By Nell Porter Brown
Harvard Magazine
January 2022
In 1207 an elderly scribe in the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia completed the Garabed Gospel. Although blinded by the 11-year undertaking, he completed the 250 inked, goat-skin pages at a monastery near what is now southern Turkey. For the next 700 years, the manuscript was passed down through that family lineage of priests, serving as a sacred object, according to the Armenian Museum of America where the volume is now on display. “If one became sick, one would ask the family for ‘the blessing of the book’ to cure their disease,” a plaque explains.
It is the museum’s oldest book, says Executive Director Jason Sohigian, and survived the looting and destruction of other texts, art, cultural objects, and whole villages. The museum’s collection of more than 25,000 objects elucidates some 3,000 years of Armenian history and culture, from the early days of Christianity to the contemporary global diaspora.
More contemporary are the museum’s famous portraits by Yousuf Karsh, underground works from the Soviet era and, surprisingly, a handful of oil paintings by the American pathologist, and pioneering right-to-die with dignity proponent, Jack Kevorkian, whose mother escaped the Genocide.
“Many of the objects in our collection and on display are survivors of history,” says Sohigian. “Armenians have inhabited those lands for thousands of years, and our cultural heritage has been under threat especially in recent centuries. Our museum is unique in that it preserves and displays many of these artifacts that tell the story of Armenian resilience, creativity, culture, and survival.”
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