ARMENIANS RENOVATE UNKNOWN JEWISH CEMETERY
By Arthur Hagopian
Armenian News Network / Groong
May 3, 2009
For ages, they had lain undisturbed and forgotten, in the distant
field of a foreign land, by the churning waters of a mighty river,
asleep in their last earthly domicile.
Ten years ago, for the first time in over seven centuries, they
were finally rediscovered and recognized, the veil of mystery
enveloping an ancient Jewish cemetery in Armenia, removed forever.
But few outside the archaeological and academic worlds of Jewry
and Armenia knew about the momentous discovery. That historical
oversight is now being addressed with a ceremonial rededication to be
held within the next two weeks.
The discovery was made by an Armenian priest, who happens to be
Bishop Abraham Mkrtchyan, Primate of the See of Siwnik. And it has
been mainly
due his tireless and indefatigable efforts that the world will come to
hear of the unknown Jewish community at Eghegis, in the country's
Vayotz Dzor region which had been the largest district of the kingdom
of Siwnik, founded in 987.
He has been assisted in his labors by the Armenian Ministry of
Culture, who footed most of the bills, and teams of archaeologists and
researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and from Armenia.
The rededication, which will be attended by high religious and
political dignitaries from Israel and Armenia, will also serve as the
springboard
for a history of the Jews in Armenia, on which professor Michael Stone
of the Hebrew University and Dr. Aram Topchyan of the Institute of
Ancient Manuscripts in Yerevan, will be working. The ceremony will be
follwed by a
two-day symposium on May 22.
The renovation of the site has just been completed and the event will
"to provide a point of meeting between Jews and Armenians, between
Judaism
and the Armenian Apostolic Church," according to Stone, a leading
Armenologist.
The find has been a major surprise for academe.
"There was no evidence adduced from the previously known literary and
historical sources for a Jewish community in Armenia in the Middle
Ages," Stone points out.
Indeed, the evidence for Jews in Armenia at any period is very
sparse, the best known sources (Movses Khorenatsi and P'awstos Buzand)
referring (with greater or lesser reliability) to a Jewish settlement
there in the first century BCE and others to Jews in Armenia in the
nineteenth century.
"A Jewish settlement of the type implied by the Eghegis cemetery
is a
new historical fact and the inscriptions on its tombstones are new
evidence," Stone notes, adding they reveal a previously unknown and
unsuspected medieval Jewish community and highlight the complexity of
the population of Vayotz Dzor.
One plausible explanation for the presence of Jews in Armenia
stems from a passage in the Midrash Ekha Rabbati (which belongs to the
period of the Palestinian Talmud) where God wonders what to do with
His people.
If He exiled them "through a desert, they will die of hunger; so
I will exile them through Armenia, where there are towns and provinces
and food
and drink," (1.42).
The people buried at Vayotz Dzor appear to have been prosperous
burghers, as evidenced by the expensive tombstones, a conclusion
archaeologists arrived at after noticing the great similarity with the
tombstones of the local Armenian rulers.
"In addition to their Jewish learning, these well-to-do, educated
Jews of Eghegis had close contacts with their non-Jewish neighbours
and show a
certain level of cultural assimilation. These seem to us to be
characteristics, not of a new, immigrant community but of a
well-established community," Stone says.
The oldest date carved out on the tombstones is 1266 and the
latest 1336/7, making this perhaps the most impressive Jewish cemetery
of the East from the period, and certainly one of the oldest oriental
Jewish cemeteries, archaeologists say, and indicating that the
cemetery was in use for nearly a century.
Some 64 complete tombstones and fragments of a number of others
were uncovered at Eghegis, bearing nearly twenty inscriptions, all in
Hebrew except for two which were in Aramaic, bearing traditional
Jewish names like Elia, Baba, Michael, Esther and Tsvi.
"Many set phrases, common on Jewish tombstones from East and West
have been discerned, and most of these use standard
abbreviations. This all leads us to conclude that these were Rabbinite
Jews, and not Karaites. They were learned in the Jewish tradition and
some of the inscriptions are literary compositions of considerable
merit, and not just records of dates of
death or interment," according to Stone.
The Eghegis Jews would order their tombstones from the workshop that
supplied the tombstones of the ruling family of the region. The Jewish
stones
are no less impressive in size and decoration than the aristocratic
Armenian ones.
The archaeologists were pleasantly surprised at the rich
repertory of decorative elements on the stones.
"There are purely decorative, geometric designs and there are
also some figurative decorations," Stone said, with the rosette, the
interlace, and the whirling rosette prominent.
"All these decorative elements are also to be found in the
Christian art of Vayotz Dzor in the same period. Among the Armenians,
to this day, the whirling rosette is the symbol of eternity or eternal
life," Stone says.
Archaeologists are inclined to believe that the Jewish community
of Eghegis was founded by refugees from the Seljuk incursions in 1103
and the wars that followed.
Jewish scholars rate the discovery of very considerable
importance, providing graphic evidence of the existence of a Jewish
population in Armenia in the Middle Ages.
But this was not an isolated Jewish community in medieval
Armenia.
"The Jewish presence in Armenia provides a link between the old,
well-established Jewish community in Iran, and other Caucasian and
Pontic Jewish communities, and those even further north," Stone says.
Some of the inscriptions on the tombstones are unique in Jewish
funerary practice because of their long, literary texts. This is
particularly true of the tombstones of children and youths, boys and
girls, where the parents' grief is expressed in moving terms.
One inscription on a girl's tombstone evokes the cry from the
heart of grieving parents who ask "the Merciful One [to] forgive and
pity and have
mercy on the soul of the girl, the [...] virgin, Esther daughter of
Michael. May her portion be with our mother S{arah}
[upon her] h{oly} [soul], upon {her} pure, ho{ly} burial."
Another inscription on a woman's tomb warns that "as it is written,
'Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain.'"
What other secrets the might river that meanders by Eghegis holds
in its unravelled depths, we shall perhaps never know.
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