CAUCASIAN AND NEAR-EASTERN STUDIES
X
I. Javakhishvili Institute of History and Ethnology
Giorgi Leon Kavtaradze
TWO TRANSCAUCASIAN ETHNONYMS OF ANATOLIAN ORIGIN
There are undoubtable data of
the neighbourhood of the Armenians and the Georgians at least for the second
century B.C. By the information of Strabo's "Geography", in
consequence of the activities of two Armenian military leaders, Zariadris
(Zareh) and Artaxias (Artashes) (father and son who subsequently became the
kings of Sophene and Great Armenia), the Armenians took from the Iberians "the
land along the side of Mount Paryadres and Cholarzene and Gogarene"
(11,14, 5). In this case "the land along the side of Mount
Paryadres" must be the territories south and south-east of the upper
and middle flow of the Chorokhi (Choruh) where Parkhal-dag or the historical
Georgian province Tao (Armenian Taik) is also located; Gogarene was situated on
the upper streams of the right tributaries of the upper and middle flow of the
Kura; Chorzene was located between the Mount of Paryadres and Gogarene or in
the area of the Arsiani (Turkish Allahuakbar) mountains and Kola
(Gol)-Artaani (Ardahan).This means that the Armenians conquered the Taoian territory
for the first time in the early second century B.C. [1] It would have been
impossible to conquer Tao before, because only at that time the territories
south and south-west of it, Carenitida and Xerxene, located closer to the core
area of the contemporary Armenianans, were taken by them from the Chalybes and
the Mosynoiceans (Strabo 11,14,5). The Chalybes and the Mosynoiceans
lived mainly on the southern
____________________
[1]
The fact that the territories inhabited by the Georgian population were included
in Armenia becomes obvious by the information that the Iberian cavalry had been
reckoned as the most formidable part of the armies with which Tigranes II
established his oriental empire (cf. 40, 315). [p.
40]
shores of the
By the data of Xenophon's "Anabasis", the land of Chalybes and
Armenia are evidently quite in contrast with each other (IV, IV, 18); as
to an elder of one of West Armenian villages the neighbouring country, next to
the route of Greeks, belonged to the Chalybes (IV, IV, 34). We must also
take into account the information of another work of Xenophons - "Cyropaedia".
As to it, the Chalds lived in the mountains, in the neighbourhood of the
Western Armenians, and the latter apparently took away from them the fertile
lands (III, 1-3). By the information of Strabo, the Chaldeans
are the same as the Chalybes (XI, III, 19). Strabo also informs us that Carenitida,
the region of the upper flow of the Kara-su (
The Armenian - southern Colchian contacts of the Early Medieval period are
depicted in the Armenian chronicles. The Armenian [p.
41]
king Pap (by the words of the Armenian historian of the 5th century, P'awstos
Biwzand) informs about the representative of the Mamikonean family, Musegh,
that "his ancestors abandoned their kingdom in the realm of the Tzenk
and came to our ancestors" (V, iv). In his letter to the king
Varazdat, cited by the same historian, Musegh's brother Manuel informs that "our
ancestors were the kings in the realm of the Tzenk. And on account of quarrels
/between/ *brothers and because much blood flowed, we set out to seek a haven
and settled /here/. The first Arsakuni kings knew who we were and whence /we
came/..." (V, xxxvii). Moses Xorenac'i
interpreted the Tzenk as
and Xaziw belongs to the Eger, which is Colchis (V, 19), though Tayk is
bordering Eger (V, 22). Tao/Taik was extending southwards as far as the
source of the
According to the Georgian tradition, the main protector of Georgians, St.
George and St. Nino, the Illuminatrix of Iberia [3]
(
_________________
[2]
One of the main
[3]
The Greek name for Georgians, Ibhroi, is connected with the
above-mentioned Armenian ethnonym - Ivirk. If we correlate Strabo's
information about the trade route to India through the Colchis and Iberia (XI,
V, 8) with that of Herodotus (I, 104) who knows the route
from Phasis through Colchis, Saspeires and Media to Persia and Indian Ocean,
the identification of the Saspeires with the Iberians would become quite
plausible.
