ACCORDING TO SPECIALIST, SALT-CELLAR FOUND IN 2005 DURING EXCAVATIONS OF HAYKADZOR NEEDS DETAILED STUDY

Noyan Tapan
May 18 2006

GYUMRI, MAY 18, NOYAN TAPAN. During the 2005 excavations of Haykadzor,
one of suburbs of one-time Armenian capital Ani, a clay salt-cellar
made in the 14-15 the centuries was found under a huge ruined
rock. According to the specialist, the founded contains a secret
of a whole ritual and needs detailed study. This salt-cellar made
in the way of an expectant mother was kept from the joint corrosive
influence of salt and water. This salt-cellar had a small bowl in its
upper part. According to ethnographic evidences, salt-cellars were put
in tonratoons (the shed which houses a tonir used for baking bread),
at the fire. People acted in this way in the period of pre-Christian
times. Those were kept in the Christian times as well but were
hiden. As Larisa Yeganian, the head of the Shirak and Aragatsotn
Territorial Department of the Agency on Protecting Monuments, mentioned
there are pictures of people’s body on salt-cellars founded earlier
as well, but this salt-cellar is the first on which they are pictured
during a round dance. One of the figures is smaller compared with the
others, and “it is difficult to say if the figure was made smaller not
to cut the circle of the round dance, or they really ment a child,
as if it is on the upper part of bearing organ, it may be accepted
as a new-born.”

The dancers are pictured naked and have ring-shaped signs from their
back and overhead. According to Larisa Yeganian, those are not crowns
as the latters are characteristical only for icons. Larisa Yeganian
supposes that those rings may be horns. According to her, during the
bronze era there were hearths which were horseshoe-shaped by their
form, like a horn, and besides that, were ram-headed as well. Figures
pictured on the salt-cellar dance Armenian Gorani that is dedicated
to ancestors’ memory.