Stone, Eghegis Lecture, page 1 7/9/09

The Background of the Medieval Jewish Cemetery in Eghegis, Vayots

Dzor Region,

Michael E. Stone

1. Introduction

In the autumn of 1997 I received exciting information from Bishop

Abraham Mkrtchyan that near the village of Eghegis, in the Vayots Dzor region, an ancient cemetery had been discovered. The first pictures that I saw showed indubitably that the tombstones in this cemetery bore

Hebrew inscriptions. This was a Jewish cemetery.

My initial impression of the antiquity of the inscriptions sufficed to highlight their importance for Jewish and Armenian history. This stemmed from one central fact. There was almost no evidence from the previously known literary and historical sources for a Jewish community in Armenia in the Middle Ages. A Jewish settlement of the type implied by the Eghegis cemetery is a new historical fact and the inscriptions on its tombstones are major new evidence for a previously unknown and unsuspected medieval Jewish community and for the complexity of the population of Vayots Dzor at that time, and of patterns of trade and travel. A survey in 2000 was followed by expeditions in 2001 and 2002,

Stone Eghegis Lecture, page 2 April 11, 2009 in the course of which we excavated the site and published all the tombstones. Today, I shall deal with the context and cultural significance of the site. Dr. Amit will discuss the inscriptions themselves.

2. Historical Background

The inscriptions date from the middle of the thirteenth century (1266) to the middle of the fourteenth century (1346/7), as is witnessed by the dates on them (see below). Before this period, Vayots Dzor was the largest district of the kingdom of Siwnik which was founded in 987 by the

"principal prince" Smbat, son of Sahak prince of Baghk. Its capital,

Kapan, fell to the Seljuks in 1103 and by 1170 the Seljuk rule of the kingdom of Siwnik was total. After the fall of Siwnik many inhabitants moved to the north and settled in Arpa, Eghegis and other villages of

Vayots Dzor. The historian Stepanos Orbelian (thirteenth- fourteenth century) narrates that during the Seljuk conquest of Kapan in 1103, the

Jewish quarter of the town, which was outside the fortress, at a place that seemed inaccessible to foes, suffered particularly.

Under the command of the Zakarian brothers, Zakarē and Ivanē, the joint Georgian and Armenian troops warred against the Seljuks for 25 years (from the 1190's on). As a result, many regions of Armenia were liberated from the Seljuks and Ivanē received the title of "at‘abek" and became the ruler of Vayots Dzor (together with the regions of

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Gegharkunik, Sodk and northeastern Siwnik). The most powerful ruling house in Ivanē's dominion were the Orbelians of Siwnik.

The Georgian noble family of Orbeli had been massacred by King

Georgi III (1156-1184) of Georgia. Rehabilitated during the reign of

Queen Tamara (1184-1213), Liparit Orbeli was granted lands in Vayots

Dzor and Kotayk. He had residences in Eghegis and the area of Arpa

(), married the daughter of one of the local nobleman, Bubak, and became the ancestor of the Orbelian family, of which the historian

Stepanos was a scion.

In 1236 the Mongols invaded and conquered Armenia. Under their pitiless sway, Armenia was devastated, "the country was full of dead bodies, and there was no one to bury them" (Kirakos Gandzaketsi), and thousands of people were constrained to migrate. From the very beginning, however, Prince Elikum Orbelian of Siwnik had accepted the

Mongol yoke. Thanks to this Orbelian diplomacy, Siwnik thus became a comparatively privileged region in Armenia.

The second half of the thirteenth century was the apogee of

Orbelian power. Elikum's successor was his brother Smbat (1251-1273) whom some sources even call "king of Siwnik". In 1251 Smbat went to the Mongol court and received high rank from Mangu Khan. Siwnik became reckoned among the "indju"-s (i.e., “royal estates”) directly subject to the Great Khan, independent of the Georgian court and the

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Zakarians. Smbat's dominion also included Eghegis and Vayots Dzor,

Kotayk and a significant part of Gegharkunik. During his rule,

Smbataberd, the fortress of Eghegis on a ridge overlooking the town, was restored and strengthened. The Orbelian rulers had a great position and were titled "prince of princes."