[4] The name Torgom is derived from the biblical Togarma
(Gen., 6.4, 10.3; I Chr., 1.6; Ezek., 27.14: 38.6), and it
is thought to be connected with the designation of the Cappadocian town Til-Garimmu,
known from the Assyrian [p. 43]
Among all other Georgian tribes the
Meskhs (the Moschs of classical authors [5] were nearest to the old Anatolian
(Hittite-Phrygian) world, and not only geographically. Josephus Flavius, the
Jewish-Roman historian of the first century A.D., considered the Moschs, as
well as the Iberians, as being of Anatolian origin. In his commentary to the
biblical Mosoch he wrote that the Mosocheans were derived from Mosoch
(Gen., 10.2, I Chr., 1.5; Isa., 66.19; Ezek., 27.13;
32.26; 38.2,3; 39.1) and that they afterwards
received the name of Cappadocians, though from the
designation of their capital Mazaca it is obvious that the
name of their whole tribe was the same (Josephus, Antiq., I, 124-125). [6] Scholars agree that later, in the
Byzantine historiography, Cappadocians - the inhabitants of
Hecataeus of Miletus wrote already in the sixth century B.C. that the
Moschs were a Colchian tribe who lived near Matienians (fr.188}. Another
remark of the same author about the location of the Matienians' town Hiope in
the neighbourhood of Gordies and about the Paphlagonian type of the clothes of
the population of this town (fr. 189), makes obvious that among the
above-mentioned Matienians western Matienians were implied who lived near the
Phrygians of the
________________
inscriptions which has its origin in the
name of the former Hittite region -Tegarama (modern Turkish - Gürün).
[5]
In the text of Eustates, Archbishop of Anriochia of the first half of the fourth
century, as well as in the Chronography of the Byzantine writer Leon the
Grammatikus, the name of this tribe is nearly identical with that of the
Georgian tribe of Meskhs - Meskhinoi.
[6]
By the information of Leo Allazius in the commentary to Josephus Flavius'
above-mentioned fragment, the Meschians were a people known by the old
authors as Moschikoi or Mosynoeci. At first they lived in the
Pontic littoral and afterwards they had become Cappadocians, but finally they
once again were forced to remove to the north. [p. 44]
city of Gordion as well as near the
Paphlagonians. Because of this fact, it is possible to localize also the Moschs
in
Some indirect indications about the presumable former homeland of Georgians
outside the
Because of the data of the "History of the Armenians" by Moses
Xorenac'i, the author of the fifth century A.D. (in reality the text is dated
to the eighth century), and of the Georgian chronicles, the modem Georgian
historiography assume that the origin of the Iberian (East Georgian) kingdom as
well as the distribution of Hittite-Phrygian religious cults [7] and the appearance of some new toponyms
there [8] must be connected with the
expansion of Hellenistic states of Asia Minor or of South-West Georgian tribal
(supposedly Meskhian) societies (34, 47-50, 233). The Georgian tribe of the
Meskhs lived at Classical and Medieval times in the
_____________________
[7]
According to some scholars, the old Georgian gods of Mtskheta like Armazi,
Zadeni, Gatsi and Ga correspond to the Anatolian deities: Arma,
Santa, Atis and Kibela (48, 45-50). It was noticed that the Georgian divine
trinity - Armazi, Gazi and Ga (with Armazi as a supreme
deity) - erected on the Mountain of Kartii, above the
Iberian capitals - Armazi and Mtskheta - and described by the "Christening
of Kartii", structurally repeated a model known from the
Hittite-Anatolian world (11, 147-157).
[8]
Among them the name of the Iberian capital - Mtskheta - which means the
place of Meskhs (34, 111ff). It is interesting that the East Georgian
mountain-dwellers are known to their North-Eastern Caucasian (Daghestanian)
neighbours as Mosok/Masek/Mosoch (51, 22). [p.
