Various Aspects of the Image of a Dragon-serpent in Armenian and South-Caucasian Sculpture of the 7th–14th Centuries

Abstract

Introduction The image of a dragon is one of the universal archetypes of world culture and, at the same time, the most multifaceted in its artistic manifestations and symbolism. If one gives a very generalized definition of its functions in Indo-European mythology including ancient Armenian, then dragon personified the primordial chaos and chthonic forces, whereas fighting the dragon was the leading theme of the victory of a cultural hero over evil and disorder and the act of consecration of a hero, the transition to another level, overcoming death. In many cultures, the snake was primarily associated with the earth and water elements and the underworld. At the same time, in the ancient cosmogonic concepts of many peoples, the body of the celestial serpent-dragon (ouroboros) was thought as the boundary of the inhabited macrocosm. According to astrological notions, its head and tail cause solar and lunar eclipses, as well as determine the change of day and night [14]. Due to their liminal position between the inferior and upper worlds, the dragon and serpent were associated with fertility and rebirth, and were also endowed with apotropaic functions, that is, they initially had explicit bipolar symbolism [12]. With the advent of Christianity, along with the rejection of pagan notions and cults, especially in the early Middle Ages, the dragon retained mainly its destructive hypostasis becoming a symbol of the devil and hell. Only on the turn of the 9th–10th centuries in the Armenian and South-Caucasian art, we find a certain appeal to the archaic, positive functions of this monster, which was especially expressed in the monuments of the 12th–14th centuries. The centuries-old veneration of the dragon-serpent in Armenia had its own local manifestations. It was called Վիշապ (vishap), which meant a monster, an enormous snake, especially a water one. The word was also used in the meaning — huge, gigantic. At the same time, vishap is the traditional name for unique megalithic stelae in the Armenian Highlands of the 3rd–2nd millennium BC. Most of them are hewn in the fish shape and bear images of the bull’s head and skin as the evidence of ritual sacrifices. The latter were placed vertically in high mountains, at sacred precincts, and were associated with the veneration of springs and reservoirs2. The dragon image is also reflected in Armenian toponyms and natural phenomena: the Lake Van