PR-Inside.com
March 15 2009

Armenia’s special gift to Jerusalem

2009-03-15 12:21:39 – Jerusalem owes an immense debt of gratitude to
the Armenians, in more ways than one. It is common knowledge that
Armenians not only gave the city its first printing press but also its
first photographic studio. But it is less known that Armenians also
contributed the first known Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land.

ARMENIA’S SPECIAL GIFT TO JERUSALEM

Special from Arthur Hagopian

(Sydney, Mar 15)

Jerusalem owes an immense debt of gratitude to the Armenians, that
sturdy clan of indestructible survivors who refuse to be consigned to
the rubbish bin of history, in more ways than one, it seems.
It is common knowledge that Armenians not only gave the city its
first printing press but also its first photographic studio, under the
patronage of the visionary Patriarch Yessayi Garabedian.
But it is less known that Armenians also contributed the first known
Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land, as leading armenologist Michael
Stone pointed out during a lecture stopover in Sydney, Australia.
Speaking to an audience representing the city’s diverse Armenian
communities, Stone even gave the date the first Armenian pilgrim, from
Satala (new Melitene/Maghatia), set foot in Jerusalem: around AD 360,
half a century only after Armenia became the first nation in history
to accept Christianity as its state religion.
"His name was Greek, Eutaktos, and he is mentioned by Epiphanius, the
fourth-century Church Father," he said.
(Armenians were still using the Greek alphabet and Greek names then,
years before Sts Sahag and Mesrob created the Armenian alphabet).
The pilgrims would come by sea or overland, often in large groups. But
they were not satisfied with just a cursory visit to the sacred
shrines of Jerusalem: they were determined to explore every nook and
cranny of Palestine, to venture to the farthest corners of the land
made holy by Jesus and the prophets.
In their wake, they left inscriptions and monuments attesting to their
travails and odysseys.
And, endearingly and refreshingly, even their humor.
One exhausted pilgrim, heaving and panting at the top of Mt Sinai
after a steep climb, has just about enough strength to carve out a
message, and a plea, to God asking Him to have mercy not only on
himself, but on his camel guide, too.
"And get me out of this heat!" he begs.
In Nazareth, two Armenian pilgrims, Anania and Papken, left
inscriptions on a rock under the Basilica. The date? before AD 447,
not long after the Armenians acquired their alphabet.
"This is the oldest writing in Armenian anywhere in the world," Stone
said.
But Anania and Papken did not stop there. They trekked on to the
Sinai, and left their mark there, too, on another rock.
"You can tell it’s the same handwriting," Stone told his audience.
Near the Jaffa Gate, another pilgrim carved out a prayer on a marble
slab, asking the Lord to have mercy on Sourp Harutiun, the Holy
Sepulchre.
Stone, a Jew, who has been instrumental in deciphering and publicising
the story of the Armenian inscriptions in Sinai, believes the first
Christian monastery of any notable size in the Holy Land was
established by an Armenian monk, St. Euthymius, at what is known today
as Khan el Ahmar (the red khan), on the road to the Dead Sea and
Jericho
He noted that some pilgrims overstayed their visit to the Holy Land,
extending their sojourn in the monastery over a year. Many became
monks.
In the 5th Century, an unprecedented group of 400 pilgrims made the
trek from Armenia to the Holy Land, and visited the monastery.
"Can you imagine what a journey of this kind entails, in terms of
logistical efficiency only? The number of camels involved alone?"
Stone wondered.
But this record was broken a couple of centuries later when 700
pilgrims made the trip.
Many of the travelers settled in and around Jerusalem.
These, then, would have been the ancestors of the Armenians of the
Holy Land, including the Kaghakatzi contingent that has held the fort
for a millennium and a half.
Jerusalemite Chris Dikian, a modest scholar and voracious history fan,
picks up the story of the Armenian presence in the holy land.
Sitting in his house in Chatswood (a Sydney suburb), surrounded by
books and memories, and pining for a return to the home of his
childhood, he tells of the day he met some of the most incongruously
placed Armenians in the world, within the distant enclaves of Jordan.
He had been acting as interpreter on a Mennonite expedition
distributing provisions to the Bedouin settlements in the Hashemite
Kingdom.
The trip took them to the town of Kerak, made famous by the encampment
there of a Crusader force.
The city had one pharmacy only, and the owner turned out to be a
fellow Jerusalemite.
But he was apparently not the only Armenian there.
"Look around you," he told Dikian, "you are surrounded by Armenians."
"I looked but all I could see were women dressed in traditional
embroidered dresses," Dikian recalls.
"They are all Armenian," the pharmacist told me.
But hardly any of them spoke Armenian. And they had changed their
names as well.
At some stage, there had been an Armenian church in the city (but it
had been placed under the aegis and protection of the Greeks) and that
is where the Armenians worshipped.
Another leg of the Mennonite humanitarian mission took them to the
town of Ma’an where food parcels arriving from the port of Aqaba were
stored pending distribution.
The depot supervisor was an Armenian.
"I asked if there were other Armenians around. He said there was at
least one other, a washerwoman," Dikian recounts.
"I could not wait to meet her.
"Next morning, I went to see him. I asked him where the Armenian woman
was," Dikian continues.
"There she is," he said, pointing to a woman nearby who was tending to
some clothes.
She was dressed as a Bedouin.
Are you Armenian", I asked," Dikian asks.
Yes" she said.
Who are you?’
I am the sister of Serop Aghpyour’s mother,’ she said," Dikian says.
"I was stunned! Serop Aghpyour was a national hero during the Armenian
resistance struggle against the Turks, and had been martyred," he
adds.
He cannot ask her what she is doing there. For the same reason you
cannot ask another "bantoukhd" Armenian what he is doing wherever he
or she is.
Another chapter in the evolving annals of the Armenian nation whose
history is now being written anew under an independent motherland.
Armenians will always yearn for Yerevan and Etchmiadzin, but when the
last chapter is written, Jerusalem will feature in every single page.
For this humble, troubled enclave, fought over by countless
antagonists through the centuries, and considered the centre of the
world by many, remains the spiritual lodestone of every Armenian.
ENDS

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