The Earliest Armenian Thunder God, Hurro-Urartian Teššub/Teišeba and the Greek Theseus: Image and Name

Abstract

The most outstanding monuments of ancient Armenia are the huge stone steles vishaps (“dragons”), the first samples of which date back to the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age (14th c. BC). A detailed analysis shows that the vishaps were attributes of the cult of the Indo-European thunder god, and before the Iranian word višap was borrowed, they were called by an Indo-European name of the mythological Serpent (geɫ < *wel-), the adversary of the god. Echoes of this Indo-European myth are also found in other archaeological artifacts of pre-Urartian Armenia. The most interesting of them, the so-called axe-bull, a bronze object with something resembling both a bull’s head and an axe in the center, surrounded by two or three open or closed concentric circles. According to L. Abrahamyan, this composition can be best explained by the Greek mythologeme “Minotaur in the Labyrinth.” The Indo-European thunder god represented the military function and thus embodied the image of an archaic warrior. His weapon was a hammer or an axe, and his symbol was a bull. The name of the Hurrian-Urartian thunder god (Hurr. Teššub, Urart. Teišeba /= Theišewa/) has no acceptable etymology in these languages. Its attributes, symbol, and myths (axe, bull, victory over a stone monster) resemble the image of the Indo-European thunderer. The article proposes an Armenian etymology for this theonym from the Indo-European *tek’s- + *h1ep- ‘axe holder.’ His image, Grecized as Theseus, was borrowed by the Greeks (apparently, through the Cilician Achaeans of the end of the 2nd millennium BC) becoming one of the key figures of the Cretan cycle.