Zvartnots
Zvartnots ( Armenian Զվարթնոց ), other transcriptions Svarthnoz, Zvartnots, Zuart'noc ' , is an archaeological site in the central Armenian province of Armavir near Echmiadzin built with the remains of a mid-7th century, St. Gregory devoted Cathedral and the Palace of its founder, the Catholicos Nerses III, who officiated from 641 to 662 and was associated with the Byzantine Empire . The St. Gregory Church of Zvartnots, which was destroyed in the 10th century, was the oldest and largest Tetrakonchos in the Caucasus and has been imitated several times. The four conches of the central building were surrounded by a circular gallery, the diameter of which was 37.7 meters, with a presumed height of the three-tiered cylindrical structure of around 45 meters. St Gregory's Church, mentioned in several medieval sources, has been recognized as the pinnacle of Armenian architecture of the 7th century and one of the most famous architectural symbols of the Armenian Apostolic Church since its ruins were excavated at the beginning of the 20th century . The excavation site next to the village of the same name has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2000 .
location
Coordinates: 40 ° 9 ′ 35 " N , 44 ° 20 ′ 11.7" E
Zvartnots is 17 kilometers west of the center of the Armenian capital Yerevan on the M5 expressway leading to the Turkish border via Etschmiadzin and Armavir . After the village of Parakar, about ten kilometers from the center, which has merged with Yerevan as a continuous chain of suburbs, fields loosen up the settlement. The Zvartnots International Airport on the south by the town Parakar. Ptghunk and Zvartnots in the east of the excavation site are independent settlements in an intensely farmed flat plain that belongs to the broad valley of the Macaw .
The Aras Valley, which is 882 meters above sea level in Zvartnots, is the lowest-lying landscape zone in Armenia. The fertile alluvial depression between the peaks of the Ararat in the west and the Aragaz in the north formed the Armenian heartland. A long-distance trade route ran along the river throughout history, which was used by the troops of the great powers in the west and south as a corridor for campaigns of conquest. A in the 7th century BC The canal irrigation system established by the Urartians with a connection to the Hrasdan still exists.
The Etchmiadzin foothills begin two kilometers west of Zvartnots. The short driveway to the ruins from the expressway to the south is marked by the stone monument of an eagle, which stands on a pedestal in front of the entrance house and represents the main symbol of the cathedral. It is the work of the sculptor Ervand Kochar from 1955.
history
The name of the cathedral is generally related to heavenly angels who appeared to Gregory the Illuminator in a dream. The “cathedral of angels” was therefore connected in a broader sense with protective powers, angels and similar heavenly beings. Another derivation from the word zvartnonk ( zuart'unk ) leads back to a pre-Christian spirit that could bring the dead back to life. The word zawrk contained in Zvartnots , which is rendered with "angel", originally means "military troops". It is derived from zawr , the word component for military, which is also in zawravar , "general". Consequently, the angels become “heavenly soldiers” who offer supernatural protection.
The place was already in the Bronze Age in the 3rd millennium BC. Venerated as finds of stone paintings with dragon-snake motifs, which are now called Vischap stones. From Urartian times in the 1st millennium BC A sacrificial altar and the foundations of a temple were excavated. In the oldest excavation layer under the church there was a cuneiform stone of the Urartian king Rusa II (reigned around 680 - around 650 BC), on which the creation of gardens, canals and sacrifices to the gods are mentioned. In Hellenistic times, the Urartian sacrificial site gave way to a temple for Tir (oracle god, god of wisdom and scripture, comparable to Apollo ). The center of ancient Armenian cults existed until early Christian times in the immediate vicinity of the seat of the Catholicos of the Armenian Church, which was established in Vagharschapat (Etschmiadzin) in the 4th century.
According to legend, the apostle Bartholomew in the Arsharunik area (larger than today's Armavir province) and the apostle Thadeus in the Artaz area (in the Iranian province of Azerbaijan ) are said to have spread Christianity among the Armenians as early as the 1st century AD . Both were martyred and received the first Armenian memorial buildings, which later became monasteries. Other foundations of monasteries are traced back to their pupils, to the holy virgin Hripsime during her hike through Vaspurakan and to Mount Sepuh (Köhnem Dağı near Erzincan ), in one case to one of the three holy kings and above all to Gregory the Illuminator, even if it was There is no reliable historical source for the existence of Armenian monasteries in pre-Arab times (before the 7th / 8th century) and no church buildings from the 4th century have been preserved. Gregory, who according to tradition 301 - historically probably 314 - introduced Christianity to Armenia, founded a chapel on his way from Cappadocia to the east in Ashtishat and then in the then capital Wagharschapat, which was built by the Arsacids in the 2nd century in a place that Christ had shown him in a vision. The construction of the first stone church at the ancestral seat of the Armenian clergy in Wagharschapat is attributed to Katholikos Sahak (officiated 387-428). According to archaeological research, it was built over a Zoroastrian altar or fire temple . The remains of the first single-nave church in Zvartnots date from the 5th or 6th century.
Zvartnots belonged to the principality of the Bagratids . The construction of the cathedral coincides with the growing importance of Vagharschapat as a pilgrimage destination, which three consecutive Catholics expressed in the 7th century with the construction of new churches. The St. Hripsime Church under Catholicos Komitas Aghdzetsi (officiated 615–628) for St. Hripsime was followed by the St. Gajane Church under Catholicos Ezra von Parazhnakert (630–641) for Gayane, whose deaths for King Trdat III. the occasion was to make Christianity the state religion in 314. Trdat, responsible for the fate of the martyrs, later showed repentance and changed his heart under the influence of St. Gregory.
Catholicos Nerses III. Ischkanetsi (Nerses von Ischkan , 641-662) with the nickname Schinarar, "the builder", moved his official seat from Vagharschapat to Zvartnots in 641 and gave around 643 or around 650 the order to build the cathedral of Zvartnots, which became his new residence outside Vagharschapats should belong. The place where the cathedral was built was, according to the "story of Heraclios" by Sebeos , a bishop and historian in the third quarter of the 7th century, on the way that King Trdat took to meet St. Gregory. At this point, according to Sebeos, the angels appeared to St. Gregory, so Nerses named the cathedral Zvartnots. Nerses divided the river into canals for irrigation, planted vineyards and orchards on the reclaimed land and surrounded the buildings with a high and beautiful wall. A similar appearance of God in the form of St. Gregory, to which the purpose of the building was to be remembered, stood at the mythical beginning of the Etchmiadzin Cathedral . Accordingly, Christ came down from heaven and struck the ground with a golden hammer, whereupon the image of a church appeared. The causative for the importance of place event is preserved in the name of Echmiadzin: "Descended ( etsch ) is the only begotten Son ( miadsin )." In addition, Nerses is attested as a builder, six because of its monograms in Greek characters on Korbkapitellen between ionic scrolls to see are.
Nerses came from the Georgian province of Tao and, through his stay in Constantinople, was close to Byzantine architecture at a young age , from which he had individual sculptural details copied. According to the Chronicle of Sebeos, which is the most important source of the relationship between Byzantine and Armenian Christianity for the 7th century, Nerses was not specifically concerned with adopting architectural forms, but with approximating the Byzantine positions of faith anchored in the Council of Chalcedon in 451 Christians , from whom the Armenian Church had finally bid farewell at the Council of Dvin 555 at the latest .
The religious dispute within the Armenian Church was not yet resolved in the politically troubled 7th century. When 640 Arabs had conquered Dvin , the capital of the Armenian province of the Sassanids , the Byzantine emperor Herakleios (ruled 610–640) continued to restrict himself to persuading the Armenian Monophysite Christians to convert to Byzantine orthodoxy instead of helping the Armenians . Between 643 and 656 the Arabs invaded the entire South Caucasus. In contrast, Byzantine and locally recruited Armenian troops gathered under the Armenian prince Theodoros Rstuni, who was commissioned to lead the army by the Byzantine emperor Constans II (ruled 641–668). In 652/653 Rstuni changed to the side of the Arabs without consulting other Armenian princely families (Nacharare) and negotiated with them the recognition of the province as a protectorate under Arab rule. The neighbors ruling the region succeeded in driving out the Byzantines. With them went Nerses, who retired to Ischkan to oversee the construction of the first church, which was completed shortly after 652/653. The central building of Ischkan, of which only the altar apse remained when it was destroyed in 736–738, thus represents a temporal anticipation of Zvartnots. After Konstans learned of the defection of the Rstuni, he personally moved to Armenia in the summer of 653 (652) with 20,000 soldiers where his troops won several battles against the Arabs, weakened by internal disputes, in the late 650s. The Zvartnots Cathedral could only be built with the support of Byzantines and Armenian neighbors and was completed in 661/662, the year Nerses died.
