Aramazd
Chief of the Armenian polytheistic pantheon; Iranic-syncretic reflex of Ahura Mazda with extensive Armenian-internal narrative-and-cultic development. The "Father of All" epithet (hayr ararich, per Agathangelos) and the sky-and-creator domain mark him as the structurally-supreme deity. His principal cult-center at Ani-Kamakh in the Upper Euphrates region was destroyed by Trdat III at the 301 CE Christianization, with the bronze cult-statue and treasury seized — Agathangelos's detailed temple-destruction narrative is one of the most extensive contemporary records of Armenian polytheistic institutional religion. The variant father-of-Anahit framing (vs. consort framing) is one of two competing models in the polytheistic-period sources, with the father-daughter version more prominent in Khorenatsi and the consort version more prominent in Agathangelos. The Navasard New Year festival (August 11) preserved the Aramazd-Anahit-Vahagn pantheon-cult cycle in folk-residual form through the Christian period and into the modern era.
Powers
- Command thunder and rain
- Make the land fruitful
Epithets
- արարիչ երկնի եւ երկրի
Relations
- equated with: Ahura Mazda
Sources
- Movses Khorenatsi, Patmutyun Hayots (5th c.) Bk. II Ch. 12-14, 53, 86
- Agathangelos, Patmutyun Hayots Ch. 786-790 — the destruction-of-temples narrative
- Ani-Kamakh archaeological survey; cultic-statue inscriptions
- James R. Russell, Zoroastrianism in Armenia (1987)
- Robert H. Hewsen, "Armenia, Geography of," Encyclopaedia Iranica