Due to the extremely severe economic situation in most of

Armenia and the comparative prosperity of Siwnik, many people migrated there. Consequently, during the second half of the thirteenth century Siwnik became a cultural center as well. Eghegis was also home to a significant scriptorium and many manuscripts were copied there. In addition, a distinct school of sculpture developed in Vayots Dzor.

Up to 1273, Arpa, located on the important route Nakhijevan-

Gegharkuni, was the residence of the Orbelians. This center is in the valley of the Arpa River, and well located from the point of view of trade.

Afterwards, the Orbelian center was transferred to Eghegis. However, the new Orbelian capital of Eghegis was not closely connected with the two arterial trade routes (northern and southern) that pass through Armenia, for which reason it was never among the most important cities of

Armenia. From the tax imposed for the monastery of Tat‘ew (12 drams), it appears that even in its floruit Eghegis did not have numerous inhabitants, and that its population did not surpass 10,000.

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With the disappearance of the Persian Khanate in the fourteenth century, the Georgian King Georgi V (1327) restored the independence and territorial unity of Georgia. The Armenian princedoms were reduced to a local role after 1350. Subsequently, Eghegis gradually decreased in size to a town and then a village. According to local tradition, the city was abandoned as the result of a volcanic eruption, which is not corroborated by the written sources or material evidence we examined in situ.

Thus, the period of the tombstone inscriptions, the second half of the thirteenth century and first half of the fourteenth century, was one of relative prosperity and independence Siwnik and Vayots Dzor, while the dominant power was in the hands of the Mongol khans. The relative isolation of the region behind its mountainous barriers contributed to this prosperity, which contrasted with the devastation of most of Armenia.

3. The Site

The Jewish cemetery is close to the present-day village of Eghegis, in the region of Vayots Dzor, ca. 16 km. north of Eghegnadzor. The village is on the Eghegis river, a tributary of the Arpa, which flows into the Araxes in the Ararat valley. It is characterised by fruitful orchards and vineyards in a narrow valley between mountains.

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The cemetery is to be connected with a Jewish community that existed in this city in the Middle Ages. This hypothesis is supported by the dating of the tombstones to the floruit of the city of Eghegis.

The course of the powerfully-flowing Eghegis river separates the present-day village from the Jewish cemetery. The cemetery is located on a level shelf of ground rises a few metres above the southern bank of the river Eghegis. It extends over an area of 1550 square meters covered by thick vegetation.

In considering the relationships of the Jews of Eghegis with their

Christian neighbours, the first element to be considered is the decoration on the tombstones. Decorations occur on seven of the 64 tombstones.

These include rosettes and whirl rosettes (nos. 12 and 45). Whirl rosettes are found on ancient synagogues, but signficantly also among Armenians, to this day, this is the symbol of eternity or eternal life. It is prominently set on the memorial to the Armenian Genocide in Erevan.

Tombstone no. 9 is engraved on both long sides with a dense running geometric relief of interlaced diamonds and triangles. A strikingly similar design is found on one of the tombstones of the

Orbelian cemetery in the nearby village of Eghegis (Figs. 26, 27) and on a panel in ’.

Most interesting is tombstone no. 6 which is covered with reliefs divided into three panels on each side. On the southern side, from left to

Stone Eghegis Lecture, page 7 April 11, 2009 right, we observe a lion and another animal in realistic poses, and a circular geometric design in the third panel. The unidentified animal has been suggested to be a crowned lioness (Amit) or a bull (Stone). It is clearly winged which leads Stone to wish to connect it with Ezekiel 1 and the Evangelist symbols. On the northern side are engraved, from left to right: an eagle surrounded by fish in the four corners of the frame, a rosette with twelve petals and a knot design in the corners of the frame, and a wheel of immortality with similar designs in the corners with six clockwise spokes. These beasts might indicate qualities of the deceased as mentioned in inscription no. 12. These three animals are common in

Jewish art from antiquity and they are, of course, three of the faces of the

Cherubs enumerated in Ezekiel, chapter 1. The fourth face, the human one, is not found on the Jewish tombstone, presumably because of the

Second Commandment.

Tombstone no. 49 is extensively decorated, in a style that is quite different from anything else found at Eghegis. We have not been able to characterize this style and content.

