The biblical myth of the flood, in which the righteous Noah, having received a warning from God about the coming cataclysm, was saved in an ark on the mountains of Ararat, became the source and a sort of primary matrix-basis to form plots and images associated with the sacred mountain. The article traces how a text, enriched with new details and carrying a lot of accumulated cultural meanings, was formed on the already existing archetype. The author presents general tendencies in the development of motives and their possible variations and highlightes stable and universal motives and images associated with Mount Ararat. The study of travellers’ notes has shown that the holiness of Mount Ararat was confirmed by more and more classifiers and sacral objects in the region of the saviour mountain, which personified the centre and the “starting point” of the sacred space. Towns founded by Noah, graves of saints, the grave of Noah himself and his wife Noemzar, miraculous springs and sources, sacred trees under Ararat, sacred places associated with events from the life of the prophets, apostles, Christian martyrs, and churches built in their honour – all these objects are correlated with the sacred mountain, and therefore, revered objects were components of sacral geography and fundamental points of local mythology. The information of diverse character in the travel essays of wanderers in the East, which has a biblical subsoil, coupled with the first-hand material recorded by travellers on the spot, makes it possible to compile a “European collection of legends about Mount Ararat and the sacred territory around it”.
Key words: biblical text, biblical mountain, sacral geography, legends, travellers' notes, intertextuality
DOI: 10.22250/20728662_2023_3_32
About the author
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Gohar L. Karagyozyan – PhD (Philology), Senior Researcher at the Institute of Literature n.a. M. Abeghyan of The National Academy of Sciences of Armenia; 15 Grigor Lusavorich str., Yerevan, 0015, Republic of Armenia; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |