Agarak (Aragazotn)
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Agarak Ագարակ |
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| State : |
 Armenia
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| Province : | Aragazotn | ||
| Founded : | 1919 | ||
| Coordinates : | 40 ° 18 ′ N , 44 ° 17 ′ E | ||
| Height : | 1063 m | ||
| Time zone : | UTC + 4 | ||
| Community type: | local community | ||
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Agarak ( Armenian Ագարակ ) is a village in the central Armenian province of Aragazotn on the southern foothills of the Aragaz . The place, founded in 1919, was next to an early Bronze Age cult center and a subsequent Urartean settlement from the first half of the 1st millennium BC. Created. One of the oldest known Armenian churches of the 5th / 6th centuries Century was preserved as a ruin in the town center. It was created by converting an Arsakid fortress.
location
Agarak lies at an altitude of 1063 meters at the transition from the southern foothills of the Aragaz , which rises to 4090 meters, to the vast river plains of the Macaw . The Amberd mountain stream flows in a gorge on the western edge of the village and flows a few kilometers south into the Kassagh .
From Yerevan it is 19 km on the M1 to the northwest to the provincial capital Ashtarak and another seven kilometers to Agarak. The expressway continues past the village of Kosch , ten kilometers to the west, towards Gyumri . In Agarak, a side road branches off to the south, which forks after two kilometers in Voskevaz . Etschmiadzin can be reached to the southwest , while the H20 to the southeast leads via Oshakan, three kilometers away, to Etschmiadzin . The extension of the H20 from Agarak to the north on the east side of the Amberd Gorge crosses the small town of Bjurakan and ends below the Aragaz south summit. The Amberd fortress, located high on the mountain, can be approached from the H20, while only one road leads directly from Agarak to Tegher with the monastery of the same name on the west side of the gorge.
Townscape
The present village was founded in 1919 by refugees from Van and Bitlis . At the 2001 census, the official population was 1655. According to official statistics, in January 2012 Agarak had 1978 inhabitants.
The town center is located north of the intersection of the expressway with the H20 (petrol station). There is a monument of an abstract eagle with a wing from the 1980s, which is supposed to commemorate the Armenian uprising of Van in the Ottoman Empire . Fruit trees and grapes thrive in the house gardens, which are separated from the street by walls, and the small-scale fields in the area are cultivated with grain and vegetables.
Johanneskirche
About 500 meters north of the intersection, a ruin made of mighty blocks of tuff indicates the location of a fortress from the 4th century AD. It served the Arsacid dynasty ruling from 54 to 428 to protect their royal tombs, the remains of which are in the village of Aghtsk ( Dzorap) located two kilometers northwest of Agarak on the edge of the Amberd Gorge. According to a source from the 5th century, the underground burial chamber in Aghtsk, carved into the rock, is said to have been destroyed by the Sassanid king Shapur II (r. 325–379). Stone blocks from an Iron Age settlement were apparently used to build the defense system in Agarak . In the 5th or 6th century, part of the Arsakid building complex was turned into an aisle church dedicated to the Apostle John ( Surb Hovhanes ) . The double-shell walls, which are unusually powerful for such a small church, enclosed a long rectangular room, the barrel vault of which was reinforced by two belt arches . For use as a church, a horseshoe-shaped apse with a raised bema (podium) was built into the eastern end. To the west, the building was extended the width of the main nave by a rectangular narthex closed on all sides . There was the only entrance. Three wall projections on both long sides characterize the building as a weir system.
The ruin is revered in popular belief, as is a medieval George Chapel, rebuilt in 1999, in a nearby side street, which originally was replaced by a Tukh Manuk shrine.
Archaeological excavations
The excavation site is located south of the expressway on the west side of Amberd Gorge. A dirt road leads south from the place name sign to the settlement hill, which can initially be recognized by the wave-like red-brown rock edges that may have been carved out of the soft tuff and still contain the incised drawing of a ram. If the dating to the Early Bronze Age ( Agarak 1 , from 3400 BC) is correct, it would be the largest man-made stone formation in the Caucasus at that time. The site of the early Bronze Age cult center covers an area of 200 hectares, 118 hectares of which have been declared a protection zone. The place of worship on the plateau includes rectangular and round tubs sunk into the rock, rock stairs and corridors that connect horseshoe-shaped structures. The function of the rock tubs is as unclear as the cult practiced in this place. There is speculation about places of sacrifice or facilities for wine production, whereby the use of wine as well as animal sacrifices could have served for purification rituals or for homage to gods.
The rock surfaces came out from under a thin layer of earth. A 50 centimeter wide passage in the edge of the rock leads to an underground burial chamber in which a complete skeleton and weapons have been found, which are believed to date from the Urartian period (first half of the 1st millennium BC). Trapezoidal shapes carved out of the rock are known as sacrificial altars and compared with a similar find in Metsamor, another Bronze Age site that is interpreted as an astronomical observatory. To the north-west of the hill, the excavators found a street with rows of houses on either side, the walls of which were round on the inside and rectangular on the outside. The walls of the Early Bronze Age culture layer were generally up to a meter thick and consisted of air-dried mud bricks
The prehistoric site of Agarak is considered unique in Armenia because of its size. The layers following the Bronze Age were disturbed. A large number of pot shards and round portable clay fireplaces are attributed to the Kura Araxes culture of the 29th to 27th centuries BC. Attributed to (main site Schengavit). The finds document a continuous settlement up to the end of the early Iron Age (9th century) and up to the fall of the Urartian Empire in the 6th century BC. From the 4th century BC. Agarak gained importance as an urban center, which lay on a trade route leading through the Aras valley. This is shown by coin finds from the Hellenistic and Roman times as well as signet rings in graves from late antiquity . According to some pot shards from household goods, Agarak was still settled on a village scale in the high Middle Ages. Very sparse remains belong to the 17th / 18th centuries. Century on.
Web links
- Rick Ney: Aragatsotn March . Tour Armenia, 2008, p. 31f
- Agarak. Armenian Heritage
Individual evidence
- ↑ Brady Kiesling: Rediscovering Armenia Guidebook - Aragatsotn March.
- ^ RA 2001 Population and Housing Census Results . armstat.am, p. 51
- ^ RA Aragatsotn March. armstat.am, 2012, p. 244
- ↑ Rick Ney, Tour Armenia, p. 31
- ↑ Agarak 4: Sacrifice. Armenian Heritage
- ↑ Metsamor 1 . Tour Armenia
- ↑ Hakob Simonian: Prehistoric and early historical finds in the area of Armenia. In: Armenia. Rediscovery of an old cultural landscape. (Exhibition catalog) Museum Bochum 1995, p. 42
- ↑ Rick Ney, Tour Armenia, p. 32
- ↑ Agarak 2: Excavation . Armenian Heritage