In 652, as can be read in some historical accounts, Konstans is said to have attended the consecration of the church. He is said to have been so enthusiastic at the sight that he planned to have such a church built in Constantinople, but the builder from Zvartnots died on the way there. However, the presence of the Byzantine emperor at the inauguration is not mentioned in the mentioned chapter with Sebeos, who then reports on his visit to Dvin in 652. The Armenian historian Moses Kaghankatwazi in the 10th century and the Movses Dasxuranci (Moses Daschurantsi, "The History of the Caucasian Albanians"), probably also from the 10th century, link both events and leave Konstans, who was only once in the province of Armenia, as well appear in Zvartnots. According to Eugene Kleinbauer, this is a legend that was enough for the architectural historian Toros Toramanian (1864–1934) to specify the year of completion as 652.
The church collapsed in the 10th century, either from an earthquake or willful destruction. In the latter case, the Arabs would have removed some statically essential bricks and the now unstable building would have gradually collapsed under its weight over the course of decades. Apparently the church did not disappear from the cultural memory, because according to popular belief it is depicted on two reliefs on a door in the Gothic palace church Sainte-Chapelle in Paris from the 1240s. You can see such a round church in a Noah's Ark , which is mythologically linked to Mount Ararat. The time gap of around 300 years could have been bridged with the help of models of the cathedral, as they are made to this day and kept in the churches, or the Church of the Redeemer of Ani, which was built at the same time and succeeds Zvartnots, could have been used as Model for the Paris reliefs.
Research history
From 1901 to 1907, the monastery mayor Khachik Wardapet Dadian had the debris buried under a heap of earth uncovered for the first time. Dadian had no formal specialist training. A systematic archaeological investigation began in 1904 under Toros Toramanian , who presented his findings the following year. He presented a three-stage reconstruction model, which initially aroused doubts, but was accepted by most experts in 1906 as probably the correct one. During excavations of the Georgskirche in Ani a stone model of the church was found, which has similarities with Toramanian's reconstruction. In 1905 Toramanian returned to Ani, where he had been for a few months in 1903. In 1908, the Georgian-Russian linguist Nikolai Marr joined them, who had already been researching in Ani from 1892 and pointed out the relationship with the round churches there. Toramanian's research only became known in the West around 1918, when Josef Strzygowski used his colleague's photographs in his work on Armenian architecture. Toramanian saw a possible origin of the round outer shape in Italy, for example in the Santo Stefano Rotondo (second half of the 5th century) or the Pantheon in Rome. The palace was excavated until the 1930s.
Toramanian's model from 1905 with a high exterior gallery and a circular upper floor contrasted Stepanyan Mnatzakanyan with a generally lower reconstruction attempt published in 1959, in which semicircular cones protruded from the inner wall square on the upper floor. This model was accepted by Georgi Chubinashvili (1885–1973), but rejected by Tiran Marutyan, who wrote a monograph on Zvartnots in 1963. His model of the round church in Bana resembles that of the Toramanians of Zvartnots. From 1958 to 1967 the remains of the wall were secured.
cathedral
Architectural-historical development
Tetrakonchos in Armenia
At the idealized beginning of the central Armenian buildings there was a square structure covered by a dome with an interposed drum . A square formed by belt arches serves as a support for the tambour. In order to enlarge the interior space and to increase the stability, buildings with four cones emerged, which emerge from the wall surfaces in the four cardinal directions. From the completely symmetrical tetraconchus and the central dome, different forms of the central building developed and, in parallel, combinations of the central building and elongated hall church or basilica .
