Legendary Aia and related lexical formatives against the background of linguistic data

Abstract

The legendary Aia and the origin of the Colchian descendants of Helios are very important for  understanding of the formation of the Argonaut legend. 

Some of the earliest terms related to the legendary Aia may imply links with the Kartvelian linguistic environment. What accounts for this fact?

It’s doubtless that the myth itself was formed within the Greek tradition. This is attested by the majority of names related to the myth as well as by archeological discoveries.

It is possible that the myth was developed in the region of the Hellespont. It is likewise logical to suppose that that the development of the myth in the Hellespont to a certain extend reflected the actual episodic contact or contacts that existed between the Kartvelian Black Sea environment and the Mycenaean world.

We could go even further and state that appearance of the so-called Colchian formatives in the earliest versions of the myth could be the result of an actual expedition fo the Mycenaean period.