Avag Harutyunyan, the president of the Union of Armenian Wine Producers and Maran Company, communicated to www.aravot.am that their company, along with a group of other organizations and individuals, had decided to celebrate the ceremony of the wine deity. “Actually ancient Armenians had 3 festivals of wine – one was in the period between the end of February and the beginning of March, the second one was in this period of time and the third one on August 10. We will try to combine all three tomorrow. The goal is the following – we don’t want to adopt certain things from other peoples, particularly given the fact that our ceremonial system differs substantially from the Greco-Roman one. Admittedly, Armenians adopted the Greco-Roman mythological and ceremonial systems in the pre-Christian period, but we had our own gods in the period of early paganism, which had more moral and broader functions,” Mr. Harutyunyan said.
The ancient Armenians had festivals dedicated to Gods Eti, Kshmari and Anahit. The fans of the wine philosophy and culture will combine those three tomorrow. Avag Harutyunyan added that only after the Kingdom of Urartu had fallen, Goddess Anahit had taken over all the functions of Cosmos God Khaldi’s wife, Arubani.
Gohar HAKOBYAN
