THE INSCRIPTION AT TAMRUT CASTLE: THE CASE FOR A REVISION OF ARMENIAN HISTORY1 Seldom has the discovery of a single inscription helped to rewrite his- tory. The dedicatory epigraph that is the subject of this study was installed over the entrance to the 13th-century baronial castle of T῾ambrowt (now Tamrut), in the heart of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia (Fig. 1), which was a conduit for cultural, political, and military exchanges with the Crusader kingdoms, the Byzantine Empire, the Seljuks, the Mamluks, and the Mongols. The often-stated conclusion that Cilicia was at this time a client state dependent on the Mongols for protection must be revised with the discovery of the first evidence that the Armenians were building new military strongholds during this crucial period of history. The inscription from T῾ambrowt Castle, which was photographed in 1981, and destroyed shortly thereafter, is also an historically important source for redrawing the boundaries between the spheres of influence of the two rival dynastic fami- lies in the Armenian Kingdom, the Het῾umids and Ṙubēnids. 1. TheHistoryoftheTamrutInscriptionanditsTranslation In 1987 Robert W. Edwards published his FortificationsofArmenian Cilicia, the result of many expeditions to Cilicia which began in 1973 and culminated in this voluminous, detailed study of seventy-five sites2. In this publication, he mentions, among others, a fortress that had been hitherto unattested until his survey in 1981, alternatively known as Tamrut Kale and Alişekale/ Alişe Kale3. A number of factors made this fortress stand 1 With sincere thanks to Dr. Robert W. Edwards for allowing me to study his copy of the photograph he took before the destruction of the inscription at Tamrut Castle and his many comments that improved this article, and appreciation for his years of work to ensure that the Armenian monuments of Anatolia are studied and published. I would also like to express my heartfelt appreciation to Prof. Dickran Kouymjian for his encouragement over many years to find the original photograph of this inscription, which led me to locating it in the archives of Dr. Edwards, who first published it in his monograph (EDWARDS, Fortifica- tions). Additional thanks are due to Prof. Richard G. Hovannisian for his help in accessing the images of Tamrut in the PARSEGIAN, ArmenianArchitecturemicrofiche set at the Univer- sity of California – Los Angeles. Last, but not least, I would like to express special thanks to Dr. Agnès Ouzounian, without whose expertise of medieval Armenian epigraphy and grammar, and talent for pulling words out of weathered stone this article would not have been completed in its current form. 2 EDWARDS, Fortifications, p. ix. 3 EDWARDS, Fortifications, p. 241, n. 2. LeMuséon 132 (1-2), 107-122. doi: 10.2143/MUS.132.1.3286535 - Tous droits réservés. © Le Muséon, 2019. 108 J. CHRISTIANIAN out in importance among all the sites Edwards surveyed, deserving it to be featured as the sole image on the dust jacket cover of his monograph: 1) until his first visit, its remote location had escaped the notice of modern travelers; 2) its general location made it a possible candidate for identi- fication as Barjrberd/Bardzrberd – one of the most strategic, renowned fortresses of Cilician Armenia; and 3) an extensive inscription carved in stone was preserved over its main entrance (Fig. 2). However, a few years after his visit to this site, the entrance gate was intentionally damaged, and the inscription was removed and likely destroyed (Fig. 2a). Another traveler, Mustapha Skalli, visited the site in 1982, and also photographed the fortress and inscription, although his photographs of it, taken from a distance, did not help in deciphering it (Fig. 3 and 3a). The website of the municipality of Aladağ, within the jurisdiction of which this fortress is located, mentions the presence of a six-line inscription on a limestone block on the exterior of the gate, whose content is still not fully known. Curiously, though, the third photograph displayed on the web page shows that the inscription is missing over the entrance gate (Fig. 4)4. My own visit in July 2014 confirmed the absence of this inscription (Fig. 2a). Two local youths at the site, noting my interest in the missing stones over the arch of the gate, mentioned that people had years before intentionally destroyed the inscription tabela previously present there5. Edwards, prior to publishing his book, had Virgil Strohmeyer, Jr., and Dickran Kouymjian, both experts in medieval Armenian epigraphy, exam- ine his photograph of this inscription for assistance in reading and translat- ing it. Unfortunately, the steep grade outside the gate had made it very dif- ficult to take a good picture, such that Edwards’ photo was taken at a sharp angle to the wall. That angle, and the distance from which the photograph had to be taken, made it impossible to make out the inscription fully, as many of the letters were also quite worn. Edwards reported the inscription as: 1. šinec῾oł.a .. c῾ankm . (or, c῾anks .) the builder .. circuit walls 2. bor anvani epł (or, t῾) ambrow … Lampron (or) by the famous bishopric 3. iyišatak hap . agior pr in the memory of (?) baron 4. …. b . cownoč῾i . orowt῾o ? 