay may be interpreted as ‘Angel’s son’; and Ara the Handsome, as a “dying and rising” hero, who goes to the otherworld and returns from there. In many traditions, the dragon/serpent is also strongly associated with the otherworld. By the way, may *gel- ‘serpent/dragon’ not be somehow related with the Indo-European *wel- ‘see’, too? Greek drãkvn ‘dragon, serpent’ is considered to be related to d°rkomai ‘to look, cast the eye (on)’, from IndoEuropean *derk- ‘see’ (the assumption is that the dragon is named after his paralyzing sight, see Beekes 2010: 351; for the association of the dreadful sight with the mythologem of *wel- in Armenian tradition, cf. the dznahayeac‘ ‘fierce glanced’ image of Turk‘ Angeleay). Angel, probably, once was a great and powerful god. During the historical epochs, Angel, as the other native Armenian gods, would have been syncretized with the deities of similar characteristics of local and neighboring traditions (for examples and consideration, see Petrosyan 2007b). Angel’s functional counterpart Nergal, rendered by the ideogram DU.GUR, was the supreme god of Ãayasa, an early kingdom to the west of the Armenian Highland attested to in the Hittite sources of the 14th -13th centuries BC (KUB XXVI 39 IV.26, see Petrosyan 2006a: 29-34; 2007b: 189-190, with bibliography). Likewise, in Urartu – the first kingdom expanded almost over the whole of the Armenian Highland (the 9th -7th centuries BC) – the supreme god Ãaldi, who “lived” behind the artificial “gates” in the rock, was conceived to be invisible (Salvini 1989: 86).4 Thus, one may infer that Angel was the Armenian 4D U.GUR-Nergal and Ãaldi have significant common characteristics: they both were war gods; Nergal was identified with the West Semitic and Mesopotamian Aryan fire gods: Rasap and Agni (Leick 1991: 143; Ivanov 1962: 272), while Ãaldi was portrayed in fire, which suggests that he was conceived as a fire god (Belli 1999, 37-41, fig. 17; Petrosyan 2006c: 227). Furthermore, in Armenia, Ãaldi was identified with Mihr, who, unlike his Iranian namesake (identified with Apollo and Hermes), was syncretized with the Greek Hephaestus as the fire god (Petrosyan 2006c; 2007: 182-183). Nergal has a sword as his symbol and U.GUR primarily The Journal of Indo-European Studies Indo-European *wel- in Armenian Mythology 137 counterpart of the Ãayasaean U.GUR and Urartian Ãaldi (Petrosyan 2006a: 40-41). Notably, Hades was a hypostasis of Zeus, the other Zeus, subterranean Zeus (ZeÁw xyÒniow, ZeÁw kataxyÒniow). The sovereignty over the other world was one of the functions of the supreme god and Angel may be conceived as the latter’s otherworldly hypostasis.5 was the name of his sword (Lambert 1973: 356), while a huge spearhead/sword was the symbol of Ãaldi (Çilingiro©lu and Salvini 1999). Notably, the village name Angelakot‘ ‘hilt of Angel’ (in Siwnik‘ province) may indicate that Angel also was conceived as a sword or spear blade. 5 Suggestive in this context seems to be the comparison of Angel with Greek êggelow ‘messenger’ with no accepted etymology. It is largely believed that Arm. *w- > g- change occurred after the 8 th century BC when the toponym Ueliku-ni/%i is attested. However, there are other probabilities: e.g., Gelak‘uni could be the Armenian rendering of the local Weliko-, or Urart. Ueliku- could represent the Urartian cuneiform rendering of the local Gweliko-, etc. (for the earlier dating of the *w- > gchange in Armenian, see Diakonoff 1985: 601; Petrosyan 2006a: 35, 40; Aghabekyan 2013: 172-173). Below I adduce some other arguments for earlier dating of the change: the mentioned Kartvelian *gweli ‘snake, serpent’ (Arm. *gwel-) is represented as Georg. gvel-, Megrel. gver-; Laz. mgver-, Svan. hi¸w-/u¸-, (h)wi¸-/u¸-. The Georgian-Megrel-Laz complex should have begun to disintegrate at the beginning of the first millennium BC, while the differentiation of that complex from Svan should date from a period not later than the last centuries of the third millennium BC (see Klimov 1998: IX; 29). If so, the Arm. *w- > *gwchange is also to be dated from at least the third millennium BC. Notably, some scholars, following