Zaden

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Zaden was the god of fruitfulness in the ancient Georgian religion of Kartli (Iberia). Medieval Georgian chronicles say that King Parnajom (reigned about 109–90 BC) built a fortress on Mount Zedazeni to house a statue of Zaden along with other pagan idols. It is told that, through the prayers of St. Nino in the 4th century, these idols were destroyed as Georgians were converted to Christianity. Aside from these old texts and the place name Zedazeni (meaning “Upper Zaden”), there is little contemporary evidence or archaeological proof about this cult. Some modern scholars think Zaden might be the Georgian version of neighboring deities like the Luwian Santas or the Hittite Sandon, or possibly related to Yazata in Zoroastrianism. The name Zaden was also used for a crater on the dwarf planet Ceres.