Art-A-Tsolum

For nearly eight centuries, the cathedral of Gandzasar stood on its hilltop above the Khachen river valley, its carved dome visible for miles across Artsakh.

How a humble noise-making instrument may connect Hattian metalworkers, Hurrian myth-singers, Egyptian priestesses of Isis, and the bronze-working culture of the Kingdom of Van 1.

Image Source: 301.am For years, Ankara and Baku publicly denied that Syrian fighters had any role in Azerbaijan’s 2020 offensive against Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh).

Long before Armenia’s kings raised churches over pagan sanctuaries, before Hellenism folded Vahagn into Herakles and Anahit into Artemis, the Armenian Highland already had its own giant of thunder and stone.

Introduction Long before Urartian kings inscribed their names in cuneiform on the cliffs of Van, and long before Armenian stonemasons carved crosses into volcanic tuff, the people of the Armenian Highland were already carving something else into stone: go…

A Coalition Beneath the Mountain Among the oracles of judgment collected in the Book of Jeremiah, one verse names a highland kingdom that modern readers instantly recognize by its mountain’s silhouette: “Lift up a banner in the land!

If you have ever climbed the Cascade in Yerevan and looked up at the tall, tapering stele crowned with stone “wings” at the very top of the complex, you have already met one of the oldest architectural ideas the Armenian Highland ever produced.

On a rocky promontory above the southwestern shore of Lake Sevan, at an elevation of nearly 1,900 meters, stands one of Armenia’s most evocative medieval complexes: Hayravank Monastery.

Among the most arresting objects to survive from the Early Iron Age Near East are gold-sheathed ceremonial short swords — akinakai — whose scabbards blend the restless “animal style” of the Eurasian steppe with the courtly iconography of the Van Kingdom,…