JERUSALEM (AP) — A hundred years after housing dozens of children whose parents died in the Armenian Genocide, a nineteenth-century orphanage in Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter has reopened as a museum documenting the community’s rich history.
The Mardigian Museum exhibits Armenian culture and tells the story of the community’s centuries-old connection to the holy city. At the same time, it is a monument to approximately 1. 5 million Armenians killed by the Ottoman Turks around World War I, in what many scholars the first genocide of the twentieth century.
Turkey denies the deaths amount to genocide, saying the death toll has ballooned and the dead have fallen victim to civil war and unrest.
Director Tzoghig Karakashian said the museum is intended to serve as a “passport for other people to meet Armenians” and perceive its component of Jerusalem’s history.
The museum reopened in late 2022 after a renovation effort of more than five years. Before that, the construction, a space for pilgrim guests built in the 1850s, served as a monastery, an orphanage for young people who survived the genocide, a seminary and eventually a small museum and library.
Jerusalem is home to a network of around 6,000 Armenians, many of whom are descendants of others who fled the genocide. Many live in one of the main districts of the historic Old Town, a commonly enclosed complex next to the twelfth-century Armenian cathedral. of Santiago.
But Armenians’ connection to the holy city goes back centuries, from priests and pilgrims in the past Roman Empire to the Armenian queens of Crusader Jerusalem.
The centerpiece of the museum, which fills the sunny courtyard, is an exquisite fifth- or sixth-century mosaic adorned with exotic birds and vines discovered in 1894 on the grounds of a former Armenian monastery. It bears an inscription in Armenian committed to the “memorial and salvation of all Armenians whose names the Lord knows. “
For decades, the mosaic remained in a small museum near the Damascus Gate in the Old City. In 2019, the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Armenian Patriarchate undertook the arduous task of placing the mosaic on the ground and transporting it through the city to the newly renovated museum. .
From the painstakingly carved stone crosses known as “khachkars” to iconic painted tiles and priestly garments, the museum showcases Armenian art, while excelling at telling the Armenian story of survival.
“Surviving means not being seen,” said Arek Kahkedjian, an excursion consultant at the museum. “We survived without other people knowing what or who we are, and today we feel in a position to show you and teach you history and heritage, and to show you how we move forward and modernize over time.