There are some rumors that after the acceptance of Christianity in 301 in Armenia everything that pertained to the period of paganism there was destroyed. In my unsophisticated view, this is a too primitive approach, which can be applied to the most peoples and nationalities of the time.
But Armenians somehow do not fit into this scheme. I’ll explain why I think so. First, the Armenians have a too scrupulous attitude to their past. This is evidenced by archaeological excavations all over Armenia. With this approach, a question arises – why would the Armenians want to destroy something of their history?
It is already certain that for at least 2000 thousand years the history of Armenia has been falsified. Of course, those falsifiers would have to come up with some fancy stories on how the Armenians themselves destroy their monuments.
Today, ancient artifacts are displayed at museums around the world, and as a rule, these museums hide the true identity of certain artifacts. For example, everything with Armenian origin kept in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg is attributed to the Urartu invented by Dyakonov and Piotrovsky (note that in their understanding, their Urartu and the Urartu (Kingdom of Van) we know are not the same thing).
In the British Museum, the birthplace of artifacts found in the Armenian Highlands has been known as “Ancient Turkey” until just recently. And only with the diligence of our compatriot Zepur Batikyan, the pavilion was condescendingly renamed “Anatolia Uratra”.
Moreover, a fragment of the sculpture of the goddess Anahit in the British Museum is displayed in the Greco-Roman hall!
The material published below tells about the finds of fragments of the statue of the goddess Anahit which are today kept in a variety of museums around the world.
Bronze Anahit
Anahit in Armenian mythology was the mother goddess and the goddess of fertility and love. Her cult was spread in Armenia from the 1st century BC to 3rd century AD. It is known that the golden statues of the goddess were worshiped in temples throughout Armenia. But after the adoption of Christianity in 301, all of them, like other images of pagan gods, were presumably destroyed.
Until now, only fragments – the head and a hand – of one bronze statue of Anahit have been preserved. They were found in 1872 in the territory of modern Turkey not far from the city of Erznjan (the same as the ancient Armenian Erznka).
Soon, the bronze head was acquired by an Italian collector Alessandro Castellani, who eventually sold it to the British Museum. Later, he transferred the hand to the museum as well. In 1874, the same excavation site was examined again by a British group, but neither the rest of the bronze sculpture nor the traces of the temple dedicated to the goddess were found.
Lets Bring The Goddess Home
6 thoughts on “The Goddess of Love and Fertility Anahit – Ancient Armenia Preface”
The achievements of the pagan Armenians, from architecture to written language, made the early Christians insecure once they came to power. So any history that they didn’t outright destroy, they distorted into their Christian point of view, incorporating biblical stories into Armenian history and crediting Christians for inventing the Armenian alphabet, among other falsifications (consider Tir for example, the God of Writing; strange for a civilization without it’s own writing system to have a God of Writing, is it not?). This was the mission of Moses Khorenatsi and other early Armenian historians. But they didn’t succeed in destroying everything; what survived was then claimed by invaders who came later such as the Turks.