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The doves which the man at Khor Virap was offering to us were domesticated to come back to him. We also saw the sculpture of another dove inside the Monastery compound. This had nothing to do with Noah. It was the image of “the Holy Ghost."
I saw a man in a trench coat holding a cigarette holder in one hand, surrounded by six bodyguards, walking among the tents in the Square. He shook hands with his deferential supporters, talked to them, and listened attentively.
Amidst many “Armenian Tricolors,” the bands of red, blue, and orange colors which since 1990 have been the flag of new Armenia, there was a banner on the back of a tent facing the newcomers. It said “OLIGARCHY OUT, DEMOCRACY IN". I walked in.
We could not determine when a tree stump needed for slaughtering sacrificial animals to the same divine end, standing nearby, was last used.
No monk lives in Geghard now. There is, however, a small church presence there, “with three active priests,” our guide said. Right next to the main church on the site, we also noticed a wishing tree with ribbons and strips of cloth attached, a sign that folk-ways to beseech god had survived.
The Orbelians’ generals who made their conquest possible, called the Zakarian brothers, have left their mark. We saw their coat of arms with a lion symbolizing might on the door above the large vestibule with nine arches which connected the two reconstructed churches of the monastery. In the present form the original main church had been built under the auspices of the Zakarians.
Called Geghardavank (Monastery of Spear), this used to be where the Holy Lance (Surp Geghard) was stored before it was moved to the Treasury at Echmiadzin.
we saw the structures, mostly rebuilt in the second half of the 19th century, which had been at times used as a summer residence by the Catholicoses.
In the gardens of Garni Village, eateries run by families hospitably catered to us and many other tourists just off their buses which had parked haphazardly on the narrow side streets. Men kebabbed skewered pieces of lamb, beef, and pork over flames of woods burning in huge open tandoori ovens.
An accomplished a capella group of five young Armenian women regaled us with Armenian folk songs, which are mostly about love. These they followed with Armenian religious music choir singing of complex harmonies.
Pliny the Elder credits this Armenian king with initiating Nero into certain magician rites, thus introducing the cult of Mythra (the Parthians’ Zoroastrian divinity Mithra or Mehr) into Roman pantheon. The Garni Temple, in turn, shows the influence of Roman architecture.
A 180-meter long wall, the remnants of which we were now seeing, closed the remaining opening between the cliffs. A temple was erected here as early as in the Urartian period (8th -6th centuries B.C.). That became the footprint for the current structure.
Earthquake also destroyed the 1st century Temple of Garni in 1679. It has since been partially restored to stand as “the only pagan temple in the Caucasus,” as our guide put it. Garni is indeed one of the oldest inhabited places in Armenia. The official sign at the site of the Temple told us that: “Excavations have uncovered artifacts dating to the Paleolithic era, while the original walls date to the Bronze and Iron Ages.
The pillars in Zvartnots showed the influence of Greek and Roman architecture, a reminder that the Cathedral was constructed when this part of Armenia was under Byzantine control. The Arabs were not far away. Their occupation of Dvin forced Catholicos Nerses III who had ordered the construction of the Cathedral to move his patriarchal palace from Dvin to Zvartnots. The ruins of the Catholicos’ palace are visible around the Cathedral.
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