Astghik

Before sunrise in Sasun, the story goes, the young men would climb above the river and wait. The goddess came down to bathe at first light, and they wanted one look at her. They never got it. Astghik knew they were there, and as the sun came up she drew the morning mist around herself like a cloak, so that all the watchers on the cold hillside saw was white vapour lifting off moving water.

That tale was still being told in the early twentieth century, when Mardiros Ananikian set it down in his Armenian Mythology of 1925. By then the goddess had been gone from the temples for about sixteen hundred years. What survives of her older worship comes from two Armenian histories written after the conversion to Christianity, by men who had every reason to be brief about her. They were brief. They were also, by accident, precise.

The fuller of the two is the History attributed to Agathangelos, the account of how Saint Gregory the Illuminator brought Christianity to the Armenian court around the start of the fourth century. Returning from Greek lands, Gregory heard that a great temple still stood in the province of Taron. It sat on the slopes of Mount Karke above the Euphrates, facing the Taurus range, and was stuffed with gold, silver and the gifts of kings. It was the eighth of the famous shrines, the place where the kings of Great Armenia came to sacrifice, and the place itself was called Ashtishat, after the many sacrifices made there. Three sanctuaries were still standing. The first belonged to Vahagn, the Dragon-Reaper. The second was the altar of the Golden Mother, the goddess born of gold. The third, Agathangelos writes, was the temple named for the goddess Astghik, the Greek Aphrodite, and people called it the Chamber of Vahagn.

That single phrase is the heart of everything known about her. A temple to a goddess, named as the bedroom of a god, standing a short walk from his own shrine. Nobody bothered to write down the love story. The building was the story.

The second history, attributed to Movses Khorenatsi and still argued over for its date, explains how the arrangement came about, or at least how its author believed it did. King Artashes, campaigning in Asia, carried off gilded bronze statues of Artemis, Heracles and Apollo. The priests of the Vahuni family, who claimed Vahagn as their ancestor, decided the Heracles was Vahagn himself and set it up on their own land at Ashtishat. Artashes also looted images of Zeus, Artemis, Athena, Hephaistos and Aphrodite from Greece, but he died before they arrived, and the men bringing them fled with them to the fortress of Ani. His son Tigran finished the job. He placed Zeus at Ani, Athena at Til, Artemis at Erez and Hephaistos at Bagayarinj. The statue of Aphrodite, Khorenatsi says, he ordered set up beside Heracles at Ashtishat, as his beloved. Then he sacked the Vahuni from the priesthood for having put the god on private ground, took the village for the crown and ordered every prince to come and sacrifice.

So the only face Astghik is recorded to have worn was a Greek one, shipped in as war loot and stood next to a Greek hero renamed as an Armenian god. Khorenatsi never uses her name at all. He says Aphrodite. It is Agathangelos who supplies the equation, and later Armenian readers who joined the two accounts into a single picture of bronze lovers side by side in a hilltop temple.

Where she came from before that is a question of language. Her name means little star. The scholar Hoffmann recognised in it a translation of the Syriac Kaukabta, a late name for the Semitic goddess Ashtart, used both for the goddess and for the planet Venus. Ananikian followed him and counted Astghik among the Syrian deities who travelled north into Armenia. Of all of them, he wrote, she was the only one to win real popularity there, holding her own against two goddesses of her own kind, Anahit and Nane, and taking the national god Vahagn as her lover into the bargain. Armenians later stopped calling the evening star Astghik and called it Arusyak, the little bride, which Ananikian read as an echo of an old title of Ishtar.

Even medieval Armenian writers found the goddesses hard to keep apart. The medieval scholar Vanakan Vardapet wrote that Astarte, “the shame of the Sidonians”, was called Kaukabta by the Syrians, Aphrodite by the Greeks and Anahit by the Armenians. Either he meant Astghik and wrote the wrong name, or he simply had not heard hers.

Ashtishat was not her only house. A hagiography once credited to Khorenatsi, the Coming of the Rhipsimean Virgins, describes a mountain called Palat or Pashat with a house of Aramazd and Astghik on its summit, a house of fire on a lower peak, and a strong spring at the foot. The worshippers there called the fire sister and the spring brother.

Then Gregory came up the valley with his relics. He was carrying bones of John the Baptist and of the martyr Athenagenes, meaning to haul them up to the temple heights, tear down the altars and build shrines on the ruins, because ordinary people were still offering impure sacrifices there. About two stadia short of the Euphrates the white mules pulling the cart stopped at a little stream and would not go on. An angel told Gregory the saints wished to rest where they stood. The soldiers built a chapel on the spot, and the temple of Astghik passes out of written history with that scene.

Her festival may have outlived her. Vardavar, the Armenian summer feast whose name is usually read as burning with roses, is now kept as the Christian feast of the Transfiguration. Vahan Kurkjian’s history of 1958 names the rose and the dove as her emblems and Vardavar as her feast. Ananikian was more careful: in Shirak, he noted, doves were released at the rose festival, and whether that preserved an old feast of Astghik was “difficult to say”. The link is an inference, and a pretty one.

Her powers, as far as the record lets anyone name them, were the powers of the planet and the goddess she was matched with. She was the star of evening and morning, a goddess of love whose temple was named as a bridal chamber, strong enough to draw the war god of Armenia into her house. The folk tale adds the one power that is entirely hers in the surviving material: she could not be looked at unless she chose.

Her limits are written into the sources. She has no myth of her own that survives, no parents, no children and no account of her birth. The writers who preserved her saw her through Greek and Syrian goddesses and, in the end, through the eyes of the saint who came to pull her altar down. What is left is a name, a temple called a bedroom, and a river at sunrise where the mist comes up just in time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Astghik in Armenian mythology?

Astghik is a pre-Christian Armenian goddess whose name means “little star”. Armenian writers of the fifth century equated her with the Greek Aphrodite, and she was worshipped as the beloved of the dragon-slaying god Vahagn.

What was the Chamber of Vahagn?

The Chamber of Vahagn was the popular name of Astghik’s temple at Ashtishat in the province of Taron, according to the History attributed to Agathangelos. It stood beside Vahagn’s own temple and an altar of the Golden Mother, and Saint Gregory the Illuminator set out to demolish the site after Armenia converted to Christianity.

Is Astghik the same as Aphrodite or Ishtar?

Astghik is not simply a copy of either, but both comparisons go back a long way. Agathangelos calls her the Greek Aphrodite, and Movses Khorenatsi says King Tigran set a statue of Aphrodite beside Vahagn’s statue at Ashtishat. Her name may translate the Syriac Kaukabta, a late name for the goddess Ashtart and for the planet Venus.

What is the legend of Astghik and the mist?

In a folk tale recorded in Sasun, young men climbed above a river at dawn hoping to see Astghik bathing. The goddess knew they were watching and wrapped herself in the morning mist, so that they saw nothing.

Is Vardavar a festival of Astghik?

Vardavar is often linked to Astghik, but the connection is uncertain. Vahan Kurkjian named it her festival and called the rose and dove her emblems, while Mardiros Ananikian noted that doves were released at the festival in Shirak and said it was difficult to know whether this preserved an old feast of Astghik. Today Vardavar is celebrated as the Christian feast of the Transfiguration.

Related Entries

Vahagn, Anahit, Aramazd, Vishap, Aralez, Mher, Armenian Mythology, Aphrodite, Heracles (Hercules), Ishtar, Inanna, Venus, Anahita, Baal