Zvartnots Cathedral was a rare type of central building, the dome of which rests on four central pillars set up in a square. The oldest preserved Tetrakonchos in Armenia is the new building of the Cathedral of Etschmiadzin (Etschmiadzin II) around 485. Its pillars form a crossing in the center of a square building with four conches protruding from the walls. This construction anticipates the completely destroyed Theodoros Church of Bagaran from the 630s, otherwise it was not carried out any further. Instead, small cross-domed churches were built , in which the four inner corners of the walls form the support for the belt arches above which the tambour rises. In the Zion Church (called Mankanoz) in Oschakan (near Ashtarak ), Lmbatavank and the Kamravor Church in Ashtarak from the 7th century, the boils protrude outwards in a rectangular shape, in later churches they are usually surrounded by side rooms and are located within a closed structure.
In the “ Mastara type”, the dome spans practically the entire square church space and rests on the middle of the outer walls. While the shear forces of the dome are absorbed in the middle of the wall by the protruding cones, the outer corners are relatively poorly stabilized. A statically successful further development is the much more complex " Awan - Hripsime type" with additional round or rectangular corner rooms. A chronological sequence of these buildings, all of which were built in the 7th century, is, however, not recognizable in view of the mostly uncertain dating, why a parallel development is assumed. The Saint Hripsime Church in Etchmiadzin, which was built around 30 years earlier than the Zvartnots Cathedral, is just under three kilometers away and is a Tetrakonchos that structurally has little in common with Zvartnots.
Josef Strzygowski referred to the central buildings in his basic classification of Armenian architecture as "radial domed buildings" and distinguished the churches of the Awan Hripsime type classified as "dome squares with strut niches" from the "pure strut niches", the most important representative of which was the Zvartnots Cathedral. Tetraconches such as Zvartnots have no visible wall square, the crossing under the central dome is only present in the shape of the four corners, which are formed by the semicircular conches that are directly connected to a quatrefoil . An example of a church based on a quadruple floor plan is the Gregorkapelle of the Sanahin Monastery from the end of the 10th century, in which the conches are enclosed by a circular, almost windowless wall. Due to the weight of the outer walls, it avoided the static problems of the open tetratonchos. The church of Agrak near Tekor had such a cloverleaf floor plan from the 7th century, with the east side being stiffened by side rooms on both sides of the altar apse . The Sergius Church of the former monastery Chtsgonk (Khtzkonk, today Beşkilise) near Tekor from the 11th century has side rooms on all four sides within a circular outer wall . The transition to the Awan Hripsime type was created by the Apostle Church of Ani from the same period. It is a cloverleaf floor plan with adjoining rooms on all sides within a square outer wall.
With a higher number of conches, the floor plan approximates the shape of a circle. The oldest polygonal conical building in Armenia is the church of Zoravar near Jeghward from the second half of the 7th century with eight conches, followed by the also octagonal church in Irind . In the 10th and 11th centuries, more churches with six and eight conches were built in Ani. A chronological order according to the number of conches cannot be determined.
In Zvartnoz, instead of the massive cylindrical structure of the St. Gregory Chapel of Sanahin, an outer wall ring was created, which formed a passage around the central tetraconchus, ensured its static stability and at the same time significantly enlarged the area. Apart from the connection with the first church in İşhan , which was built at the same time or a few years earlier, the Zvartnots Cathedral is named as a model for further "four-passages with dealing" (Strzygowski). The round church near the village of Ləkit in the north Azerbaijani district of Qax , which may have belonged to a palace, owned four conches with access . The partially brick building can only roughly be dated to the time after completion and before the destruction of Zvartnots, i.e. the end of the 7th century to around 1000. The most faithful copy was the Church of St. Gregory ( Surb Grigor ) of King Gagik (also Church of Gagkashen) in Ani, which was built between 1001 and around 1005. The similarity in the floor plan suggests that its architect Trdat (around 950-1020) had drawings by Zvartnots. The main difference is the Ostkonche, which in Ani, like the other conches, was designed as an exedra with six columns.
The largest church dating back to Zvartnots was the Georgian round church of Bana in northeastern Turkey, the mainly preserved remains of which are dated around 900. These could have been preceded by an initial construction phase in the middle of the 7th century. The dating of Bana to the first half of the 7th century, endeavored by Georgi Chubinashvili and adopted by subsequent Georgian art historians, is not accepted by rival Armenian research because this would put the Georgian round church at the beginning. The development seems to lead more from Zvartnots to Bana. The four mighty pillars that form the square under the dome of Zvartnots Cathedral were left out in Bana and replaced by corner spaces between the conches: a step towards the column-free rotunda .
