Striking parallels to the Indo-European wolf cult are to be found in South Caucasian (Kartvelian) culture. A wolf cult occupies a special place in the earliest traditions. The depiction of people in wolf masks is a basic motif of ritual art. Traces of the wolf cult are especially clear in Svan traditions, where as in ancient Indo-European wolves are a symbol of a certain type of social organisation. Moreover, Svan tradition equates the mobility of wolf packs with that of human groups: the organization of wolves is a reflection in nature of human social organisation.

In Old Georgian tradition the significance of the wolf cult is reflected in the names of the rulers of Iberia, which contained Iranian words meaning ‘wolf’, for example the epithet of the Old Georgian king Vakhtang Gorgasala ‘Vakhtang Wolfhead’; the very name Vakhtang (ვახwტანგი) may be Iranian, from *warx-tang = vəhrka-tanū– ‘wolf-bodied’ (cf. the Ossetic hero’s name in the Nart epic, Wærxæg, from ‘wolf’). The name of ancient Iberia itself, *Vṛkān– = Hyrkaniā, goes back to the same Iranian word for ‘wolf’.

As a result of the cultic status of wolves, the original Kartvelian word for ‘wolf’ undergoes taboo and is replaced by borrowings from other languages. Georgian mgel-i, Mingrelian ger-i are probably taken from Armenian (cf. Arm. gayl ‘wolf’); Svan txer ‘wolf’ is obviously connected to Gk. thḗr ‘wild animal’. Similarly, in Ossetic, where the wolf was an ancient totemic animal and the mythic ancestor of the tribe, the original Indo-European word was tabooed and is preserved only in mythic names. It is replaced by a word of apparent Turkic origin, bīræğ/beræğ.

The wolf cult plays a special role in the South Caucasus, and many traits of the tradition connected with ritual status of wolves coincide in their essential elements right down to striking details with the ancient Indo-European traditions. The coincidence of this entire complex unites the Indo-European and South Caucasian traditions with a wider circle of mythic conceptions characteristic of a much broader area which extended far to the east.

Excerpted from “𝐼𝑛𝑑𝑜 𝐸𝑢𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐼𝑛𝑑𝑜 𝐸𝑢𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑠; 𝑎 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐻𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝐴𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑦𝑠𝑖𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑡𝑜 𝐿𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑢𝑠𝑔𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎 𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑡𝑜 𝐶𝑢𝑙𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒” by T. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov (translated by Johanna Nichols)

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#Wolf #wolves #indoEuropean #werewolf #wolfcult #linguistics #protoindoeuropean

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