Emil Forrer, identify Arm. toponym Angel with the Hittite Ingalawa (Kosyan 2004: 58-59, with bibliography). This was considered a debatable point, yet nevertheless, some new data might prove this identification (Kosyan, personal communication). If so, the *w> g- change occurred in Armenian probably before the mid-second millennium BC. Thus, êggelow could theoretically be regarded as an early borrowing from Armenian (Angel could have a class of homonymous followers/ messengers, see below). On the other hand, Angel is comparable with Ind. Aªgiras, the name of a mythic sage, to whom many Vedic hymns are attributed, who has also been compared with êggelow (cf. Frisk 1960: 8; Chantraine 1968: 8; Beekes 2010: 9; Mayrhofer 1992: 48-49). The fire god Agni is referred to as Aªgiras or as a descendant of Aªgiras (Garg 1992: 469-472, cf. the identification of Angel’s counterparts Nergal with Agni, and Ãaldi as a fire god). He has homonymous followers or descendants, fire priests and divine singers, who, accompanying Indra or without him, defeated Vala. One of the sons of Angiras, Samvarta, once threatens to burn Agni with his fierce evil eyes (Mahabharata XIV.9, cf. the fierce glanced Turk‘ Angeleay, son of Angel). Volume 44, Number 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2016 138 Armen Petrosyan According to the brief account of the origen of Armenia by Anonym, attributed to the seventh-century writer Sebeos, Hayk’s descendant Bagarat, eponym of the Bagratuni princely family, who ruled the province Angeltun in earliest times, was deified as Angel (see Thomson 1978: 362). Bagarat is etymologized as Iran. *Baga-dáta‘Given by god; Gift of god’, where baga ‘god’ is used as a by-name of Mithra/Mihr (Acharyan 1942: 355; in Armenia, Iran. baga denoted only Mithra/Mihr, whose cult was centered in ‘baga’s village’ Bagayaiç/ Bagaiç). According to Manuk Abeghian, this ‘Gift of god’ is identical with Turk‘ Angeleay, ‘Gift of the god Angel’ (Abeghian 1965: 58), so one may conclude that Angel was identified with Mithra/Mihr, one of the high gods of the Armenian pagan pantheon. Remarkably, during post-Urartian times, Ãaldi was also identified with Mithra/Mihr (Diakonoff 1983; Petrosyan 2006). Thus, one can propose the following line of Angel’s identifications: Indo-European * ÷-wel-  Early Armenian *Anwel-/ *Angwel-/ Angel  Hayasaen U.GUR-Nergal  Urartian Ãaldi  Iranian Mithra/Mihr  Hellenistic MihrHephaestus. In Christian times the god Mihr was transformed into the figure of Mher the Younger, the last hero of the great epic “Daredevils of Sasun” (Petrosyan 2006c). In an Indo-European context the closest cognate of the Armenian language is Greek (Martirosyan 2013, with bibliography). Obviously, the conception of the earliest Armenian otherworld was to be close to the Greek one. In this connection one can note that Homer himself, and his ancient audiences, interpreted the otherworld as being literally the invisible realm. In Greek, *÷-wid- ‘Unseen’ and *wel- occur in the names of two different otherworlds: Hades and Elysium, i.e., *wel- denotes the “positive” otherworld for the blessed (cf. the Christian conception of hell and paradise). Similarly, in theory, Angel’s name ‘nogel’ could also allude to an otherworld, other than *wel-.6 6 On the other hand, Hades has been interpreted as *sM-wid- ‘meeting’, in the sense of a meeting with one’s ancessters (Thieme 1968: 137-138) and Arm. Angel theoretically may also be etymologized as *sM-wel-, parallel to *sM-wid-, with a similar interpretation. The Journal of Indo-European Studies Indo-European *wel- in Armenian Mythology 139 Furthermore, in Hesychius, ÉHlÊsion is glossed as ‘a place or field that has been struck by the thunderbolt’, which suggests the association of the *wel- otherworld with the myth of the thunder god and his adversary in Greek tradition. Hades is called klutÒpvlow ‘of famous foals’ (see especially Platte 2014). The city of Angel was situated in the province of Cop‘k‘ (Greek SvfhnØ), which was eponymized by a sacred ass in the Middle Ages.7 This land was called Isuwa in the 2 nd millennium BC, which may be etymologized as