the Arsacids, the Armenians became familiar with some of the stories that were later added into the Persian epic Shahnameh. This includes the stories of figures such as Hraseak (Afrasiyab), Sawarsh (Siyavash) and Spandarat (Esfandiyar). The Armenians viewed the bond between their country and the royal houses of Parthia as indestructible. Armenian sources use the terms "king" and "Arsacid" (Aršakuni) as synonyms. The Arsacid king was regarded as the bnak tērn ašxarhis ("natural lord of this country"). Imperial ideology and religious practices The Arsacids were advocates of Iranian legitimacy, which they remained even after the fall of the Parthian Empire. They insisted that they carried the xwarrah ("fortune", cognate of Armenian pʿaṙkʿ), which was the divine glory wielded by legitimate Iranian and Iranic kings. The city of Ani served as the centre of the cult of Aramazd (the Armenian equivalent of Ahura Mazda), as well as the royal necropolis of the Arsacids. In the same fashion as the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC), the Arsacids of Armenia and Iran practiced entombment and burial, probably doing it with great care to avoid contaminating the sacred earth of the Zoroastrian yazata (angelic divinity) Spenta Armaiti. The bones of the buried Arsacid kings were believed to carry their xwarrah, which was the reason that the Sasanian shahanshah Shapur II had their bones disinterred and taken out of Armenia following his raid on the necropolis. The tombs were seemingly strongly fortified, since Shapur II was unable to open the tomb of Sanatruk. The ancient sanctuary of Bagawan was of high importance to the Arsacids, who celebrated the Iranian New Year's festival (Nowruz) there. The boar, which was the favourite totem of the yazata Verethragna (Vahagn in Armenian) was the symbol of the Arsacids. Language and naming traditions While the culture of Armenia was dominated by Hellenism under the Artaxiads, the reign of the Arsacids marked the predominance of Iranianism in the country, with Parthian replacing Greek as the language of the educated. However, Armenian Hellenism was not eradicated, as the Arsacids of Iran were proud philhellenes. Armenian was considered a "vulgar" language, and thus Parthian language was spoken amongst the upper class and at the court. It was during this period that Classical Armenian incorporated most of its Iranian loanwords. The modern historians R. Schmitt and H. W. Bailey compare the Parthian influence on Armenian to that of the French influence on English following the