The exhibition "Armenia. The Legend of Existence" has opened at the State Historical Museum

One of the names of Armenia is Karastan, the country of stones. And there is another option - the country of talking stones. This clearly refers to khachkars. Vertical stone slabs with ornaments and a cross. They began to be installed on the site of future churches back in the 4th century, during the rooting of Christianity in this region. Khachkars are still made in Armenia. The exhibition “Armenia. Legend of Existence” allows you to get to know one of the oldest Christian states in the world and see unique artifacts of the past. It opened in Moscow, at the State historical museum. Three leading museums in Armenia presented their rarest exhibits.

Specialists from Matenadaran, the Institute of Ancient Manuscripts, delivered 25 artifacts to Moscow. Bibles and prayer books darkened by time. The most valuable exhibit from the Museum of History of Armenia is a silver cup from the 22nd century BC. There are only a few of these in the world. Decorated in several tiers - here are scenes from the life of the nameless king: here he is hunting, fighting, feasting, making sacrifices to the gods.

“The thing is unique and extremely informative. Even by how many weapons are depicted here, you can make a typology, because everything is depicted very clearly and you can see which handle and which blade,” says the head of the department’s sector archaeological sites Historical Museum Alexander Moshinsky.

These miniature idols, a marble statue of the goddess Aphrodite from the end of the 2nd century BC, arrived from the Museum of History of Armenia. And these things were made six centuries earlier. The helmet, shield and quiver belonged to the kings of the state of Urartu. And the dominant feature of the exhibition is the cross with the relics of St. George the Victorious from the treasury of Etchmiadzin. Relic from 1746.

“There are a lot of jewelers and craftsmen who worked with metal. And here is one of the examples of those masters who worked mainly in the city of Van. Unfortunately, after the genocide, all these workshops do not exist. This school is lost,” notes the director of the museums of the Mother See of the Holy Etchmiadzin priest Asogik Karapetyan.

About genocide, the most terrible period in history Armenian people, the exhibition tells the story of photographs and documents from those years. They show destroyed and lost forever architectural monuments and people who were lucky to survive. Among the surviving artifacts that cannot be found anywhere else are khachkars.

If translated from Armenian, the word “khachkar” combines the concepts of a cross and a stone; such monuments originate from monuments that were erected in the 4th century on the site of ancient pagan sanctuaries. Khachkars are called a symbol national culture Armenia.

These are both amulets and a prayer enclosed in a stone. In the center is a cross, the ends of which must have elements of flowering. According to one of the apocrypha, after the crucifixion of Christ, the cross sprouted and bloomed until the moment of Jesus’ death. This symbol of the coming resurrection to eternal life is called nothing less than the Armenian cross.

. And these are not just unique objects and sacred relics, representing the history of the country, from the tools of primitive times to late XIX century. Each exhibit here is priceless and is associated with the legends and traditions of the Armenian people. And the discovery of each artifact is a whole story, and deciphering the content of drawings on objects still gives rise to a lot of hypotheses and similar detective stories. If we have time, someday we’ll talk about them in more detail.

Opening of the exhibition. Minister of Culture of the Republic of Armenia Hasmik Poghosyan speaks. Nearby are the director of the State Historical Museum Alexey Levykin, the Minister of Culture of Russia Vladimir Medinsky

Speech by Vladimir Medinsky.

To begin with (taking into account the specifics of the blog), let's get acquainted with textiles and handwritten books.

The central place in the exhibition, next to the cross with the relics of St. George the Victorious, is given to a large altar curtain. It consists of sewn fabrics and is perfectly preserved, despite its considerable age.

Altar curtain. Evdokia (Tokat). 1689 Canvas, printed material. Museums of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin

Fragments
The traditional colors of Armenian printed cloth: black and red have not faded at all over the past centuries

Veil. Constantinople. 1761 Silk, gold, silver and silk threads. Museums of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin

Fragments.
The finest embroidery on yellow silk. The craftswomen took their time to depict every brick and fold of clothing...

Amice. New Julfa. 1688 Silk, gold, silver and silk threads, pearls, silver, enamel, turquoise. Embroidery. Museums of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin

Left: Stole. Smyrna. 1732 Silk, gold, silver and silk threads, pearls, emeralds (cabochons).
On right: The collar is the mantle of the surplice. Smyrna. 1734 Silk, gold, silver and silk threads. 68.5x47 cm
The collar is the mantle of the surplice. New Julfa. 1736 Silk, gold, silver and silk threads.
Museums of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin

Fragments

Omophorion. Slutsk Late XVIII V. Gold, silver and silk threads, silver. Museums of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin

Fragment
Wide Slutsk belts were woven without backing, double-sided. And there were also four-sided ones - two stripes different color, for all occasions. The belt is easy to date thanks to the inscription in the corner: “V grd Slutsk” (I replace it with a solid sign). Belts began to be signed in Cyrillic after the third partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, when the Belarusian lands became part of Russian Empire, as one of the provinces.
The restrained color, the no longer bright shine of the gold threads and the modest design do not attract much attention. Meanwhile, this is the famous Slutsk belt (called an omophorion in the signature). In Belarus itself after the war there were only 5 copies of them, but they are in the collections of museums in different countries.
For details about their history, the museum of Slutsk belts and their revival today, see