5. norogesc῾i ē : t῾v[….] I will renew 6. …. yišesc῾owk῾ ? We will remember6 4 http://www.aladag.bel.tr/index.php/tamrut-alise-kalesi [accessed February 5, 2017]. 5 Another recent study that references Tamrut makes no mention of the inscription: PETRE, Commonality, p. 250-251. 6 EDWARDS, Fortifications, p. 237. THE INSCRIPTION AT TAMRUT CASTLE 109 He further added that Strohmeyer included the following notes with his translation: “In the second line, the ept῾amb could stand for episkoposowt῾eamb or for episkopost῾ambrow which might be a name of a person or place (see Hubschmann’s T῾ambarak῾). If this reading is accepted, row is possibly a dialectal form of ṙowben [sic: read ṙowbēn], but I think the initial r argues against this. Finally, if we read ł for t῾ we might have the word Tambrow [sic: read Łambrow?] or Lampron. The third line is fairly clear except for the name which seems to be in the genitive. The fourth line is impossible to translate. The fifth line has a clear t῾v which may be a phonetic rendering of the more normal t῾ow.. (number) in classical Armenian.”7 Edwards also wrote: “[Kouymjian] reads a date at the end of line 5: ‘in our era 682.’ The Armenian year 682 is equivalent to A.D. 1233. […] but it should be stressed that this reading is highly speculative.”8 The year 682 would be written as ՈՁԲ in Armenian. As it stood, the unen- hanced photograph referenced in TheFortificationsofArmenianCilicia was simply too difficult to read. I was able to obtain the original 8 × 10 inch black & white enlargement from Edwards in 20169. Considering the challenges posed by the photo- graph, due to the picture-taking conditions experienced by Edwards, digi- tal manipulation of a scan of the image seemed likely to help. A high- resolution scan was made, and that image was treated with Photoshop to eliminate the perspective distortion and improve contrast and sharpness in the delineation of the letters. This final result showed much promise, and yielded the following reading, in six lines of text separated by horizontal lines, with raised letters carved in relief from the surrounding areas. The text is given below in the layout used on the stone face (Fig. 5 and 6): 7 EDWARDS, Fortifications, p. 241, n. 4. 8 EDWARDS, Fortifications, p. 241, n. 4. 9 Having failed to find the inscription on-site to confirm and complete its reading and translation, I searched for Edwards’ photograph and his extensive archive, which he had entrusted to the late Vazken L. Parsegian, Professor Emeritus of the School of Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY. Parsegian was also Chairman of the Armenian Educational Council and Director of the Armenian Architecture Photographic Archives Project. However, while an extensive archive of photographs and other docu- ments on Armenian architecture is indeed located at RPI, I was assured by Ms. Jeanne M. Keefe, the Graphics Curator at the RPI Architecture Library (since retired), that Edwards’ files were not there. Their whereabouts remain a mystery. My search was finally rewarded when, having contacted Edwards, I was informed that he still had a copy of the image. While he did not have the original negative, he fortunately had an 8×10 inch enlargement he shared with me, as well as a duplicate of a 35 mm color slide he had taken, which unfor- tunately did not contribute any further details. 110 J. CHRISTIANIAN ± ՇԻՆԵՑԱՒ ԴՂԵԱԿՍ ՑԱՆԿԱ ԼԻ : ՈՐ Է ԱՆՎԱՆԻ ԲԵՐԴ ԹԱՄԲՐՏԻ . (. used instead of :, or : touching the Ի?) Ի ՅԻՇԱՏԱԿ ՀԱՒՐ ԹԱԳԻ : ՈՐ ՊՐ ԿՈՍՏԻՆ ԱՆՈՒՆ ԿՈՉԻ : ՈՐՈՒՄ +ՏՐ 10 Ն ՈՂՈՐՄԵՍՑԻ ԱՄԵՆ 11 : ԹՎԻՆ ՉԲ12 : + ԵՒ ԾՆ[Ո]ՂԴ ԳԼԽԱՎՈՐ ՅԻՇԵՍՑՈՒՔ Ի ՔՍ 13 A number of punctuation marks appear in the inscription, in the form of the sentence-ending period mark, the vertically-arranged two dots (:). Using this punctuation allows us to rearrange the words of the inscription as intended to be read. It is given again below in this form, with missing letters added – or abbreviated words expanded – in square brackets ([ ]); with single- or double-underlines used to differentiate juxtaposed sets of ligatures or “nested” letters – where a letter is “nested” above, below, or inside part of another. Finally, the wavy underlines are used to indicate the use of the patiw, the Armenian mark of abbreviation, above the corresponding letters. It becomes apparent that each of the first five lines ends in the letter Ի, an attempt at a simple rhyme.