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PRE-CHRISTIAN HISTORY IN THE GEORGIAN SHATBERDI CODEX: A TRANSLATION OF THE INITIAL TEXTS OF MOK‘C‘EVAY K‘ART‘LISAY (“THE CONVERSION OF K‘ART‘LI”) Origins tales, in all of their colorful guises, at once fascinate and be- wilder1. Consider, for example, the Judeo-Christian tradition that the peoples of Afro-Eurasia are ultimately descended from Noah and his progeny, the only humans to have survived the catastrophic flood. Al- though the authenticity of the flood account may be called into question, the story nevertheless demonstrates that some ancient peoples traced their origins to a definite point in the remote past. Indeed, the historical record is replete with ethnic “Big Bangs.” Yet the historical dynamics of ethnogenesis often have been obscured beyond recognition or are en- tirely absent. Linguistic data might surrender valuable clues, but tangible contemporary evidence is largely insufficient. Even in this light, however, it would be unwise to presume that any given received tradition about ancient origins is a later fabrication. Genuine historical memories can be transmitted orally for centuries, though they have invariably been altered — accidentally and/or inten- tionally — from their primordial states. Further complicating matters is the fact that the typical story of conception was composed at a much later time when the community was already well established in its par- ticular way. Such a tale not only explained ultimate beginnings but also validated the present or even conjured a desired future. Another schol- arly predicament is rooted more firmly in our own times. Modern efforts to unveil the significance and historical underpinnings of origins tales, efforts that often reveal successive layers of embellishment and rela- tively late dates of manufacture, can “provoke” a maelstrom of patriotic outcries. While professional historians are obliged to seek objectivity, living traditions nevertheless must be handled with respect and sensitiv- ity, no matter how little they might be deemed to reflect historical “truth.” With this in mind, let us turn to the medieval tradition about the prov- enance of the Georgians, and in particular, of the K‘art‘velians of eastern 1 I should wish to thank J. Fine and D. Kiziria for their penetrating comments upon earlier drafts of this article and R. Hewsen for producing the accompanying map. 80 St.H. RAPP Jr. Georgia2. The two received narratives describing the ethnogenesis and earliest history of the K‘art‘velians were first consigned to writing in the seventh through ninth centuries. The Life of the Kings discloses the most elaborate story3. Constituting the initial component of the medieval his- torical corpus K‘art‘lis c‘xovreba (≤ar¯lis wxovreba) — the so- called “Georgian [Royal] Annals” or “Georgian Chronicles,” The Life of the Kings sketches the genealogy of the most prominent peoples of Caucasia, focusing specially upon the K‘art‘velians. When, around the year 800, its anonymous author investigated his kinspeople’s heritage, he ascertained that the pedigree of the K‘art‘velians was not revealed in the tabula populorum of Genesis. Although the Hebrew Bible lacked di- rect evidence about the K‘art‘velians, at least one early Christian elabo- ration of the tabula did. That the Armenians and the K‘art‘velians shared a common origin was affirmed in the medieval Armenian adapta- tion of the Chronicle of Hippolytus of Rome4. The author of The Life of 2 The English terms “Georgia” and “Georgian” do not exist in the Georgian lan- guage. Sak‘art‘velo (sa≤ar¯velo), with its meaning “all-Georgia” is anachronistic — at least politically — before 1008 AD. Prior to this time, one of the most cohesive and durable of the “Georgian” lands was K‘art‘li in the east, the Iberia of the Romans and Byzantines. The inhabitants of K‘art‘li called themselves K‘art‘velni (≤ar¯velni, i.e., k‘art‘vel[i] + the Old Georgian plural suffix -ni), which I have rendered “K‘art‘velians.” For the sake of clarity, I apply the attributive “Georgian” to histo- riographical traditions and to the K‘art‘velian language (which in its present fomulation is called “Georgian” in English) despite the fact that (1) this convention expresses an undue sense of unity and (2) obscures the K‘art‘velo-centric nature of pre-modern Georgian-lan- guage historiography. 3 The full title is The Life of the K‘art‘velian Kings: C‘xorebay k‘art‘velt‘a mep‘et‘a (wxorebay ≤ar¯vel¯a mefe¯a). The reconstructed Georgian critical text was edited by S. Qauxch‘ishvili: K‘art‘lis c‘xovreba, vol. 1 (T‘bilisi, 1955), pp. 3-71. This entire volume has been completely reprinted with my new introduction: K‘art‘lis c‘xovreba: The Georgian Royal Annals and Their Medieval Armenian Adaptation, vol. 1 (Delmar, NY, 1998). See also the translation of both the reconstructed Georgian text and the medieval Armenian adaptation of K‘art‘lis c‘xovreba by R.W. Thomson, Rewriting Caucasian History: The Medieval Armenian Adaptation of the Georgian Chronicles (Ox- ford, 1996), pp. 2-84 for The Life of the Kings. For an overview of the historical ethnogenesis of the K‘art‘velians, see the essential study of G. Melik‘ishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii (T‘bilisi, 1959). 