45]
Georgians, must be located. This suggestion can be proved by the
data of other old Georgian chronicles (21) and by the above-mentioned Anatolian
character of the pantheon of deities of the Iberian royal court.
In the opinion of Georgian archaeologists, after the middle of the fourth
century B.C., especially after the breakdown of the Achaemenian Empire as a
consequence of Alexander the Great's victory and against the backrground of the
new political situation (the struggle of diadochs, the emergence of the new
Hellenistic states), the distribution of Meskhs, bearers of Hittite-Asia Minor
traditions to the north had taken place. Consequently a quite new culture was
spread in the eastern regions of Colchis (Western Georgia) and in
Southward of the
By the Middle Assyrian inscription of Tiglath-Pilesar I, in ca. 1164 B.C., the
___________________
[9]
The Assyrian-Urartian ethnonym muški corresponds from the
phonetical point of view to the Greek ethnonym moschi (cf. 8, 15;
47, 111-118). At the same time, in the opinion of linguists, the form mosxi/musx
represents a West Georgian (Colchian) equivalent of the East Georgian ethnonym meskh-i
(44, 118-122). [p. 46]
archaeologists the Early Iron
Age pottery discovered there, in the Elâzığ region, and which must be
attributed to the Mušks, has no connection at all with the Western Anatolian
homeland of the Phrygians and reveals traits typical of the South Caucasian,
North-Eastern Anatolian and North-Western Iranian materials (4, 98, 161; 39,
96f.). As well as the Assyrian written sources do not support the idea about
the possible identity of the Mušks and the Phrygians, though there are
indications that they were for a time under the supremacy of the Phrygians (see
36, 494).
There are interesting parallels between the self-designation of
Georgians - Kart-veli - with the initial meaning resident of the
acropoles [10] and the name of
the eponymous forefather of Georgians (i.e. Kartvelians) - Kartl-os - on
the one hand and the name of the Phrygian capital -Gordium ("town,
stronghold" [11] ) - and the
name of the mythical founder of this town [12]
as well as of the Phrygian state - Gordias (Justin., XI, 7, 5;
Arr., Anab., II, 3-5) - on the other.
From the point of view of the problem discussed, attention must be also paid to
an ethnonym designating a Phrygian tribe. The Old Phrygian
Areyastis-inscription from Yazilikaya (
________________
[10]
Kartii was the initial name of the oldest residence of the Iberian kings
(34, 238f.).
[11]
E.g. Manegordium - "the town of
[12]
Gordium/Gordion is considered to be a contracted form of Gordeion,
"the place or the seat of Gordius", presumably of Gordius who
fathered the king Midas of Phrygia (37, 1148f.). [p.
47]
(12, 857ff; 35, 142ff; 30, 13f.). By the
information of Herodotus Briges was the name of Phrygians before they
came to
______________________
[13]
This form (Vrkan) is testified by the Armenian historian of the tenth
century, Ukhtanes (32, 115). In the opinion of G. Tsereteli, the similarity
between Georgian (Iberian) and Gurganian (the south-east Caspian region)
ethnonyms must not be considered as a mere coincidence (46, 102f.).
[14] In the opinion of Markwart, the Middle Persian plural form Vrkān,
derived from the Armenian plural Wir-k' and deduced from the Latin-Greek
definition Hyrkani, was sometimes used to denote also Georgians (See 31,
80; 5, 126ff.). [p. 48]
of the Georgian ethnonym for Armenians. As it is known from the same inscription,
Tiglath-Pilesar I reached the territories of Aizi and Katmuhu by crossing the
Kašiari mountains, the same as Tur-Abdin. At the same time, there is a
reference in the inscription of Tukuiti-Ninurta I (1235-1198 B.C.) to the
totality of the
____________________
[15]
At the same time, an early eighth century B.C. Urartian inscription near Mush
in the Murat valley still mentions the country of Urmeie (28, 232),
perhaps belonging to the descendants of the Urumeans and the ancestors of the
Armenians.
