Very little is known about pre-Christian Armenian mythology, the oldest source being the legends of Xorenatsi's History of Armenia.
Armenian mythology was strongly influenced by Zoroastrianism, with deities such as Aramazd, Mihr or Anahit, as well as Assyrian traditions, such as Barsamin, but there are fragmentary traces of native traditions, such as Hayk or Vahagn and Astghik.
According to De Morgan there are signs which indicate that the Armenians were initially nature worshipers and that this faith in time was transformed to the worship of national gods, of which many were the equivalents of the gods in the Roman, Greek and Persian cultures.
Georg Brandes described the Armenian gods in his book: “When Armenia accepted Christianity, it was not only the temples which were destroyed, but also the songs and poems about the old gods and heroes that the people sang. We have only rare segments of these songs and poems, segments which bear witness of a great spiritual wealth and the power of creation of this people and these alone are sufficient reason enough for recreating the temples of the old Armenian gods. These gods were neither the Asian heavenly demons nor the precious and the delicate Greek gods, but something that reflected the characteristics of the Armenian people which they have been polishing through the ages, namely ambitious, wise and good-hearted.”[1]
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The pantheon of Armenian gods (ditsov) formed during the nucleation of the Proto-Armenian tribes that, at the initial stage of their existence, inherited the essential elements of paganism from the Proto-Indo-European tribes that inhabited the Armenian Plateau. Historians distinguish a significant body of Indo-European language used by Armenian pagans as sacred. Original cult worship is a kind of unfathomable higher power or intelligence called Ara, called the physical embodiment of the sun (Arev) worshiped by the ancient Armenians, who called themselves "the children of the sun". Since ancient times, the cult of sun worship occupied a special place in Armenian mythology. Also among the most ancient types of worship of Indo-European roots are the cults of eagles and lions, and the worship of heaven. Over time, the Armenian pantheon was updated, and new deities of Armenian and not Aryan origins appeared. Furthermore, the supreme god of the Armenian pantheon, Vanatur, was later replaced by Aramazd. The latter, though, has appeared under the influence of Zoroastrianism (see Ahura Mazda), but with partially preserved traditional Armenian features. Similarly, the traditional Armenian goddess of fertility, Nar, was replaced by Anahit. In the Hellenistic age (third to first centuries BC), ancient Armenian deities identified with the ancient Greek deities: Aramazd with Zeus, Anahit with Artemis, Vahagn with Hercules, Astghik with Aphrodite, Nane with Athena, Mihr with Hephaestus, Tir with Apollo. After the formal adoption of Christianity in Armenia, new mythological images and stories were born as ancient myths and beliefs transformed. Biblical characters took over the functions of the archaic gods and spirits. For example, John the Baptist inherited certain features of Vahagn and Tyre, and the archangel Gabriel that of Vahagn. Basic information about Armenian pagan traditions were preserved in the works of ancient Greek authors such as Plato, Herodotus, Xenophon and Strabo, Byzantine scholar Procopius of Caesarea, as well as medieval Armenian writers such as Moses of Chorene, Agathangelos, Yeznik of Kolb, Sebeos and Anania Shirakatsi, not to mention oral folk traditions.
Beliefs of the ancient Armenians were associated with the worship of many cults, mainly the cult of ancestors, the worship of heavenly bodies (the cult of the Sun, the Moon cult, the cult of Heaven) and the worship of certain creatures (lions, eagles, bulls). The main cult, however, was the worship of gods of the Armenian pantheon. The supreme god was the common Indo-European god Ar (as the starting point) followed by Vanatur. Later, due to the influence of Armenian-Persian relations, God the Creator was identified as Aramazd, and during the era of Hellenistic influence, he was identified with Zeus.
In addition to the main worship of the eagle and the lion, there were other sacred animals: the bull (Ervand and Ervaz were born to a relationship of a woman and a bull), deer (from the Bronze Age, there are numerous pictures, statues and bas-reliefs associated with the cult of the mother goddess and, later, with the Christian Mother of God), bear, cat and dog (e.g. Aralez). Sacred mammals
Sacred birds.
