Fellowship Report

Research Topic: History of Magic and Witchcraft in Armenian (DFG project 470815550)

From December 2024 to May 2025, I was a MagEIA fellow conducting research on the “History of Magic and Witchcraft in Armenian.” At the beginning of this period, I finalized my article “Sacrifice and Sorcery in Native and Iranian Layers of the Armenian Vocabulary,” which appeared in Lingua e Storia: Walter Belardi a cento anni dalla nascita (Roma: Il Calamo, 2025: 159–183).

During my MagEIA fellowship, I was able to continue and seamlessly integrate my earlier research interests in ancient Armenian mythology and ritual practices with a closely related new topic: magic and witchcraft. The close connection between these two fields is evident in the fact that many relevant Armenian words simultaneously mean both “demon, evil spirit” and “magician, sorcerer, enchanter.”

MagEIA proved to be the ideal environment for entering and deepening my work in this field. Because the project is inherently interdisciplinary, my research greatly benefited from regular consultations with leading specialists working in various linguistic and cultural traditions, as well as from participation in seminars and academic discussions. In two seminars held during the last months of my fellowship, I presented the results of my ongoing work on several magical texts and on ancient divine and demonic names attested within them. Equally important was my extensive use of the rich collections of the Würzburg University Library, which significantly supported and expanded the scope of my research.

Although my fellowship period at MagEIA has formally ended, I hope to maintain close connections with the project and to continue deepening my expertise in this fascinating field of the history of magic.

Since December 2022, I have been the leader of the research project “The Armenian Language, Land, and Culture in the Context of the Armenian Highlands” (Remote Laboratories Fellowship Programme: Armenia, MESCS RA, Project No. 22rl-061). During my MagEIA fellowship I concentrated entirely on the semantic domain of magic, sorcery, demonology, and rituals. In close collaboration with the members of my research team, I prepared several co-authored papers that have been submitted for publication or for peer review.

These collaborative studies greatly enhanced both the volume and the quality of my research. On the one hand, they enabled me to combine and compare the different areas of expertise represented within my team; on the other hand, they allowed me to obtain Armenian-language scholarly literature published in Armenia, which is often difficult to access from Europe. In addition, thanks to the collaboration of my teammates—Iranologist Anooshik Melikian and Turkologist Ani Sarukhanyan—I am able to accurately identify and clarify the Iranian and Turkic counterparts of the lexemes under investigation.

After the conclusion of my MagEIA fellowship, I have continued to work intensively on demonological and witchcraft-related topics in close collaboration with my Armenian team. I am currently working on bringing several of our joint papers to final publication stage. During this period, we have already presented one of our studies at the International Conference “Deportation and Memory: The Ongoing Crisis of Artsakh in Oral Histories” (Yerevan, NASRA, 16-17 October 2025).

Papers

● Martirosyan, Hrach; Sacrifice and sorcery in native and Iranian layers of the Armenian vocabulary. In: Lingua e Storia: Walter Belardi a cento anni dalla nascita. Atti del Convegno internazionale, Roma, 14-15 dicembre 2023 (ed. by Paolo Di Giovine and Marco Mancini). Roma: Il Calamo (Biblioteca di ricerche linguistiche e filologiche; 64), 2025: 159-183.

● Martirosyan, Hrach; Aramyan, Zara; Yesayan, Nelli. An implement for weavers and sorcerers: Arm. bēč/ǰ ‘shoulder-blade’. To be published in Iran and the Caucasus 30.1 (2026).

● Martirosyan, Hrach; Badalyan, Varduhi. The Indo-European verb *peh₂- ‘to protect, guard, pasture’ in native and borrowed layers of Armenian. Accepted for reviewing in: Hunara: Journal of Ancient Iranian Arts and History (Bologna: Casa Editrice Persiani).

● Martirosyan, Hrach; Ghukasyan, Mane; Melikian, Ani. Evil spirits and wild animals in the ancient Armenian and Iranian calendars. Submitted for reviewing to Persica Antiqua: the international journal of ancient Iranian studies.

● Martirosyan, Hrach; Chopuryan, Gayane; Ghukasyan, Mane; Sarukhanyan, Ani. The demonology of flowers in Armenian tradition: from ‘lily’ to ‘star-of-Bethlehem’. Presented to International Conference “Deportation and Memory: The Ongoing Crisis of Artsakh in Oral Histories” (Round Hall, NASRA, 24 Marshal Baghramyan Ave, October 16-17, 2025).