The patriarch Phawos (Փաւոս)

Khorenatsi lists multiple kings/patriarchs for a short period that fits into the end of Urartu and the rise of Orontid (Eruanduni) Armenia. This can be interpreted as an argument for the complexity of that period.

We have already seen one of patriarchs of that period. The Pharnawaz who seems to be a real person related to Parnaki tribe. Another patriarch of that period is Phawos pronounced as P'awos. His name is written in various forms in different texts but the canonic form is Phawos (Փաւոս).

Finding an ancient tribe or person related to him seems impossible. But the more close look on ancient provinces of Armenia gives a remarkable result.

Strabo in his Geography mentions a certain province Phauene in Armenia. Few paragraphs later he mentions Phaunitis between Basoropeda (Vaspurakan) and Caspiane (Paytakaran). 

There is also Phauenê,⁠ a province of Armenia, and Comisenê, and Orchistenê, which last furnishes the most cavalry. Chorzenê and Cambysenê are the most northerly ...

....

(Artaxias and Zariadres) enlarged their kingdoms by cutting off for themselves parts of the surrounding nations, — I mean by cutting off Caspianê and Phaunitis and Basoropeda from the country of the Medes;

If we remove the Greek suffixes usually added to foreign toponyms we get the root Phau/Phaun. This root is virtually identic to the possible root Phaw- in the name of patriarch Phawos. We can deduce that the name of Phawos is derived from an old tribe that lived probably somewhere in Syunik/Artsakh and/or south of Araxes also in the adjacent northern regions of Iran. 

This hypothetic Phaw-os tribe gived his name to that region but overtime the name was lost.  Some scholars has proposed that the name Phauene is preserved in Pharisos of Artsakh (north of Mrav range) while Hewsen suggested that Phaun-itis is a corrupted form Siwnik/Syunik. Both proposals are problematic from linguistic perspective, even though in one manuscript the name of Phawos was written as Pharos.

Keeping aside whether the name survived to medieval period or not, there is another interesting name in ancient texts. The tribe Pausikae was living next of Caspians (Paytakaran) in 11th satrapy according Herodotus.  If we consider -ikae as a Greek suffix or a particle from the language of Pausikae we get the root Paus- in a region where later Strabo mentions Phaun-itis. This is a strong argument that such a tribe lived in that region.

Finally the ultimate origin of Pausikae/Phawos is obviously unknown. Some scholars suggested an Iranian origin for Pausikae based on a vague similarity of name with some Central Asian tribes. If -ik is a suffix from their language then they could be both Armenic and Iranian. And finally if -os was a suffix from their language then this links them to the wider Gutian group where such a suffix is found in names. My own opinion is that Phawos more likely is descending from the R1b tribes present in that region. They became part of wider Armenian identity while some others were probably absorbed in Iranians.

The King Pharnavaz (Փառնավազ)

In Armenian historical tradition, the post-Urartian period — which, incidentally, is also the post-Assyrian period — is marked by the emergence of new elites.

In Movses Khorenatsi’s history, the first crowned king of Armenia (after Assyrian rule) was Paruyr Skayordi. He was an ally of the Medes and, according to Khorenatsi, participated in the destruction of the Assyrian Empire. However, the historian Sebeos reports a different story about the same period [1]. He mentions a certain Pharnavaz who was loyal to the Babylonians and was recognized by Babylon as king of Armenia. Afterward, this Pharnavaz and his descendants controlled lands in the southwestern regions of historical Armenia (Ałdznikʿ and Tsopkʿ).

The Assyrian Empire was destroyed by an alliance of Babylon and the Medes in 614–609 BC. After this, Babylonian sources report three additional campaigns in northern Mesopotamia in which the lands of Urartu are mentioned as targets of attack and plunder. It is quite possible that, after the annihilation of Assyrian political influence, Babylon had interactions with rulers located in the southern parts of historical Armenia and recognized one of the local rulers as king. Thus, the reports of the Babylonian Chronicles fit well with Sebeos’s account of Pharnavaz.

The name Pharnavaz is absent from Urartian texts; however, Assyrian texts mention a certain tribe, the Parnaki, dwelling in a region north or east of Assyria, in the northern Zagros. A derivation of the personal name Pharnavaz from the Parnaki tribe is quite plausible and is supported by historical parallels found in Anatolia, where the satrapal Pharnacid dynasty bore both the names Pharnaces and Pharnabazus. The term Pharnavaz itself is composed of two Iranian words: *farna* (“glory,” “splendor”) and *bāzu* (“arm”), which, according to Armenian phonetic rules, could have developed into Pʿarnawaz (Փառնաւազ).

Assuming that Sebeos’s story has a real historical background, we can reconstruct the following chronology of events:

**8th–7th century BC.** A minor Iranian tribe, not directly affiliated with the Medes or Persians, was dwelling near historical Armenia. They are mentioned by the Assyrians. In the Armenian patriarchal list, the name Pʿarnak is also present in ancient times.

**At the end of the 7th century BC.** The destruction of Assyria and the extreme weakening of the Biainean dynasty triggered migrations and the emergence of new elites. The Parnaki tribe most probably settled in the southwestern regions of Armenia, had occasion to interact with the Babylonians, and became part of the local ruling class. It was assimilated by the Armenians, and the memory of King Pharnavaz became part of Armenian historical tradition. 

Another Pharnavaz is also important in Georgian historic tradition. He is the king of Iberia around ~300BC and the founder of Pharnavazid dynasty. I will dedicate a separate post about the possible relation of this two Pharnavaz' and the position of Pharnacid dynasty of Anatolia in all this.

During the same post Assyrian period, or slightly earlier, Paruyr Skayordi was probably ruling in the eastern regions of historical Armenia — in or around the territory of the modern Republic. In that location, Paruyr Skayordi would have had occasion to interact with the Medes, and this memory was recorded by Khorenatsi. It must be noted that Khorenatsi also mentions Pharnavaz as a “grandson” of Paruyr Skayordi, but gives no further information about him. The Urartian cuneiform texts referring to the lands of Išqigulu and to Sagaputra (“son of Saka”) as king may also be interpreted as evidence for a Skayordi domain in the eastern regions.

In conclusion, the end of the Assyrian Empire was also a period of weakening for the Biainean dynasty and of political fragmentation in the Armenian Highlands. New elites appeared, possibly some of Iranian origin, and were assimilated into the Armenian-Urartian cultural milieu. Slightly later, the Orontid (Eruanduni) dynasty emerged and unified the country.

References

[1] Tsakanyan, R., The Versions of Khorenatsi and Sebeos on the Fall of Assyria, VEM, 2017, № 4(60), pp. 230-239, in Arm.

See also

• A tribe Parnaki is attested in Iron Age Assyrian texts