6 pile carpets of the 19th century and 4 national costumes were brought to Moscow:
Carpets: On the left is a carpet with medallions, “Vorotan” type[name of mountain river] . Syunik, XIX century Wool.
Carpet "Asthaavk"[Stars]. Syunik. XIX century Wool.
On right: Women's costume ensemble. Vaspurakan. Late XVIII - early XIX V. Wool, cotton. Museum of History of Armenia

Carpet fragment "Tree of Life". Artsakh. End of the 19th century Wool. Museum of History of Armenia

An entire library of ancient manuscripts is presented at the exhibition. The leather bindings are open and you can look at the bright miniatures in the gospels, the Bible, lectionaries, hymnaries, and the Synaxarium for a long time.
The oldest among the monuments of writing is this lonely burnt (?) sheet:
Deuteronomy. Fragment. V century Parchment. An example of the earliest form of Armenian writing, which was written by Mesrop Mashtots, the creator of the Armenian alphabet. Matenadaran

Gospel. Sandkhkavank, Airarat. 1053 Scribe and recipient Hovhannes, bookbinder Priest Astvatsatur. Parchment. Opened on the miniature “Mark the Evangelist” and the first sheet. ...It is known that Hovhannes Sandkhkavanetsi lived and worked in the Sandkhkavank monastery. Matenadaran

Gospel. Kaffa, 1420. Scribe, artist and bookbinder Christosatur, recipients Astvatsatur and his wife Eagut. Parchment. Opened on the miniature “Evangelist” and the first sheet. Matenadaran

By the way, manuscripts are not only monuments of writing and examples of the art of books. They are also of interest to textile workers, since the bindings preserve the oldest printed fabrics. They are painted with vegetable dyes and the famous Armenian kermes. This unique red color was obtained from an insect - the oak mealybug. He also contributed to the glory of Armenian carpets.

Exhibition “Armenia. Legend of Existence" in the Historical Museum on Red Square for the first time presents to a wide Russian audience more than 160 unique exhibits from three leading museums in Armenia:

Museum of the History of Armenia, Museums of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin and the Institute of Ancient Manuscripts Matenadaran named after Mesrop Mashtots.

The History Museum of Armenia provided for display a rich collection of artifacts found on the territory of modern Armenia and covering the entire history of the Armenian people - from the time primitive society to end XIX century. These are guns primitive man and objects related to ancient agricultural cultures of the Bronze Age: ritual hearths, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic clay sculpture, miniature figurines and astral symbols, painted vessels. All these monuments testify to the highest level development of crafts, culture and religious ideas. Of particular interest is a silver cup from the royal tomb in Karashamba, found during excavations of one of the richest mounds Bronze Age. Made of thin silver sheet, it is surrounded from top to bottom with six friezes filled with chased images. Individual scenes and compositions - hunting, war, ritual actions, feasting, beating of prisoners and others - form a detailed epic plot that has a mythological basis.
Among the exhibits of the exhibition are monuments to Urartu, a powerful state ancient world on the territory of the Armenian Highlands: cuneiform inscriptions, bronze figurines of gods, ceramics, weapons of the Urartian kings with relief images of horsemen and war chariots, sacred trees, winged deities and dragon-snakes with lion heads.

The Hellenistic period in the history of Armenia is represented at the exhibition by monuments of the 4th century BC. e. – II century AD e., among which the marble statue of the goddess Aphrodite is a highly artistic work of art from the end of the 2nd - beginning of the 1st century BC. e. According to researchers, it belongs to the school of Praxiteles or is a copy of sophisticated sculptural images of the Aegean Islands and Asia Minor.
Armenia is the first country to adopt Christianity as an official religion in 301. A special place in the exhibition is occupied by church objects from the museums of Holy Etchmiadzin, unique in their artistic and historical value. The liturgical utensils made using the techniques of chasing, casting and filigree, decorated with precious and semi-precious stones and enamels, amaze with their amazing expressiveness. The undoubted highlight of the exhibition will be a priceless shrine christian church– a cross from 1746 with the relics of St. George the Victorious.

The symbol of the national culture of Armenia is khachkars. Based on ancient traditions and distinguished by a wealth of forms, decorative and architectural monuments are not found anywhere else in the world. Several khachkars from the 13th to 15th centuries are on display at the exhibition.

