Myth about Amirani
Amirani is the name of a culture hero of a Georgian epic who resembles the Classical Prometheus. Amirani was the son of Dali, a Caucasian goddess of the hunt, but he was removed prematurely from her womb and raised by a hunter Sulkalmah alongside the latter’s two natural sons Badri and Usibi. Together, they fought evil spirits and defeated a three-headed giant whose several heads metamorphosed into snakes. Amirani battles withdragons. He is swallowed by the Black Dragon. Amirani cuts the dragon’s belly and comes out.
While battling other evil spirits in his search for a bride, his two mortal brothers were killed, and Amirani attempted suicide, but discovered to his dismay that he returned to life. Thereafter, Amirani abandoned his search for a bride, and empowered by the highest God, Ghmerti (later the name of the Christian deity), he took on another giant, and then Ghmerti himself. In response for this insolence, Ghmerti punished him in three stages: he fastened Amirani to a post driven deep in the earth; second, Ghmerti buried him in chains under a mountain pass, which formed a cave-like dome over him; and third, for one night each year, the mountain opened to reveal Amirani suspended in air where a human attempted in vain to release him, and the mountain closed again in consequence of the excessive talk of a woman.
Legend about Georgia
When God set about dividing the Earth among peoples, Georgians were late, as they lingered over their traditional feast. So, by the time they turned up, the whole world had already been distributed. The Lord asked them what they had been drinking to. The Georgians answered, they had been drinking to the God their Lord, to themselves and to the whole world. The Almighty appreciated the response and said that although, all the lands had been given out already, he had preserved one piece of land for himself and he would willingly give it to the Georgians.
The beauty of this land, said the God, is incomparable to anything elsewhere and people will admire it for ever and ever.
Years passed…. The country went through innumerable misfortunes and hardships.
Legend about Tbilisi
According to an old legend, the present-day territory of Tbilisi was covered by forests as late as 458. One widely accepted variant of the legend of Tbilisi’s founding states that King Vakhtang I Gorgasali of Georgia went hunting in the heavily wooded region with a falcon (sometimes the falcon is replaced with either a hawk or other small birds of prey in the legend). The King’s falcon allegedly caught or injured a pheasant during the hunt, after which both birds fell into a nearby hot spring and died from burns. King Vakhtang became so impressed with the hot springs that he decided to cut down the forest and build a city on the location. The name Tbilisi derives from the Old Georgian word “Tpili”, meaning warm. The name ‘Tbili’ or ‘Tbilisi’ (‘warm location’) was therefore given to the city because of the area’s numerous sulphuric hot springs that came out of the ground.
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