a lesson in Armenian history

Armenia has an even longer history of Christianity than Georgia, having officially adopted the religion in the year 301.  & like Georgia, it has a number of very impressive old churches and monasteries to visit.  All have a strange mixture of devout locals praying and lighting candles, and tourists with their cameras, many of the latter trying to sneak a photo of that religious devotion without intruding on it.

The priests were particularly enticing, with their big beards and black hoods looking very sinister and therefore very photogenic.  But again, you don't want to intrude on their priestly work given that you are visiting their domain.  So I was very grateful when this guy in Tatev Monastery looked down and I could quickly raise my camera for a shot.


Sadly, what Armenia is probably most famous for is the genocide, although with most people actually knowing nothing about it other than that it was Turkey's fault.  So it was very interesting to visit the genocide museum, with its narrative of how the genocide unfolded as well as some moving photos of some of the victims.

So for those who don't know, it was a genocide of somewhere between 700,000 and 1.5 million Armenians, over a period from 1915 to 1923, by the Turks (Western Armenia at that time being a part of the Ottoman Empire) - although persecution and some killing of Armenians had started long before.  But what is now defined by many as a genocide started with the killing of Armenian males, partly through forced labour (the justification being that they were allied with the Russians), and was then followed by the deportation of women, children and old people into the Syrian desert, where they were forcibly marched through the desert without food and water.  Apparently (all this coming from the information in the museum) there was widespread rape of the women, and some sold into sex slavery in the markets of Syria.

It was an informative and well-ordered museum.  I'm not sure that you can describe a trip to a genocide museum as 'enjoyable', but certainly it was interesting and it filled a gap in my knowledge.  What I also found interesting was how the Armenian women looked in those days, with their facial tattoos - something that I didn't see even on the old women who live in Armenia today, and certainly I've never seen women looking like this in the formerly Armenian parts of present-day Turkey.  It's sad how all the distinctive markings and dress of different peoples are being lost.