Dali is a goddess from the mythology of the Georgian people of the Caucasus region. She is a hunting goddess who serves as the patron of hoofed wild mountain animals such as ibexes and deer. Hunters who obeyed her numerous taboos would be assured of success in the hunt; conversely, she would harshly punish any who violated them.
About Dali (goddess) in brief
Dali is a goddess from the mythology of the Georgian people of the Caucasus region. She is a hunting goddess who serves as the patron of hoofed wild mountain animals such as ibexes and deer. Hunters who obeyed her numerous taboos would be assured of success in the hunt; conversely, she would harshly punish any who violated them. Dali is most prominently attested in the stories of the Svan ethnic subgroup in northwestern Georgia. Other groups in western Georgia had similar figures considered equivalent to Dali, such as the Mingrelian goddess Tkashi-Mapa. It has been suggested that Dali had her origins in a lost common religion of the Kartvelian peoples. Dating the origin of this religion, and therefore of Dali in particular, may be impossible due to the lack of surviving written sources. Her story remains an important part of Georgian cultural consciousness, and she is often referenced with eponyms and literary allusions. Some historians have speculated that the name Dali comes from certain Phasian drachma coins from the 4th to 5th century. The etymology of Dalo’s name is unclear, although some historians have suggested that it may have been the name of a pre-Orthodox church figure. Some archaeological artifacts have been suggested to have a connection to Dalo, although numismatist John Hind argued against these interpretations in a 2005 paper in a journal of the Georgia Museum of Fine Arts, which has published a book on Dali’s role in the Georgian mythology. The name Dalo is not among them among them from the early Orthodox Church figures in Georgian mythology, although it has been speculated that it comes from them from them in the early Georgian Orthodox Church, which had a similar name for a goddess of the morning star, Aphrodite.
The word Dali has also been used to refer to the goddess of seduction, Ishtar, and the morningstar, as well as to goddesses of the hunt and of the night sky. She was usually described as a beautiful nude woman with golden hair and glowing skin, although she sometimes took on the form of her favored animals, usually with some marking to differentiate her from the herd. She has been compared with Artemis of Greek mythology, a Scottish hag called the glaistig, and the maiden who tames the unicorn. Some myths depict her working alongside other forest deities, and her sometimes accompanied by the legendary hunting dog Q’ursha. According to Elene Virsaladze, Georgian culture exhibits an extraordinary degree of live retention of ancient folklore and traditions, possibly from as far back as 3,300 years ago. The only thing that can be stated definitively is that these beliefs predate the adoption of Christianity in Georgia, which archaeological evidence indicates began as early as the 3rd century. Some older hunters still consider her to be a real figure one might encounter deep in the forest. The surviving texts are fragmentary, representing but a tiny fraction of the texts that would have been in circulation in the Savaneti of a few centuries ago.
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