2 Cambridge Ancient
History, vol I, part 1 Prolegomena and Prehistory (Cambridge,
1970) p. 289; M. Roaf, Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the
Ancient Near East (New York, 1990) pp. 34-35; J. Mellaart,
The Neolithic of the Near East (London, 1975) postulated
an organized trade in obsidian connecting southern Mesopotamia
and Syria with deposits originating around Lake Van and possibly
Ararat. His hypothesis is based on numerous artifacts dated to
the 8-7th millennia B.C. deriving from these sources found throughout
the Middle East.
3 For bibliography on the extensive literature on this subject see the articles in J.A.C. Greppin, ed., When Worlds Collide (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1990); J. P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans (London, 1991), pp. 278-84.
4 For references see M.
A. Hazarabedian, "A Bibliography of Armenian Folklore",
Armenian Review 39(1986) pp. 33-54; A. Grigolia, "The
Caucasus and the Ancient Pre-Greco-Roman Culture World",
Bedi Karthlisa 34-35(1960) pp. 97-104; G. Charachidze,
Promethee ou Le Caucase (Paris, 1986). Unfortunately, Charachidze's
Memoire indo-europeene du Caucase (Paris, 1987) was not
available to us.
5 K. Kerenyi, Gods
of the Greeks (New York, 1988; repr. of 1951 ed.); W. Burkert,
Greek Religion (Cambridge, Mass., 1985). See note 14 below.
For a partial bibliography and appraisal of Dumezil's important
works see D. S. Calonne, "Georges Dumezil and Armenian Myth"
Armenian Review 44(1991) pp. 37-49.
6 C. Burney and D.M. Lang,
Peoples of the Hills (New York, 1971) pp. 1-13; R. Meiggs,
Trees and Timber in the Ancient Mediterranean World (Oxford,
1982) pp. 39-48, 62-63; T'. Hakobyan, Hayastani patmakan ashkharhagrut'yun[The
Historical Geography of Armenia] (Erevan, 1984) Cambridge
Ancient History, pp. 39-46.
7 V. Hehn, Cultivated
Plants and Domesticated Animals in their Migration from Asia
to Europe (Amsterdam, 1976; originally published in 1885).
Among plants and animals Hehn believed originated in or passed
through the area of our interest are: the vine(p.73); olive(p.88)
flax and hemp(pp.132,134,151), the pea(p.167) alfalfa(p.306),
oleander(p.311), the rose and lily(p.189), the violet(p.196),
crocus(p.197), laurel and myrtle(pp.172-75), box-tree(p.177),
cypress(p.212), plane-tree(p.219), almond, walnut, chestnut (p.294),
hazelnut(p.298), pomegranate(p.181) cherry(p.300), peach and apricot(p.320),
orange and lemon (pp.331,332,335), the cock and domesticated fowls
(6th cent.B.C., pp.241,246,247) the pheasant (named after the
Phasis river (p.274), the ass and mule (pp.110-111). Hehn wrote:
"Not only castration, circumcision, and the breeding of mongrel
beasts, but the lopping and dwarfing of trees, and crossing of
species by imping and grafting, had been early practised in Syria",
pp. 324- 25.
8 T. A. Wertime and J.
D. Muhly, ed. The Coming of the Age of Iron, (New Haven,
1980) pp. 17-18, 358, 434-36; W. E. D. Allen, A History of
the Georgian People (N.Y., 1971; repr. of 1932 ed.)
pp. 11-19. Burney and Lang, Peoples, pp. 113-15.
9 S. Piggott, "The
Earliest Wheeled Vehicles and the Caucasian Evidence", Proceedings
of the Prehistoric Society, 34 (1968) pp. 266-318; "Chariots
in the Caucasus and China", Antiquity 48 (1974) pp.
16-24; and The Earliest Wheeled Transport (London,
1983) by the same author.
10 R. Drews, The Coming
of the Greeks (Princeton, 1988) especially pp.46-69, 103,
107, 112-20, 134-35, 148-49, 156-57, 178-85.
11 Recently, the linguists
T. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov in Indoevropeiskii iazyk
i indoevropeits [The Indo-European Language and the Indo-Europeans]
Parts I and II (Tbilisi, 1984) selected Armenia, Georgia and
Azerbaijan as the likely homeland of Indo-European speakers, a
hypothesis which has spawned an enormous literature (see note
3 above and also T. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov, "The
Early History of the Indo-European Languages", Scientific
American (March, 1990) pp. 110-16). An early "modern"
diffusionist was
J. Blumenbach (1800) who
used the term "Caucasian" to designate that ethnic division
of the human race with skin color varying from very light to brown.
Among nineteenth century philologists promoting an Indo-European
homeland in eastern Asia Minor or the Caucasus were A. V. W. Jackson
and
J. Darmesteter, and the
naturalist V. Hehn, who wrote: "Our field-fruits and tree-fruits
come from India and Persia, from Syria and Armenia; and so do
our fairytales and legends, our religious systems, all primitive
inventions, and fundamental technical arts" (V. Hehn, Cultivated
Plants, p. 398). Among twentieth century linguists supporting
variants of this position belong E. A. Speiser, A. Ungnad, I.
J. Gelb (see the discussion in G. Wilhelm, The Hurrians
(Wiltshire, England, 1989) pp. 2-5), the art historian R. Ghirshman,
the archaeologist J. Mellaart, and historians C. Renfrew and R.
Drews. This is a partial list only.
12 Stith Thompson, who
created the motif index of folktales which bears his name, derived
a number of his earliest types from the same myths discussed in
the present study. See "The Folktale in Ancient Literature",
in Stith Thompson, The Folktale (Berkeley, 1977; repr.
of 1946 ed.), pp. 272-82. The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud's studies
of myth include Moses and Monotheism (1939) and Totem
and Taboo (1946).
13 P. Walcot, Hesiod
and the Near East (Cardiff, 1966).
14 J. Bremmer, "What
is a Greek Myth?", in Interpretations of Greek Mythology
(London, 1987), J. Bremmer, ed. pp. 1-9; W. Burkert, "Oriental
and Greek Mythology: the Meeting of Parallels", pp. 10-40
in the same volume; W. Burkert, "Oriental Myth and Literature
in the Iliad", The Greek Renaissance of the Eighth
Century B.C. (Stockholm, 1983) pp. 51-56.
15 S. Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia (Oxford, 1991), pp. 39-49.