The state religion of the kingdoms of Kartli (Iberia) and Colchis before Georgia's official conversion to Christianity in the early fourth century CE under King Mirian III. Its supreme god Armazi, whose great idol stood on the mountain above the capital Mtskheta, headed a court pantheon shaped heavily by centuries of Achaemenid and later Zoroastrian Iranian influence, distinct from the older, less centralized nature-spirit religion of the highland Caucasus peoples further north. Knowledge of it survives mainly through the medieval Georgian chronicles, themselves compiled after Christianization, and through archaeology at Mtskheta and the Armazi hillfort site.
Facts
Disputed
Origin PeriodThe older nature-spirit religion of the highland Caucasus peoples has no fixed origin point, and Armazi's court cult as recorded in the medieval Georgian chronicles took its historically attested shape under centuries of Achaemenid and later Zoroastrian Iranian influence, beginning when the Achaemenid Empire's rise around 550 BCE extended that influence into the Kartli and Colchis region. The date marks the start of that influence, not the religion's undocumented earlier origin. Correspondences & Relations
Cross-Tradition Connections
Sources
1. The Georgians (Lang)
David Marshall Lang, Thames and Hudson, Ancient Peoples and Places vol. 51, 1966Lang's account of the pre-Christian Georgian pantheon and the Armazi idol at Mtskheta
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