Azon

Ruler of Mtskheta in the chronicles

4th–3rd centuries BC

Azon, or Azo, ruled ancient Kartli after the campaign of Alexander the Great, according to the medieval Georgian chronicles. The two chronicles tell his story differently. “The Conversion of Kartli” calls him Azo, son of an unnamed king of Arian Kartli, whom Alexander brought with his followers into Kartli proper and installed as the first king at Mtskheta; with him, it is said, came the cult of the idols Gatsi and Gaim.

“Kartlis Tskhovreba” knows him as Azon, son of Iaredos, and makes him an outsider, a Macedonian who took Mtskheta with a hundred thousand warriors, whom the chronicle calls “Romans”. Alexander supposedly ordered him to worship the sun, the moon and five stars and to serve the invisible God, creator of the world. In this version Azon appears as a tyrant: he killed Pharnavaz's father and uncle, and Pharnavaz, raising an army with the help of Kuji of Egrisi, overthrew and killed him.

Who stood behind this figure remains one of the most tangled riddles of early Georgian history. The Georgian scholar Sergi Gorgadze tentatively dated his rule to 330–272 BC, but these dates lack precision. The Armenian tradition of Movses Khorenatsi speaks of Mithridates, a satrap of Darius, whom Alexander set over the Iberians, and Giorgi Melikishvili found many parallels between him and Azon; some scholars have even linked the name Azon with Jason of the Argonaut myth. Both chronicles agree on the main point: kingship at Mtskheta arose in the early Hellenistic age, and foreign sources confirm this.