Forerunner of Zvartnots outside Armenia
Models for the square central domed churches in the Christian East, such as the ideal-typical four-pillar building in Bagaran , are sought among the Central Asian and Iranian domed buildings. Possible forerunners for the four-cone buildings in the shape of a clover leaf can be found in Syria and northern Mesopotamia. A Syrian influence seems obvious due to the close ties between the Armenian and Syrian church organizations. According to Eugene Kleinbauer, all the founders of the churches with Tetrakonchos in Syria were followers of the Orthodox and not the Syrian faith, which was a criterion for the choice of this design by Nerses III, who was committed to Byzantine orthodoxy. could have been.
In the ancient port city of Seleucia Pieria (near Samandağ in Turkey) there was a tetraconchus built in the second half of the 5th century, which was surrounded by an identically shaped outer wall ring and possibly served as a burial church or a cathedral. The dimensions (36 meters in north-south direction) roughly corresponded to those of Zvartnots. With a diameter of 48 meters, the otherwise almost identical Tetrakonchos from Apamea from the same period was even larger . As in Zvartnots, both churches had a room behind the eastern cone that could be entered from the outside. It is unclear whether and how the inner church rooms were domed. The Tetrakonchos by Resafa from the beginning of the 6th century represented an unusual combination with an elongated hall church due to its saddle roof . It measured 42 × 34 meters. A cloverleaf-shaped inner structure with the same exterior handling as Seleicia Pieria and Apameia and an altar apse protruding far to the east characterizes the 44-meter-long St. Mary's Church ( Meryem Ana Kilisesi ) in Diyarbakır , which was built in the first half of the 6th century .
Zvartnots temporally preceding, geographically and creatively more distant tetracones, which mainly served as churches, can be found in the Mediterranean area ( Basilica of San Lorenzo in Milan, around 400; Little Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, 6th century; Hadrian's Library in Athens, 132 AD. also in Dubrovnik ). San Vitale in Ravenna is a circular building with eight cones from the middle of the 6th century .
Possible spread outside Armenia
Josef Strzygowski's history of the development of Armenian architecture, impaired by racial ideology ( The Architecture of the Armenians and Europe ) assigns Armenia a mediating role in the “diffusion” of Iranian building types to Europe. As an example on the way of the Christian architecture developed in his view in Armenia to the west, he leads the Georgian church in the castle of Sweti (in the northeast Turkish town of Şavşat ) from the 8th / 9th centuries. Century on. Your tetrakonchos was enclosed in a polygonal, almost round structure, but - unlike in Armenia - the central area was extended to the east and covered by a barrel vault. Strzygowski attributed the difference to the Georgians' inability to adequately adapt the Armenian model to their own building tradition. Via several early Christian central buildings, exemplified from Eastern Europe, he finally reached Greece via Central Europe to the elongated domed structure of the Nea Moni monastery from the 11th century. It is difficult to discover anything in common with the supposed prototype Zvartnots or an Armenian domed basilica.
The Lithuanian art historian Jurgis Baltrušaitis (1903–1988) researched, like Strzygowski, the relationship between the medieval architecture of the South Caucasus and the West. In his studies published in the 1930s, he mentions several Armenian-looking tetracones in France, such as the donjon of Étampes Castle from the 12th century. What cannot be seen on the floor plan shown: The roof of the upper floor was constructed with diagonal belt arches, which are very rare in Armenian architecture. Crossing belt arches occur practically only on Gawiten ( Haghpat Monastery, Horomos Monastery ).
Architecture and building sculpture
The cathedral stood on an artificial round terrace 38.7 meters in diameter above another decagonal terrace 55 meters in length, to which the palace buildings adjoined to the north. The church itself stood on a three-tiered base. The circular, one meter thick outer wall enclosed a room 33.7 meters in diameter. In the east, a rectangular extension 11 meters wide protruded 7.4 meters above the outer circle, which may have come from a later period.