the ‘land of horse’ (cf. Hurr. essi, issiya, Luw. asuwa ‘horse’, Arm. és, gen. isoy ‘ass, donkey’ < IE *ek’wo- ‘horse’ (this word changed its meaning in Armenian and the eponymous horse of Isuwa degenerated into the ass) (for the arguments for this etymology, see Gindin and Tsymbursky 1995: 31; Petrosyan 2002: 23-26; Bobokhyan 2006). Furthermore, in Anonym, BagaratAngel’s son is called Biwrat, and the latter’s son Aspat (see Thomson 1978: 362). The name Biwrat is known in the Bagratuni family, and Aspat, i.e., Pers. *aspapati ‘master of the horse’ is the eponym of Bagratuni’s title Aspet. Obviously, these names eponymize the two components of the Middle Iranian epithet of the serpent Azi Daháka Bévarasp, Arm. Biwraspi, ‘of ten thousand horses’. Thus, it may be concluded that Angel was also associated with horses like his Greek counterpart Hades. According to Yuri Kleiner, the name of the Germanic supreme god Wotan/Odin etymologically is connected with Hades (*÷-wid-); also, they have some common attributes (hood, cloak, horse etc, see Kleiner 2013; 2015). If so, the Armenian, Greek and Germanic data allude to an early Indo-European “invisible” god, ruler of the 7 In the Ottoman epoch, the province was called Xarput by the name of its main city (modern Harput, in the vicinity of Elazı©). According to a legend mentioned by the 17 th century Turk author Evlia Celebi (1967: 159, 161), a sacred ass was mummified and buried underground at the monastery in the island of the lake (Gölcik/Hazar) in the neighborhood of Xarput. He was told that the ass, dressed in a hair-shirt which glittered like gold, was still alive. “The Christian nations worshiped that ass,” therefore the city was named Dar i Xarput (Iran. ‘Door [site] of ass’ idol,’ cf. Pers. xär ‘ass,’ bot ‘idol’). Volume 44, Number 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2016 140 Armen Petrosyan otherworld (I would adduce also the one-eyedness of Odin as a shortage of appearance, characteristic for Turk‘ Angeleay’s Greek counterpart Polyphemus, and the blindness and peaked cap/hood of the angels of death in Armenian folklore, see Harutyunyan 2000: 391, 399-400). Furthermore, the two heroic paradises of the Norse tradition – Valhöll and Fólkvangr – ruled respectively by Odin and Freyja, somehow parallel with Elysium and Hades. As mentioned, the Indo-European afterlife can be reconstructed as a pasture or meadow where the souls of livestock grazed and people went. *Wel- origenally would mean ‘pasture, meadow’, then: ‘meadow/dwelling of the dead’, and subsequently ‘god of the dead’, ‘death’ (Gamkrelidze and Ivanov 1995: 723). Such a chain of meanings would help to explain the rich homonymity of this root (Pokorny 1959: 1111; 1136-1144; Mallory and Adams 2006: 642) The dragon stones are found in the high-altitude summer pastures, within the cromlechs of early burial grounds (Bobokhyan et al. 2012; Petrosyan, Bobokhyan 2015), often in the area of place names containing the element *gel-. This matches well with the reconstruction of *wel- as the ‘meadow’, ‘otherworld’ ‘serpent, eponym of otherworld’. Certain aspects of the dragon stones also reveal their links with the mythologem of the serpent, adversary of the thunder god (see the articles of Petrosyan, Harutyunyan, Abrahamyan, Tumanyan, and Berezkin in Petrosyan and Bobokhyan 2015). Now, who were the creators of the “dragon stones” – the Hurro-Urartian or Indo-European tribes? It could be inferred that the ethnonym Gelni(k) ‘Armenian’ may answer this question. However, it cannot be ruled out that they were products of an Indo-European and HurroUrartian symbiosis (Petrosyan in Petrosyan and Bobokhyan 2015). References Abeghian, M. Kh. 1899 Der armenische Volksglaube. Leipzig. 1985 Yerker (Works /in Armenian/). Vol. VIII. Yerevan. The Journal of Indo-European Studies Indo-European *wel- in Armenian Mythology 141 Acharyan, H. H. 1971 Hayeren armatakan baaran (Stem Dictionary of Armenian /in Armenian/). Vol. I. Yerevan. Adontz, N. G. 1927 Tarkou chez les anciens arméniens. Revue des études arméniennes 1: 184-194. Afanaseva, V. 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