An important part of the exhibition consists of ancient manuscripts representing the spiritual and cultural heritage Armenia and now stored in Matenadaran. All manuscripts are decorated with miniatures, which in themselves are highly artistic works of art. Among the monuments of Armenian written culture are the Gospels and the Bible; lectionaries, hymnaries, as well as the Synaxarium, on the miniature of which there is an image of St. Gregory the Illuminator - the first head of the Armenian apostolic church. In the miniature in the “Grammar” of the 17th century Armenian philosopher and theologian Simeon Dzhugaetsi, we see Mesrop Mashtots, the creator of the Armenian alphabet and the founder of Armenian literature and writing. A fragment of Deuteronomy, also presented at the exhibition, dates back to the 5th century, to the time of the creation of the Armenian alphabet.

One of the brightest and most original pages of Armenian decorative and applied art is carpet weaving, which has gone through centuries of development. Its roots go back to the time when people began to depict astral symbols and ornaments on the objects around them; Such symbols were also embroidered on fabrics. In the exhibition you can see magnificent examples of carpets and women's costumes of the 18th – 19th centuries. from different parts of Armenia.

About one of the most tragic events in the history of the 20th century - the Armenian genocide, organized and carried out in 1915 in territories controlled by the authorities Ottoman Empire, photographs of destroyed, looted and burned architectural monuments tell.

The exhibition exhibits will give visitors the opportunity to become more deeply acquainted with the centuries-old history of Armenia and its multifaceted cultural tradition.

Which takes place at the State Historical Museum. Here visitors will be able to see interesting exhibits related to the history of this country. Today we will tell you about the Christian period in the history of Armenia. Christianity came to Great Armenia in the second half of the 1st century AD. The Holy Gospel was preached by two of the twelve apostles in the ancient Armenian land.

Fragment. Cross. Western Armenia. X-XII centuries Silver, enamel, gems, wood; gilding.

In 311, Christian Armenia for the first time entered into a destructive battle for its faith against the Roman Emperor Galerius. In 405, Achimandrite St. Mesrop Mashtots created the Armenian alphabet, which marked the beginning of translation activities and the creation of proper Armenian works on theology, philosophy, education and scientific literature.

Khachkar with an inscription. 1477 Tuff.

Khachkar in the form of a winged cross. On the surface there is a dated memorial inscription.

The history of khachkars goes back to early period Christian history of Armenia and originates from cross-monuments, which in the 4th century were erected on pillars or columns on the site of destroyed ancient pagan sanctuaries as a sign of the victory of Christianity. Khachkars became widespread in the 9th century, displacing another form. memorial structures, adopted in the VI-VII centuries, - steles with images of sacred scenes. At first, steles with crosses were installed at crossroads to provide guidance to those passing by, as a symbol of protection and patronage. In the 9th century and later, when the classical composition of khachkars was formed, they were endowed with various functions. Often they served tombstones- they were installed at the foot of tombstones. Khachkars were built for “intercession before God,” “for the salvation of the soul,” “for the remission of sins,” “for health and well-being,” etc.

Gospel. Mox, s. Pasavank. 1447 Scribe and artist Israel. Paper.
Opened on the miniatures “Genealogy” and “Sacrifice of Isaac”.

The vast majority of Armenian manuscript books are gospels, bibles and other church works. A large complex of manuscripts consists of works on philosophy, theology, grammar, and history. Over time, collections appeared that simultaneously included monuments of hagiography, works ancient authors and the Fathers of the Church, as well as collections on branches of knowledge known in the Middle Ages: medicine and geography, meteorology and astronomy, mathematics.

Manuscripts began to be illustrated at the end of the 6th - beginning of the 7th century. Fully illustrated books have been preserved since the 9th century - at this time the formation of the system took place decoration Gospels, the main directions in Armenian book painting were outlined.

Fragment. Lectionary. Artske. 1450 scribe Hovhannes, artist Minas, recipient of makhtesi Stepanos. Paper.

Makhtesi - (Armenian, literally: saw death, in the sense of the Holy Sepulcher) - among the Armenians honorary title those pilgrims who visited Jerusalem to venerate the Tomb of the Savior. Such persons have tattooed marks on their hands, as proof of their visit to Jerusalem, depicting various scenes from the earthly life of the Savior.

Lectionary - a liturgical book, a collection of fragments of texts of the Holy Scriptures, arranged according to order church year, and used during services for biblical readings. Various researchers attribute the emergence of lectionaries to the 3rd - 8th centuries.

Fragment. Patriarchal staff. Smyrna. 1781 Silver, rubies; gilding.

Fragment. A vessel for myrrh in the shape of a dove. Constantinople. 1791 Silver, garnet; gilding.

Come to the museum, and pages of the history of the ancient country of Armenia will appear before you.

The exhibition will last until June 13, 2016.

Address: Exhibition complex Historical Museum. Revolution Square, 2/3.
Operating mode: Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Sun, from 10:00 to 18:00 (ticket office until 17:30) Fri, Sat, from 10:00 to 21:00 (ticket office until 20:00)
Ticket price: 300 rubles. There are benefits. Details.
Persons under 16 years of age, regardless of citizenship - for free.
On the last Sunday of each month, the entrance ticket for full-time students is 10 rubles.

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