The inner building structure was defined by four intricately shaped bundle pillars that formed a square with an edge length of 12.2 meters. On the outside of each pillar stood a free pillar 0.75 meters in diameter in front of a semicircular niche 1.5 meters in diameter sunk into the pillar. The pillars were connected to one another by belt arches. Three of the four conches between the pillars had no closed walls, but were designed as exedra with round arches over six columns each. Aside from the complex overall plan, which is unique in Armenia and in the entire Caucasus, pillars are virtually non-existent in Armenian (and Georgian) architecture. The passage was 3.65 meters wide at its narrowest points between the ring wall and the four free-standing columns. According to Toramanian's model, the ring wall on the ground floor was broken up by 32 arched windows with round windows ( ox eyes ) above , which should have well lit the interior thanks to the open exedra. In addition to the main entrance in the west, there were other entrances in the south, north, north-west and south-west. The east conche, designed as an altar apse, had a closed wall and a bema (raised podium) that was pushed forward by about 4 meters into the room from the pillars on the side. A round hole in the bottom in the middle is said to have contained a relic of St. Gregory, if the statement of the Catholicos John V from the 10th century is correctly interpreted, who narrated that Gregory was buried "under four columns". Other medieval historians also spoke of the cathedral as the Church of Gregory. However, no evidence of a relic was found. An ambo (platform for the preacher) partially covered the opening.
The sculptural jewelry is rich, of high quality and shows borrowings from Hellenistic and Syrian art. The 3 × 6, i.e. 18 capitals of the exedra, which were re-erected together with their columns, are Armenian-Ionic composite capitals with three-striped basket weave ribbons and overlying volutes . In the middle they show medallions with crosses on one side and monograms in Greek script on the other. This is a peculiarity because by the end of the 6th century Armenian had become the standard script and is interpreted as a sign of Nerses solidarity with the Hellenistic-Byzantine culture. The four taller pillars behind the pillars bear mighty capitals on which eagles spread their wings. In ancient times and in the Middle Ages, the eagle was a symbol of strength, triumph, speed and renewal and made its way into official Byzantine art from the Roman Empire. In pre-Christian times the eagle could bring the dead to life. Vine tendrils that appear on window frames and wall corners represent the blood of Christ and the resurrection , while pomegranates represent an ancient Armenian symbol of fertility.
On the outer walls, blind arches framed the upper edges of the windows. The round windows were surrounded by a frieze with a wicker pattern. Archivolts were supported by half-columns with cube capitals adorned with palmettes . The portals had a gable canopy that rested on lateral pairs of half-columns with cube capitals. The floors were at least partially covered with mosaics and the walls, especially the altar apse, were painted with frescoes. The excavators found remains of paint on the eagle capitals. Khachik Wardapet Dadian discovered two mosaic fragments in 1900, one of which was still preserved in 1918 and showed a cross with rays emanating from a star.
The walls were made of light brown and gray slabs of tuff with a core of cast masonry . A total of 32 master builders were employed, whose busts were shown in high relief between the approaches of the exedra arches. Nine figures with individual facial features have been preserved. According to the tools that they carry in their hands, they were assigned to different trades.
The stepped base and one or two rows of the curtain wall were restored and the pillars were put back up so that the dimensions of the ground floor can be seen. Statements about the shape of the upper floors are based largely on speculation. The drum was probably round on the inside and sixteen-sided on the outside . Zwickel made the transition from the crossing to the circular base of the drum using a combination of trumpets and pendants . The roofs had a tile covering. The handling was covered by a ring barrel. Toros Toramanian's reconstruction from 1905 envisages a two-storey gallery and a recessed second, also circular step, above which the tambour with a conical roof rises, tapering by about the same amount. In this tall building, a lot of weight would have had to be transferred over eight broad, double-curved arches over the four conches. These arches formed the inner support ring for the vault above the walkway. A more recent reconstruction by A. Kuznecov (1951) and Stepanyan Mnatzakanyan (1959) shows the handling and thus the entire building lower. The second level is slimmer because the inner structure with the four conches is made visible to the outside. Each cone is connected to a square component with a flat sloping roof, from which the round drum emerges.
palace
The main building of the palace (east wing) with the residence and work rooms of Catholicos Nerses III. bordered on the south by the terrace of the cathedral. A side wing containing reception rooms extended to the west. A columned hall with a wooden roof and another hall with a barrel vault were located here. Nerses Palace was the largest secular building in 7th century Armenia.