[16] E.g. the East Georgian Kartlelian and Kakhetian tribes designate in
the same way each other as tetia and gagria. These names
are maybe connected with the Totene (presumably the same as the Albanian
province of Uti located on the right side of the Kura near the Georgian
border and mentioned in Armenian chronicles and/or the country of Etiuni
of the Urartian sources, between the lakes of Childir and Sevan) and Gargar
(northeast of Sevan) - known from the Classical and Early Medieval times (cf.
16, 270-275, 352f). The fluctuation of the type presented by Otene and Totene
is typical of the ethno-toponyms of the Classical times of the Black Sea area
and the Caucasus which are often characterised by such a disappearing of the
dental consonants d, t or ţ. Tuni=Uni, Tapiri =Apiri,
Dvali=Vali, Ţoreti=Oreti. It is interesting that in the History of
the Armenians of Moses Xorenac'i Uti and Gargar are mentioned
as offsprings of the mythical Arran (Xor, 11,8), the eponymous
ancestor of the Arraneans, inhabitants of old Albania, on the lower flow of the
Kura. [p. 49]
was understood as a reflection of the
Commagenian heritage of the Armenians (49, 42-45).
In reality, Commagene was situated southwest of
It seems more plausible to connect the name komekhi and perhaps also the
toponym Kummaha with modem Kemah on the
________________________
[17]
After a short period of the Seleucidian supremacy, the dynasty of
Commagenian Orontides came again from that country to power in Commagene
in 163 B.C. (36, 280; 38, 80f., 107, 123, 195, 235, Tafel I). The king Samos of
Commagene (130-100 B.C.) had an Armenian tiara as his headdress; his grandson's
Antiochos I (69-38 B.C.) tiara was identical with the tiara worn by the
Armenian king Tigranes the Great. This fact makes clear the position of
subordination of Commagenian kings to
[18]
The attempts to prove that the population of the country Azzi-Hayasa, supposedly
located on the Black Sea littoral, were the ancestors of the [p. 50]
At the same time, the name of the country
Zuhma/Suhma, known from the Hittite-Assyrian literary sources as a designation
of a country located in Eastern Anatolia near Pahhuwa, Išuwa and Maldiia (25,
234), [19] is usually connected with
the Georgian name for the Armenians, somekhi (see, e.g., 6, 190). The
substitution between k and s is known in Georgian phonetics, and
therefore the ethnonym somekhi is thought to be the later form of komekhi
(49, 44). At the same time, it is difficult to exclude that komekhi is a
later form of the ethnonym somekhi.
It seems that Georgians called Armenians by the name of their former neighbors
who lived in the territory occupied afterwards by Armenians; in such a case we
could also propose that the Armenian designation of the Georgians was connected
with those Phrygians who were presumably assimilated by the Georgian tribe of
Meskhs and who, according to Herodotes, migrated to Anatolia from the Balkans
together with the Armenians (VII, 73).
Anyway, the Anatolian descendance of the Armenian and Georgian ethnonyms which
were many centuries used by them to designate each other, are the evidence of
the long, but vanished, Anatolian past of these two nowadays Transcaucasian
nations.
__________________________
Armenians because of the similarity of the term Hayasa with the ethnonym
Hayk' - used by the Armenians as their self-designation - were
considered by Diakonoff and Medvedskaya as "a severe case of the malady
called Sirene des Gleichklangs" (7, 386f).
[19]
It is interesting that the capital of Commagene, Samosata, was identified with
Hittite Šamuha (3, 77-80), though it is now known that Šamuha was
situated on the right bank of the upper Euphrates, near the confluence of the
Kara-su with Murad-su, in the place of modem Samuka near Kemaliye (See 26, 2,
9; 27, 135, 140). [p. 51]
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