Donabédian stresses both the originality and creativity of architectural sculpture in Vayots Dzor at this time, and particularly the role of relief sculpture. Many of the subjects are the same as those on the decorated Jewish tombstones. Thus, on a church in the village of Verin

(Upper) Akhta, in the area between the gable and a high window, is a

Stone Eghegis Lecture, page 8 April 11, 2009 design in which two lions stand in heraldic fashion facing an eagle, over the head of which is a wheel of eternity (see Hovsepian, fig. 51, p. 72). At

Noravank is a sculpture of an eagle holding its prey, which symbol was the coat of arms of the Orbelians. The images both of a lion and an eagle are widespread in the Proshian holdings, and elsewhere in Vayots Dzor.

Hovsepian has proposed that they were part of the coat-of-arms of the

Proshian dynasty. However, it is most important to bear in mind that the same two symbols are common in Jewish art from antiquity, such as in synagogue sculpture.

The four faces of the Cherub are to be found on a sculptured tympanum in Eghegis though there, surely, their dominant meaning is the

Christian re-interpretation of Ezekiel, according to which they are the symbols of the Evangelists. Both meanings are brought together in the

Eghegis tympanum, where the four beasts are below the throne on which the Virgin and the Child are represented. Again, the combination of

Jewish religious and cultural tradition with local Armenian cultural tradition is evident.

We propose as a working hypothesis that the Jewish tombstones were made by local masons and, for decoration, symbols were selected from their repertoire that had iconographic resonance for the Jewish community and no overt Christian meaning in isolation, but only in context. For Christians, one obvious meaning of the lion and the eagle is

Stone Eghegis Lecture, page 9 April 11, 2009 two of the Evangelists. The reuse of the rosette and the wheel of eternity is a similar case of Jewish selection of local but non-specific Christian symbols that had also been used in Jewish contexts since antiquity.

In the present village of Eghegis there is a church of the same period. In its graveyard we may observe "pillar-shaped" tombstones, identical in shape with the Jewish ones, and different, as we have noted, from those of Noravank. The results of the examination of the graveyard of the Orbelian family, also located in the village of Eghegis, are even more surprising. These aristocrats' tombstones are identical in form, manufacture and decoration with the Jewish tombstones.

Malachi Beit-Arié showed that the inscriptions on the Jewish tombstones were written after the decoration was engraved. A geologist compared the stone from which the tombstones in the two cemeteries, the

Jewish and the Orbelian, were made. He concluded that the stones have identical geological characteristics and probably come from the same quarry. It may be concluded, therefore, that the same artisans crafted the stones in the Jewish and the Orbelian cemeteries, in all likelihood in the same workshop. In other words, the Eghegis Jews ordered 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, Orbelian ones. This was a well-to-do community, whose tombstones rivaled those of the region's leading

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Christian family. Moreover, the fact that the Jewish tombstones used the same shapes and decoration as the Armenian ones, shows that this community had been in the area a long time and had accepted local cultural norms in a number of respects.

The discovery of the Jewish cemetery in Eghegis is very important.

First, it shows in the most graphic way that there was a Jewish population in Armenia in the Middle Ages. This is itself a new historical fact, and it has stimulated a re-examination of relevant Armenian and Hebrew sources. Today we can affirm that Eghegis 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, as well as those even further north. This will, after the necessary research is completed, require us to reassess the relationships between these areas, and it also has implications for economic and commercial history.

In 1912 Hovsepian discovered one tombstone in the village of

Eghegis. This tombstone mentions Jews with Persian names and titles which concords with the situation of Persian Jews in the Ilkhanid period in Iran (13th-mid-14th century). This indicates the ultimate origin of the

Jews of Eghegis but it does not mean that the Jews of Eghegis were new immigrants from Persia. From Stepanos Orbelian's report on Jews in

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Kapan in 1103 we know that there were Jews in this area of Armenia long before the earliest burial in the Eghegis cemetery.

The Jewish community existed in Vayots Dzor during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in which period Siwnik, and particularly Vayots Dzor, saw a remarkable cultural flowering.

