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  1. 2025

    Armenian Bole (Deposits, Chemical Composition, Application) and References to It in Medieval Armenian Medical Texts

    Sahakyan, Armen

    Traces the historical and modern medical uses of Armenian bole (bolus armenicus), a clay credited with anti-inflammatory and other properties. Its use is attested by Armenian and foreign scholars of the Middle Ages, and it remained significant in both Eastern and Western medicine until the eighteenth century. Sahakyan reports geological and mineralogical analysis of the clay's composition alongside citations from medieval Armenian medical works, and flags its catalytic properties as a subject for future research.

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    2025Journal ArticleOpen Access
  2. 2025

    Clinging to the Classical: The National Education Council and Armenian-Language Instruction in Constantinople, c. 1860 – c. 1890

    Manoukian, Jennifer

    Manoukian, a historian of the modern Western Armenian language, challenges two widely held assumptions in Armenian studies about nineteenth-century Ottoman Armenian schooling: that the Armenian National Constitution and its National Education Council were transformative reformers of Armenian education, and that Armenian schools spread Modern Western Armenian from the outset. Drawing on primary sources from Constantinople, she shows that Armenian-language instruction in this period stayed wedded to Classical Armenian (grabar), complicating the standard story of a smooth rise of the modern vernacular.

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    2025Journal ArticleOpen Access
  4. 2025

    Die „bärtigen Jungfrauen". Das Gleichnis von den zehn Jungfrauen (Mt 25,1-13) in Armenien zwischen Exegese und Kunst (The "Bearded Virgins": The Parable of the Ten Virgins in Armenia between Exegesis and Art)

    Pane, Riccardo

    Traces the Armenian exegesis of the parable of the ten virgins from the fifth to the fourteenth century, identifying its Greek sources while highlighting what is distinctively Armenian in it. Pane then turns to two unusual works in which the virgins are depicted as men: a bas-relief at Hovhannavank monastery and a miniature by the copyist Yovsian. Beyond the liturgical and eschatological readings proposed in recent scholarship, he argues that the explanation for these 'bearded virgins' lies in the continuous Armenian exegetical tradition, which reinterpreted the parable with reference to the spirituality of male monastic communities.

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    2025Journal ArticleOpen Access
  5. 2025

    Essai pour une nouvelle lecture du bas-relief du tympan inférieur du narthex de l'église Saint-Étienne le Protomartyr du monastère de Noravankʻ (Toward a New Reading of the Bas-Relief of the Lower Tympanum of the Narthex of the Church of St. Stephen the Protomartyr, Noravank Monastery)

    Leyloyan-Yekmalyan, Anna

    Re-reads the carved lower tympanum of the Noravank narthex (founded 1261), whose composition centers on the Virgin and Child. The bird beneath the Child's feet is identified as the apocryphal clay bird animated by Jesus's breath, echoing the Father animating Adam; the lion the Child sits on is the Lion of Judah from the vision in Esdras. Old Testament prophets flank the Virgin, and a large letter Ա with a three-pointed arrow aimed at Mary's ear evokes Ephrem the Syrian's conception-through-the-ear formula, reinforced by the word ԲԱՌՆ and the surrounding Armenian inscription, which the author translates. The reading ties Armenian monumental sculpture to apocryphal and patristic exegesis.

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    2025Journal ArticleOpen Access
  6. 2025

    The "Nazlum Family Medical Book": Codex M11161 and Its "Medical Book on Horses"

    Dum-Tragut, Jasmine and Khachatryan, Ovsanna

    Presents the first study of a previously unexamined medical manuscript, Matenadaran codex no. 11161, covering its physical characteristics, provenance, and textual composition. The authors analyze one of its key texts, a book on horses, and compare it with other Armenian medical manuscripts. This lets them date and localize the codex more precisely and situate it in the Armenian medical tradition between medieval Cilicia and early modern Nor Jugha (New Julfa). Khachatryan is based at the Matenadaran; Dum-Tragut heads Armenian Studies at Salzburg.

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    2025Journal ArticleOpen Access
  7. 2025

    Transforming Governance in Armenia: From Soviet Legacy to Strategic Reform

    Margaryan, Marina

    Margaryan analyses the evolution of institutional reform in Armenia's public administration since independence, dividing it into four stages: initial institutional creation (1991–1999), formalization and adoption of Western governance models (2000–2008), European integration and administrative modernization (2009–2017), and the political transformation with renewed reform since 2018. She reads these as the interaction of historical legacy, external influence and domestic aspirations toward modernization, assessing institutional inertia, the limited localization of imported models, and political resistance. She closes by measuring the reforms against Armenia's Public Administration Reform Strategy to 2030 and arguing for a shift from imitative reform to durable institutional transformation.

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    2025Journal ArticleOpen Access
  8. 2025

    Yovasap' of Sebastia: From Adam to Noah and the Tower

    Blokland, Dina et al.

    Presents an annotated edition and English translation of a poem probably composed by Yovasap of Sebastia (c. 1510–after 1564). Part of a longer cycle of biblical retellings in verse, the poem narrates world history from Adam down to the Tower of Babel. Yovasap repeatedly departs from the biblical narrative to offer homiletic or typological elaborations and shows deep familiarity with parabiblical traditions. The authors present it as a fine specimen of the 'Armenian embroidered Bible,' attesting how biblical and parabiblical material was received and developed in the Armenian literary sphere.

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    2025Journal ArticleOpen Access
  9. 2025

    Բառերի պատճառաբանվածության մթագնումը հայերենում (The Obscuring of Word Motivation in Armenian)

    Felekyan, Manuk

    Over the historical development of a language the semantic structure of a compound word can shift, blurring or destroying awareness of its compound structure: a process called demotivation (ապապատճառաբանում). The article explains that a compound word's meaning rests on its internal form, the motivated link between sound and sense, and that this internal form is usually transparent to speakers. Under certain conditions, however, Armenian tends to obscure both the derivational and the semantic ties inside a compound, sometimes losing the internal form entirely, as in many native Armenian root words. The study sets out the principal causes and the successive stages of this demotivation, noting that words at different stages of loss coexist side by side in the language.

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    2025Journal ArticleOpen Access
  10. 2025

    «Համայնքը և հանրային մշակութային տարածքի փոխակերպումները հետխորհրդային Հայաստանում սահմանամերձ բնակավայրերի օրինակով» ծրագրի շուրջ

    Հայկուհի Մուրադյան et al.

    Հայաստանի սահմանամերձ բնակավայրերում, the project follows մշակույթի տներ, գյուղական ակումբներ, թանգարաններ, and արվեստի դպրոցներ as communities and state bodies remake post-Soviet public space.

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    2025Journal ArticleOpen Access

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