on the scene, Urartu had made some acquaintance with the Indo-Iranians and their Aryan manners and beliefs, For the Medes had begun their national career long before 935 b.c., and a little later the Scythians had established themselves in Manna, an Eastern dependency of Urartu.[2]
As an undeniable evidence of such influences we may point to the fact that in Manna, Khaldi had become identified with Bag-Mashtu (Bag-Mazda) a sky-god and probably an older form of the Iranian Ahura Mazda.
It is in the midst of such a religion and civilization that the Armenians came to live. Their respect for it is attested by the fact that the ancient Urartian capital, Thuspa (the present Van), was spared, and that another (later) capital, Armavira in the North, became a sacred city for them, where according to the national legend even royal princes engaged in the art of divination through the rustling leaves of the sacred poplar (Armen. Saus). On the other hand the vestiges of Armenian paganism conclusively show that the newcomers lent to the Urartians infinitely more than they borrowed from them,
The Thracians and Phrygians, with whom the Armenians were related, had in later times a crude but mystic faith and a simple pantheon.
Ramsay, in his article on the Phrygians[3] assumes that the chief deity whom the Thracian influx brought into AsiaMinor was male, and as the native religion was gradually adopted by the conquerors, this god associated himself with, and usurped certain functions of, the Asianic goddess, At all events the Phrygians, who had a sky-god called Bagos Papaios, must have had also an earth-goddess Semele (Persian Zamin) who no doubt became identified with some phase of the native goddess (Kybele, Ma, etc.). The confusion of the earth-goddess with the moon seems to have been a common phenomenon in the nearer East. Dionysos or Sabazios represented the principle of fertility of nature, without any marked reference
