Article based on the explanations and interpretive observations of Angela Terian, with additional archaeological and historical references.
Among the archaeological objects associated with the ancient cultural landscape of the Armenian Highlands is a remarkable ceramic vessel decorated with a complex system of solar, geometric, landscape, and animal imagery. The vessel is traditionally identified as a find from Gardman, Shamkhor (Shamkir) and is dated to approximately the 16th–15th centuries BCE, placing it within the Bronze Age.
The vessel is preserved in the History Museum of Armenia, whose archaeological collections document the material culture of Armenia from prehistoric times onward. The museum describes its archaeological holdings as including major collections from the Bronze and Early Iron Ages and emphasizes the importance of archaeological materials for understanding the ancient culture of the Armenian Highlands.
The interpretation presented here follows the explanations of Angela Terian, particularly her observations concerning the symbolism of the swastika or arevakhach (Sun-Cross), the solar imagery, mountains, water, deer, and horse represented in the archaeological traditions of Gardman and the wider Armenian cultural sphere.
History Museum of Armenia — official website
The geographical name Gardman has a long history in Armenian historical geography. In her discussion of the eastern regions of Armenia, Angela Terian describes Gardman as part of the historical eastern territories of Armenia and emphasizes the archaeological richness of the region. According to her account, excavations conducted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries uncovered bronze objects, jewelry, weapons, and especially richly decorated ceramic vessels featuring geometric, vegetal, animal, and anthropomorphic motifs.
This historical background is important when examining the vessel in the photograph. Its decoration should not be regarded simply as ornamental design. Bronze Age ceramics throughout the South Caucasus could carry geometric and figurative motifs whose meanings were connected with ritual, religious, and cosmological concepts. A study of Bronze Age pottery in the wider South Caucasian region, for example, records the presence of swastikas, zigzags, waves, triangles, spirals, and other geometric forms and notes that such decoration could have ideological and religious significance.
The History Museum of Armenia itself places the Bronze Age firmly within the central archaeological narrative of Armenian history, with its permanent exhibition covering both the Middle Bronze Age (23rd–16th centuries BCE) and Late Bronze Age (15th–13th centuries BCE).
The decoration of the vessel is particularly striking because it appears to combine several interconnected categories of imagery:
According to Angela Terian’s interpretation, these elements should be considered together rather than as isolated decorative motifs. They form a symbolic picture of the relationship between Sun, Earth, mountains, water, animals, and human existence.
The vessel therefore becomes something more than a household object. Its decoration can be understood as a miniature representation of a sacred cosmological landscape.
The upper part of the vessel’s body contains several circular representations from which rays extend outward. One of the clearest examples has approximately eleven rays.
The circular form is significant because the circle provides a natural visual representation of the celestial body, while the radiating lines transform the circle into an unmistakable solar image.
In the interpretation proposed by Terian, the Sun was not simply a physical object in the sky. Solar imagery belonged to a wider religious conception in which the Sun represented divine power, light, vitality, and the ordering force of the cosmos. The solar symbolism of the vessel is therefore connected to the broader concept of the Sun-God.
This interpretation also fits a wider archaeological pattern. Bronze Age art across the Caucasus contains numerous representations of celestial bodies and geometric signs, while solar motifs frequently occur alongside animals and landscape symbols.
The most distinctive symbol on the vessel is the angular, right-oriented form traditionally described in Armenian as արևախաչ — arevakhach, literally the Sun-Cross.
Today, the shape is commonly called a swastika. That modern word can create confusion because the symbol acquired an entirely different and destructive political association in 20th-century Europe. Its prehistoric use is vastly older and belongs to a wide range of cultures across Eurasia.
In the context discussed by Terian, however, the important point is not its modern political association but its ancient religious and cosmological meaning.
Her interpretation understands the Sun-Cross as a symbol connected with the Sun, divine light, movement, eternity, and the relationship between the celestial and terrestrial worlds. She specifically discusses the swastika as one of the principal symbols of the Sun-God in the ancient Armenian cultural environment.
The archaeological record demonstrates that swastika-like motifs were not isolated to a single object or period. They occur on prehistoric and Bronze Age ceramics and other artifacts in the South Caucasus. A modern archaeological study of Late Bronze Age sites in the southern Caucasus, for example, describes the swastika as a common decorative motif across the Mediterranean and Caucasus.
Terian’s research also points to swastika representations among the rock art of the Geghama and Syunik mountains and on archaeological objects discovered at sites including Shengavit, Artik, Karashamb, Vanadzor, Lori Berd, Ijevan, and Shamkhor/Gardman.
Angela Terian — “On the Ancient Origins of the Swastika Symbol”
Another important element of the vessel is the repeated use of triangular or mountain-like forms.
Seen independently, the triangles could simply be geometric decoration. But when they occur together with solar disks, animals, and water motifs, they can also be read as representations of a structured landscape.
This is particularly interesting in the context of the Armenian Highlands, where mountains constitute one of the defining features of the physical environment.
In Terian’s interpretation, the relationship between the Sun-Cross, mountains, and rivers is particularly meaningful. She compares the composition of ancient Armenian-area artifacts with other prehistoric objects in which the central sacred territory is surrounded by mountains, while rivers descend from the mountains and connect the land with a larger body of water.
Thus, the triangular forms on the vessel may be understood not merely as abstract geometry but as part of a visual language of mountain, land, and sacred space.
The middle band of the vessel is characterized by repeated wavy lines.
The motif can naturally be interpreted as water — a river, flowing water, or a larger body of water. Water is especially important when considered alongside the mountains.
Mountains and rivers form a fundamental geographical relationship: water originates in the highlands and flows toward the plains. In a symbolic worldview, this could become a representation of the connection between heavenly or mountainous space and the inhabited world below.
The combination of mountain triangles, wavy water lines, and the Sun-Cross is therefore particularly evocative. It creates a visual landscape in which the solar principle occupies the center of a living world.
Among the most fascinating figures on the vessel is the deer with large, branching antlers.
The antlers are particularly significant because their shape resembles branches of a tree. This creates a visual connection between the deer and the Tree of Life motif, one of the most enduring symbolic forms in the art of the Armenian Highlands and the broader ancient Near East.
The association of deer with solar and cosmological symbolism is not limited to the vessel in question. The History Museum of Armenia’s own description of a much later Bronze Age deer statuette from Tolors, dated to the 12th–11th centuries BCE, describes the deer as belonging to the solar and stellar sphere and as a mediator between upper and lower realms. The museum’s interpretation associates the deer with the Sun and with elemental forces including water, thunder, and lightning, as well as fertility and life.
Although the Tolors statuette is several centuries later than the Gardman vessel, the comparison is useful because it demonstrates that deer imagery had a significant symbolic dimension in the Bronze Age material culture of Armenia.
History Museum of Armenia — Bronze Age deer statuette
The presence of a horse on the vessel is equally important.
The horse had an exceptionally prominent place in the cultures of the ancient Armenian Highlands. Archaeological discoveries demonstrate the importance of horses and horse equipment during the Bronze Age, while later written evidence provides an unusually direct connection between the horse and solar worship.
One of the most important literary references comes from Xenophon’s Anabasis. Describing his passage through Armenia in the early 4th century BCE, Xenophon explicitly states that a horse was understood to be sacred to the Sun-god and was intended for sacrifice.
Xenophon, Anabasis IV.5 — Perseus Digital Library
This is particularly interesting because the Gardman vessel predates Xenophon’s account by more than a millennium. The literary testimony therefore cannot be used as direct proof of the meaning of the horse on this particular 16th–15th-century BCE vessel. Nevertheless, it provides important later evidence for the persistence of a solar association involving horses in Armenian cultural territory.
An academic article published in Fundamental Armenology likewise discusses the horse as a symbol of the Sun in ancient Armenian religious culture and refers to Xenophon’s account of the Armenian horse sacrifice.