4 K. Kekelidze, “Ideia bratstva zakavkazskikh narodov po genealogicheskoi skheme gruzinskogo istorika XI veka Leonti Mroveli,” repr. in his Etiudebi dzveli k‘art‘uli literaturis istoriidan, vol. 3 (T‘bilisi, 1955), pp. 96-107; and idem, “Chronique d’Hip- polyte et l’historien géorgien Leonti Mroveli,” Bedi Kartlisa 17-18 (1964), pp. 88-94. A part of Hippolytus’ Chronicle was rendered into Georgian and was incorporated into the Shatberdi codex ( 122r-126r; for the codex, see infra). However, the Georgian variant is limited to a list of Jewish, Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman rulers. Medieval Georgian historians did not integrate Hippolytus’ account into their own works. See also I. Abuladze, “Ipolite romaelis k‘ronikonis dzveli k‘art‘uli versia,” Moambe (of the Institute of MSS) 3 (1961), pp. 223-243. A TRANSLATION OF THE INITIAL TEXTS OF MOK‘C‘EVAY K‘ART‘LISAY 81 the Kings embraced this schema and “K‘art‘velized” it. As a conse- quence, by the start of the ninth century both the K‘art‘velians and Ar- menians professed foundation by mythical eponyms, K‘art‘los and Hayk respectively, who were understood to have shared a lineage from Noah through Japheth and Togarmah5. Moreover, the story of K‘art‘los actu- ally was embedded within the received Armenian tradition about Hayk; thus, K‘art‘los became Hayk’s younger sibling. Having integrated Caucasian origins into a Judeo-Christian matrix, The Life of the Kings then reports the establishment of indigenous K‘art‘velian kingship in the wake of the mythical invasion of the region by Alexander the Great. Thus, two central moments in the K‘art‘velian past, the formation of the community and the foundation of local royal authority, were each associated with an illustrious Eurasian celebrity: Noah and Alexander respectively. Indeed, the grafting of local traditions upon pre-existing Eurasian ones magnificently demonstrates the intense dialogue in which the K‘art‘velians had engaged with the larger world around them. Georgian evidence for the period down to the fourth century, when the monarchy of K‘art‘li was first Christianized, is at once enigmatic and limited. Precious few medieval Georgian historical works survive inde- pendently of the corpus K‘art‘lis c‘xovreba. While it is entirely possible that there had been no additional histories, it is more likely that now-lost texts were destroyed, neglected, and even intentionally suppressed6. One of the few historiographical works preserved separately from K‘art‘lis c‘xovreba is the literary collection entitled Mok‘c‘evay k‘art‘lisay (mo≤wevay ≤ar¯lisay), literally The Conversion of K‘art‘li. Ex- tant redactions indicate that Mok‘c‘evay k‘art‘lisay was compiled in the early tenth century, if not slightly earlier. It is worth noting, however, that Mok‘c‘evay k‘art‘lisay’s original MS has not come down to us — a circumstance that plagues a great many medieval Georgian texts. The corpus’ only complete version is transmitted in the tenth-century Shatberdi codex, a document that was first publicized in 1888 by N.Ia. Marr. It is now part of the holdings of the Kekelidze Institute of MSS in T‘bilisi (# S-1141, 215v-248v)7. Named for the southwestern monas- 5 S. Rapp, Imagining History at the Crossroads: Persia, Byzantium, and the Archi- tects of the Written Georgian Past, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michi- gan (1997, UMI repr. # 9722070), hereafter: IHC. 6 We must wonder, for example, whether prose histories from/about regions other than K‘art‘li had been composed. 7 A. Shanidze (Chanidzé), “Les monuments de l’ancienne littérature géorgienne: le recueil de Chatberdi du Xe siècle,” Bedi Kartlisa 38 (1980), pp. 131-136. 82 St.H. RAPP Jr. tery in which it was produced, the Shatberdi document conjoins a num- ber of disparate texts, mostly translations of Greek-language ecclesiasti- cal writings by eminent authors like Gregory of Nyssa, Epiphanius of Cyprus, Basil of Caesarea, and Hippolytus of Rome. Mok‘c‘evay k‘art‘lisay is the solitary original Georgian-language tract among these ecumenical works. C. Toumanoff, eminent scholar of pre-modern Caucasia and author of the unmatched Studies in Christian Caucasian History, firmly estab- lished that Mok‘c‘evay k‘art‘lisay is a corpus consisting of six distinct works originally written between the seventh and ninth/tenth centuries8. Five of them are untitled in the MS. The third and core component lent its name to the entire collection9.

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