Architectural monuments, such as Noravank, and the great intellectual centres and "university" schools, such as and Tatew, were at their apogee. It is intriguing to entertain the possibility of connections between the Jewish community in Siwnik and its broader Armenian cultural context and what such connections might have meant.

If further discoveries do not show active burials later than the mid- fourteenth century, the reason for their cessation at that time should be sought. The increased Mongol oppression, also felt in Siwnik after the death of Ghazan Khan in 1304, and the subsequent Mongol attempts to impose Islam, were probably factors in bringing this community to an end, as well as the heavy taxes imposed in 1313 on "foreigners" living in

Armenia. For the moment, however, these ideas are only speculative.

The beginning of the burials in this site is, perhaps, to be explained by some circumstance in Eghegis. Perhaps an older cemetery was full; perhaps some conditions in the Jewish or general community preciptated the establishment of a new cemetery outside the city itself. For the present, this remains a mystery.

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A number of conclusions can be drawn about the character of this

Jewish community. First, this Jewish community had members well- rooted in Jewish tradition and learning. The use of standard Jewish funerary formulae and abbreviations and the familiarity with Rabbinic sources, show that the Eghegis community cultivated a tradition of

Jewish learning. The citation of biblical verses used elsewhere in funerary contexts, the knowledge of very specific exegetical traditions and terminology, all combine to show the relatively high standard of Jewish culture in this community.

With this factor we should combine a consideration of the character of the tombstones themselves. They so resemble tombstones in the contemporary Orbelian family cemetery, itself also in Eghegis, as to lead us to the conclusion that the tombstones in both cemeteries were made in the same workshop. The Jews of Eghegis, then, ordered their tombstones from the same workshop as the ruling family of the region.

Thus, we are dealing with the tombs of well-to-do people. These were expensive stones as may also be inferred from their great similarity to the stones of the local 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 are characteristics, not of a new, immigrant community but of a well-established community.

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The same picture emerges from the analysis of the ornamentation.

On the one hand, the ornaments, both figurative and symbolic, found on the graves all have well-established roots in Jewish art from the Second

Temple period on. On the other, they all occur in the local Christian art of

Vayots Dzor. It is as if the person ordering the tombstone was shown the repertoire of the local workshop and selected from it symbols that resonated deeply with Jewish iconography and decoration. As noted above, many of these shared elements go back to biblical roots, but not all of them. Again, the combination of Jewish tradition with local Armenian cultural tradition is evident.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDICATIONS

Amit, D. and M.E. Stone, “A Jewish Cemetery in the Middle Ages in Eghegis in

Southern Armenia,” Pe‘amim 98-99 (2004), 39-66 (in Hebrew).

Donabédian, P. “Le Tympan du monument à deux xač‘k‘ars d’Ełegis,” REArm 14

(1980), 393-413.

Marr, N. “Note” in Kristianskiy Vostok 1912, translated in Stone and Amit, 2006,

121-122.

Step‘annos Orbelian, Պատմութիւն Նահանգին Սիսական արարեալ

Ստեփաննոսի Օրբելեան արքեպիսկոպոսի Սիւնեաց The History of the

Region of Sisakan composed by Step‘annos Ōrbelean, Archbishop of Siwnik‘ (Paris:

1859).

Stone Eghegis Lecture, page 14 April 11, 2009

Stone, M.E. “The Orbelian Family Cemetery in Ełegis, Vayoc‘ Jor, Armenia,” in

J.J.S. Weitenberg Festschrift (eds. Th.M. van Lint et al.; Leuven: Peeters), forthcoming.

Stone, M.E. and D. Amit, “Report on the Survey of a Medieval Jewish Cemetery in

Eghegis, Vayots Dzor Region, Armenia,” Journal of Jewish Studies 53 (2002), 66-

106.

Stone, M.E. and D. Amit, “The Second and Third Seasons of Research At the

Medieval Jewish Cemetery in Eghegis, Vayots Dzor Region, Armenia,” Journal of

Jewish Studies JJS 57 (2006), 99-135.

Yovsēp‘ean, Garegin Catholicos, Խաղբակեանք կամ Պռոշեանք հայոց

պատմութեան մէջ The Xałbakeans or Pŕošeans in Armenian History (Antelias:

Catholicosate, 1969).