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The Study of the Armenian Epigraphic Heritage of the Holy Land: A Bibliographical Survey

Harutyunyan, Khachik · 2025

Harutyunyan surveys scholarship on Armenian inscriptions and graffiti in the Holy Land, a corpus that begins shortly after the invention of the Armenian alphabet and continues essentially unbroken to the present. The densest concentrations are in Jerusalem, above all the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and in the Basilica of the Nativity, alongside Armenian monasteries and churches. Research in the 1970s and 1980s revealed a large body of Armenian pilgrim graffiti along the route to Sinai, with further inscriptions documented in Nazareth, Bethlehem, Jaffa and Ramleh. His central point is that despite a century and a half of collecting efforts, no comprehensive compilation of this epigraphic heritage exists.

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Published in
ARAMAZD: Armenian Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 19 (2025), pp. 225–236
Year
2025
Language
English

Citation

Harutyunyan, Khachik 2025. The Study of the Armenian Epigraphic Heritage of the Holy Land: A Bibliographical Survey. ARAMAZD: Armenian Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 19 (2025), pp. 225–236.

What this offers a reader

For students

A guide to a whole field, with a reference list you can mine for a thesis.

For academics

State-of-the-field survey; author is at the Scientific Research Centre of Historical and Cultural Heritage, Yerevan.

For the community

Armenian pilgrims carved their names in Jerusalem for 1,500 years. Nobody has ever gathered them all.

For a general reader

The Armenian inscriptions carved in Jerusalem's churches over fifteen centuries.

Topics

Armenian epigraphyJerusalempilgrimage graffitiHoly SepulchreArmenian diasporahistory of scholarship

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