Several references are made by Moses of Chorene to the worship of the sun and moon in Armenia. In oaths the name of the sun was almost invariably brought up, and there were also altars and images of the sun and the moon. Agathangelos, in the alleged letter of Diocletian to Tiridates, bears witness to the Armenian veneration for the sun, moon and stars.[2] However the oldest witness to this worship is Xenophon, who notes that the Armenians sacrificed horses to the sun, perhaps with some reference to his need of them in his daily course through the skies. The eighth month of the Armenian year and, what is more significant, the first day of every month, were consecrated to the sun and bore its name, while the twenty-fourth day in the Armenian month was consecrated to the moon. The Armenians, like the Persians and most of the sun-worshipping peoples of the East, prayed toward the rising sun, a tradition which the early Armenian Apostolic Church adopted, so that to this day the Armenian churches are built and the Armenian dead are buried toward the east, the west being the dwelling of evil spirits.[2] As to the moon, Ohannes Mantaguni in the fifth century bears witness to the belief that the moon prospers the plants, and Anania of Shirak says in his Demonstrations "The first fathers called her the nurse of the plants". At certain of its phases the moon caused illnesses, especially epilepsy, which was called the moon-disease, and Yeznik of Kolb tries to combat this superstition with the explanation that it is caused by demons whose activity is connected with the phases of the moon. The modem Armenians are still very much afraid of the threaten influence of the moon upon children and try to ward it off by magical ceremonies in the presence of the moon. Ordinarily in contemporary myths the sun is thought to be a young man and the moon a young girl. But, on the other hand, the Germanic idea of a feminine sun and masculine moon is not foreign to Armenian thought. They are brother and sister, but sometimes also passionate lovers who are engaged in a weary hunt for each other through the trackless fields of the heavens. In such cases it is the youthful moon who is pining away for the sun-maid. The ancient Armenians, like the Latins, possessed two different names for the moon. One of these was Lusin, an obvious equivalent of Luna ( originally Lucna or Lucina ), and the other Ami(n)s, which now like the Latin mens, signifies "month." No doubt Lusin designated the moon as a female goddess, while Amins corresponded to the Phrygian men or Lunus. Stars and planets and especially the signs of the Zodiac were bound up with human destiny upon which they exercised a crucial influence. According to Yeznik, the Armenians believed that these heavenly objects caused births and mortalities. Good and bad luck were dependent upon the entrance of certain stars into certain signs of the Zodiac. Yeznik mentions repeatedly that stars, constellations, and Zodiacal signs which bear names of animals like Sirius (dog), Arcturus (bear), were originally animals of those names that have been lifted up into the heavens.
The worship of fire was possessed by Armenians as a venerable heirloom long before they were influenced by Zoroastrianism. It was so deeply rooted that the Christian authors do not hesitate to call the pagan Armenians ash-worshippers. Fire was, for them, the substance of the sun and of the lightning. Fire gave heat and also light. Even today to put out a candle or a fire is not a simple matter, but requires some care and respect. Fire must not be desecrated by the presence of a dead body, by human breath, by spitting into it, or burning in it such unclean things as hair and parings of the finger nail. An impure fire must be rejected and a purer one kindled in its place, usually from a flint. The people would swear by the hearth-fire just as they would swear by the sun. Fire was and still is the most potent means of driving the evil spirits away. Eastern Armenians who had to bathe in the night would scare away the evil occupants of the lake or pool by casting a fire-brand into it, and the man who was harassed by an obstinate evil spirit had no more strong method of getting rid of him than to strike fire out of a flint. Through the sparks that the latter apparently contains, it has become, along with iron, an important weapon against the powers of darkness. Not only evil spirits but also diseases, often ascribed to demoniac influences, could not endure the sight of fire. In Armenian there are two words for fire. One is hur, a cognate of the Greek pur, and the other krak, probably derived, like the other Armenian word jrag, "candle," "light," from the Persian cirag. Hur was more common in ancient Armenian, but we find also krak as far back as the Armenian literature reaches. While Vahagn is unmistakably a male deity, we find that the fire as a deity was female, like Hestia or Vesta.
There is a tendency to present the development of Armenian mythology under the influence of Semitic, Iranian and other cultures. The opposite tendency and uniqueness of Armenian pagan gods are taken in the publications of the authors Ghevont Alishan, Hovik Nersisyan, and others”.[3]