When the motifs are considered as a whole, the vessel presents an extraordinarily coherent symbolic vocabulary:
| Motif | Possible symbolic significance in the interpretation of Angela Terian |
|---|---|
| Solar disk | Sun, light, divine celestial power |
| Radiating rays | Solar energy and the spreading of light |
| Sun-Cross / arevakhach | Solar power, eternity, divine order |
| Mountains | Sacred landscape, highlands, earthly structure |
| Wavy lines | Water, river, flowing life |
| Deer | Solar and cosmic symbolism; connection between realms |
| Branching antlers | Possible Tree of Life imagery |
| Horse | Solar symbolism and sacred power |
| Circular forms | Celestial bodies, cosmic order and cycles |
Taken together, these motifs can be read as a symbolic image of a world organized around the Sun and the Earth.
This is the central interpretive point emphasized in Terian’s explanation: the Sun-Cross can be understood as the sign of the Sun-God, situated within the earthly world represented by mountains, rivers, animals, and the landscape.
One of the most important lessons provided by the vessel is that ancient ceramics should not automatically be regarded as merely decorative.
The Bronze Age communities of the Armenian Highlands and South Caucasus produced ceramics with remarkably sophisticated systems of geometric and figurative ornament. Archaeological research shows recurring combinations of triangles, waves, spirals, swastikas, animal figures and other signs. Scholars have recognized that such motifs could participate in religious and ideological systems rather than functioning exclusively as decoration.
The Gardman vessel is especially compelling because its motifs seem to operate on several levels simultaneously:
the Sun above,
the mountains beneath it,
water flowing through the landscape,
animals inhabiting the world,
and the Sun-Cross occupying the center of the composition.
Such an arrangement makes the vessel an important visual document for investigating how Bronze Age communities conceptualized their environment.
The importance of the object extends beyond the symbolism of a single ceramic vessel.
The History Museum of Armenia states that its archaeological collection represents the history and culture of Armenia from prehistoric times and includes substantial Bronze Age material.
The museum has also specifically presented archaeological and cultural materials from Gardman, Shirvan, and Nakhichevan in exhibitions devoted to the heritage of those regions. According to the museum, such collections contain archaeological and cultural evidence documenting the historical development of the region over long periods.
Angela Terian’s own research places the archaeological finds from Gardman within the historical-cultural framework of the eastern Armenian territories and emphasizes the abundance of decorated ceramics from the region.
The vessel therefore belongs to a much broader archaeological context in which Gardman appears as an important center within the ancient cultural landscape of the South Caucasus and the Armenian Highlands.
It is important to distinguish the prehistoric Sun-Cross from the 20th-century political symbol that later appropriated a similar geometric form.
The swastika is an extremely old motif, documented in numerous archaeological cultures across Eurasia. In the South Caucasus, it occurs among Bronze Age decorative traditions, while in the Armenian cultural sphere it appears in prehistoric rock art and on archaeological objects.
Consequently, the presence of a Sun-Cross on a Bronze Age vessel from Gardman has no relationship whatsoever to its much later political appropriation. Here, the symbol must be interpreted within its archaeological and religious context.
In the terminology used by Armenian researchers and cultural tradition, arevakhach — the Sun-Cross — is a much more informative designation for understanding this particular object.
The Bronze Age vessel from Gardman/Shamkhor, dated to the 16th–15th centuries BCE, can be viewed as a remarkable expression of an ancient symbolic system.
Its decoration brings together:
Sun → Sun-Cross → mountains → water → deer → horse → Earth.
Following the interpretation explained by Angela Terian, these are not random motifs. They form a symbolic vocabulary in which the Sun-God and solar power occupy a central position, while the mountains, rivers, animals, and earthly landscape constitute the living world upon which that celestial power operates.
The vessel is particularly valuable because it preserves this worldview in visual form. More than three thousand years ago, an artisan transformed clay into a representation of a universe in which light, land, water, animals, and the Sun were interconnected.
And it is precisely this combination of solar imagery, the Sun-Cross, sacred landscape, deer and horse that makes the artifact an important piece of the ancient cultural heritage associated with Gardman and the Armenian Highlands.
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