Saturday, February 27, 2021

Let's see can we find evidence of presence of Armenic tribes in most Eastern regions, like Utik' and Artsakh.

 Let's see can we find evidence of presence of Armenic tribes in most Eastern regions, like Utik' and Artsakh. Those regions are not attested in cuneiform texts. We learn about those places only starting with Greeks. After MLBA period modern Azerbaijan witnessed two migrations. One is the Daghestani tribes from Lezgin branch. They started to migrate at LBA/IA. They moved gradually from North to South. The second migration was the Scythian. They left the name Sakashen. So Iron age situation was different from the preceding MLBA period. Nevertheless some archaic Armenic presence should be expected. Martirosyan propose an interesting example.

The word *weyḱ- in PIE was meaning settlement. In Armenian this word would become Gis. But this term is absent in Armenian most probably replaced by substratic (hurro-sumerian) agarak. 


https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/wey%E1%B8%B1-


The word gis is ideal for toponymes. Indeed a town and a region Gis is attested in Utik'. Another Gish is attested in Artsakh. 

In Urartian period this word was pronounced as wis. 

Indeed we see Uiše and Uišini in regions between Van and Urmia. Another example is the land Uišuši close probably to modern Tavush. The final -uši can be compared to Greek suffix -os.

So it seems that the term wis/gis was present in ancient Armenia. Later when Armenians borrowed words like agarak and k'alak' (city) this term was lost. Interestingly there is no much toponymes with gis in Western Armenia. Except one Gisak in Erzrum region I couldn't find much in Nairi dictionary.


Another interesting example is the Kolb. But I will discuss it later.


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