Achilles and the Caucasus - Université de Montréal

Achilles and the Caucasus (K. Tuite) — août 17, 2007 — pg. 23
3.1. PARENTAGE. Achilles, as was mentioned above, is the son
of a shape-changing nature goddess and a human hunter who
coupled with her in her seaside cavern.
3.1.1. AMIRAN. Amiran is the offspring of Dæl, the Svanetian
goddess of mountain game animals, and a human hunter who
enters her domain (the mountains), and sleeps with her in her cave.
Among the numerous characteristics attributed to Dæl in Svanetian
mythology is the ability to take on the form of the animals she
watches over, especially the ibex. When Dæl transforms herself
into an ibex, it is usually marked by a golden horn or unusual
beauty.
Darjelian encounters Dæl while wandering in the mountains in
search of game. In traditional Caucasian religious ideology,
broadly speaking, the hunter was a type of intermediary between
the domestic and alpine spatial realms. 25 In these societies the
primary division of space is between the domestic, ‘civilized’
realm, centered around the village, and the savage, exterior realm.
Of the various component spaces of the latter, the high mountains,
home of the ibex and their divine patrons, is deemed especially
pure compared to the village and the lowlands. The principal
occasions of impurity were death and women’s blood flow (during
menstruation or childbirth), for which reason women were
excluded from spaces associated with a high degree of purity, such
as churches and the mountains.
In this intermediate space, between the inaccessible peaks
where Dæl and her sisters dwell, and the village in the valley, the
goddess and the hunter meet. Underlying their encounter is a
competition for the exploitation of natural resources. The game
25 Just before preparing the final version of this paper, I came across this striking
observation by K’ik’nadze (1996: 64), which is wholly consistent with the
argument developed here: “The hunter who goes up into the pure mountains is
like an oracle (mk’adre), who has the right to cross into sacred (k’vrivi) places”.
The principal function of the mk’adre in the traditional religious system of the
Georgian mountaineers is to assure communication between the celestial world
of the deities and the terrestrial community of humankind (Charachidzé 1968:
205-223).