To the east wing belonged the common rooms of the servants, a hall opened to the churchyard through arcades, a Roman bath and a single-nave church from the 5th / 6th. Century, on the south side of which a wine press was built. To the south of the throne room there were three rooms with basins for fermentation and clay jugs for storing wine with a total capacity of 22,000 liters. The Roman bath on the north side of the single-nave church consisted of a general area and an area for special guests. The facility was divided according to the usual pattern - warm bath (Latin: tepidarium ), cold bath ( frigidarium ), steam bath ( caldarium ) and changing rooms - as in garni .
An elongated stone idol south of the palace is a fertility symbol ( phallus ) that has been known since the Late Bronze Age and is associated with the simultaneous cult of a mother goddess . A basalt stele placed in front of the museum contains a cuneiform text by the Urartian king Rusa II , in which he prides himself on having built irrigation canals and vineyards. The museum, established in 1937, shows small finds, models and plans of the church.
literature
- Burchard Brentjes , Stepan Mnazakanjan, Nona Stepanjan: Art of the Middle Ages in Armenia. Union Verlag (VOB), Berlin 1981.
- Károly Gombos (text), Károly Gink (photos): The architecture of Armenia. Corvina, Budapest 1972/1973, pp. 32–36, figs. 59–79.
- W. Eugene Kleinbauer: Zvart'nots and the Origins of Christian Architecture in Armenia . In: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 54, No. 3, September 1972, pp. 245-262.
- Christina Maranci: Medieval Armenian Architecture. Construction of Race and Nation. (Hebrew University Armenian Studies 2) Peeters, Leuven u. a. 2001.
- Christina Maranci: Byzantium through Armenian Eyes: Cultural Appropriation and the Church of Zuart'noc '. In: Gesta, Vol. 40, No. 2, 2001, pp. 105-124.
- Simon Payaslian: The History of Armenia. From the origins to the present . Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2007.
- Josef Strzygowski : The architecture of the Armenians and Europe. Volume 1. Kunstverlag Anton Schroll, Vienna 1918, pp. 108–118 ( online at Internet Archive ).
- Josef Strzygowski: The architecture of the Armenians and Europe. Volume 2. Kunstverlag Anton Schroll, Vienna 1918, pp. 587, 687 ( online at Internet Archive ).
- Jean-Michel Thierry: Armenian Art. Herder, Freiburg / B. 1988, ISBN 3-451-21141-6 .
Web links
- Rick Ney: Armavir. Tour Armenia, 2008, pp. 48-52
- Zvartnots . Armenian Heritage
- Zvartnot s. Armenian Studies Program
- Zvartnots Cathedral. Armeniapedia
- Zvartnots Cathedral . armenica.org
- Entry on the UNESCO World Heritage Center website ( English and French ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ UNESCO World Heritage Center: Cathedral and Churches of Echmiatsin and the Archaeological Site of Zvartnots. Retrieved August 25, 2017 .
- ^ Zvartnots 2: History . Armenian Heritage
- ↑ Nina G. Garsoïan: Introduction to the Problem of early Armenian monasticism . In: Revue des Etudes Arméniesses 30 , 2005–2007, pp. 185–187 (reprinted in: Dies .: Studies on the Formation of Christian Armenia. (Variorum Collected Studies Series) Ashgate, London 2010)
- ^ Zvartnots 2: History. Armenian Heritage
- ↑ Zvartnots. Armenian Studies Program. More precisely than in the tenure of Nerses III. the construction time of the cathedral cannot be reliably narrowed down.
