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