- ↑ Edjmiadsin . In: Rouben Paul Adalian: Historical Dictionary of Armenia . Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2002, p. 183
- ^ Robert Bedrosian (trans.): Sebeo's History of Armenia. ( Memento from October 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Chapter 33, 146
- ↑ Eugene smallholder: Zvart'nots and the Origins of Christian Architecture in Armenia. P. 247f
- ↑ Christina Maranci: Byzantium through Armenian Eyes , p. 105
- ↑ Wachtang Djobadze: Early Medieval Georgian Monasteries in Historic Tao, Klardjetʿi and Šavšetʿi. (Research on art history and Christian archeology, XVII) Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 1992, p. 191
- ↑ Christina Maranci: Byzantium through Armenian Eyes, p. 107
- ↑ Hartmut Hofrichter: Architecture of the Armenians in the Middle Ages. In: Armenia. Rediscovery of an old cultural landscape . (Exhibition catalog) Museum Bochum 1995, p. 137
- ↑ Eugene smallholder: Zvart'nots and the Origins of Christian Architecture in Armenia , p 247
- ↑ Ararat . In: Rouben Paul Adalian: Historical Dictionary of Armenia . Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2010, p. 85, ISBN 978-0810860964
- ^ Zvartnots 6: Collapse. Excavation. Reconstruction. Armenian Heritage
- ↑ Christina Maranci: Medieval Armenian Architecture, pp. 45, 66
- ↑ Eugene smallholder: Zvart'nots and the Origins of Christian Architecture in Armenia , p 245
- ↑ Stepan Mnazakanjan: Architecture . In: Burchard Brentjes u. a., pp. 63-65
- ↑ Christina Maranci: Medieval Armenian Architecture , p. 97
- ↑ Sanahin monastery. armenica.org (No. 6 in the basic plan)
- ^ Josef Strzygowski, Volume 1, p. 102
- ↑ The Monastery of Khtzkonk. VirtualAni
- ↑ Eugene smallholder: Zvart'nots and the Origins of Christian Architecture in Armenia, S. 253
- ^ Patrick Donabédian: Documentation of the art places. In: Jean Michel Thierry: Armenian Art, p. 504
- ↑ Christina Maranci: The Architect Trdat: Building Practices and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Byzantium and Armenia. ( Memento from February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 62, No. 3, September 2003, pp. 294-305, here pp. 298, 301f
- ^ Ulrich Bock: Armenian architecture. History and problems of their research . (25th publication of the architecture department of the Art History Institute of the University of Cologne) Cologne 1983, pp. 125f, 203
- ↑ Christina Maranci: Byzantium through Armenian Eyes, p. 105
- ↑ Eugene smallholder: Zvart'nots and the Origins of Christian Architecture in Armenia, S. 258f
- ↑ Izda Pavic: The pillar basilica in Dubrovnik: late antiquity or medieval building? In: Arheoloski vestnik, 51 , 2000, pp. 205-223
- ↑ Josef Strzygowski, Volume 1: His thesis is anticipated in the foreword on page V.
- ^ Josef Strzygowski, Volume 2, p. 758
- ↑ Christina Maranci: Medieval Armenian Architecture, pp. 121, 128f
- ↑ Christina Maranci: Medieval Armenian Architecture , p. 189
- ↑ Christina Maranci: Byzantium through Armenian Eyes, p. 109
- ^ Patrick Donabédian: Documentation of the art places . In: Jean-Michel Thierry, p. 597
- ↑ Christina Maranci: Byzantium through Armenian Eyes, p. 118
- ↑ Christina Maranci: Byzantium through Armenian Eyes, p. 105
- ↑ Gerd Heinz-Mohr: Lexicon of symbols. Images and signs of Christian art . Herder, Freiburg 1991, p. 26
- ^ Zvartnots 5: The Cathedral Decoration. The Masters. Armenian Heritage
- ^ Patrick Donabédian: Documentation of the art places. In: Jean-Michel Thierry, p. 598
- ^ Josef Strzygowski, Volume 2, p. 566
- ↑ illustrated in: Josef Strzygowski, Volume 1, p. 297, Fig. 335
- ↑ Zvartnots 3: Cathedral Exterior. Construction. The masters. Well. Armenian Heritage
- ↑ Stepan Mnazakanjan: Architecture . In: Burchard Brentjes, p. 68f; Patrick Donabédian: Documentation of the art places . In: Jean-Michel Thierry, p. 597f
- ↑ Rick Ney, Tour Armenia, p. 52
- ^ Zvartnots 7: The Palace. Palace Western Wing. Palace Eastern Wing. Roman Bath (14). 5th-6th century (15). Armenian Heritage
- ^ Zvartnots 8: Jars and Fertility Stones . Armenian Heritage
- ^ Zvartnots 10: Rusa II Stone. Sundial . Armenian Heritage
