Faith and Identity in Nicosia: Four Relics from Yerevan, a Gospel Brought Home and a New Khachkar

In this article (7)

• Eight voices under the arcade
• Four pieces from Yerevan
• The Gospel of Sourp Magar
• A khachkar, that afternoon
• What they told Araz
• What I understood
• The exhibition, in short

On Friday 9 October I filmed the opening of “Faith and Identity: Relics from the History Museum of Armenia” at the Byzantine Museum of the Archbishop Makarios III Foundation in Nicosia, with Araz Tavitian Kotchounian asking the questions. It is the first time the Yerevan museum has shown part of its collection in Cyprus, and this is, the previews say, the Byzantine Museum’s first loan exhibition from abroad since it reopened in March 2025. The Embassy of Armenia initiated the exhibition, and the Byzantine Museum organised it together with the History Museum of Armenia and our Prelature. It runs until 9 April 2027.

Eight voices under the arcade

Representatives of the Cypriot government and parliament, ambassadors, clergy and members of our community attended. Christos Koukliotis, Director General of the Archbishop Makarios III Foundation, welcomed us. Dr Ioannis Eliades, Director of the Byzantine Museum, spoke of two countries “with deep Christian traditions” and “common memories”. Dr Davit Poghosyan, Director of the History Museum of Armenia, explained why the objects had come here: beside the Byzantine Museum’s Christian and Armenian manuscripts, he said, they “enter into a new dialogue”, because they “are not only relics from Armenian history, they are also ambassadors of dialogue.”

Vartkes Mahdessian, who represents the Armenian religious group in the House of Representatives, called heritage “a bridge not only between generations, but also between peoples and nations”. Archbishop Gomidas Ohanian, Pontifical Vicar of our Prelature, said that Armenia’s faith “was never just a belief. It became the anchor of national survival.” Archbishop Georgios of New Justiniana and All Cyprus, speaking in Greek, called the Armenian people “a brother, a fellow traveller in history and in trials”.

Ambassador Inna Torgomyan said that the objects “are more than just silver, stone, ceramic, parchment, or ink”. Dr Clea Hadjistephanou Papaellina, Deputy Minister of Culture, opened the exhibition on behalf of the President of the Republic, reading his address in Greek. The address recalled that the lion of Armenia passed into the coat of arms of the Lusignan kings, and it said that the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide is “not simply a matter of historical justice, but also an honour to the Armenian people”.

Four pieces from Yerevan

Dr Poghosyan said that his museum holds more than four hundred thousand items, which is why choosing a few was “very, very hard”. The museum wanted faith tied to statehood, he told Araz, and so it chose three of the four pieces from two medieval capitals, Ani and Dvin, and from the Kingdom of Cilicia, whose king’s coin, he said, is “very close to Cyprus”.

The first is a bronze censer from the Gagkashen church in Ani, dating from the tenth to the eleventh century. In Ani, he said, the king “was holding the church”. The second is a silver half-tram of King Levon I of Cilicia, who reigned from 1198 to 1219. It shows the king enthroned on the front and a lion and a patriarchal cross on the back, and it bears the words “By the will of God”. The third is a glazed dish from Dvin, dating from the twelfth to the thirteenth century and painted with a long-legged bird. The fourth is a silver pectoral cross of the eighteenth century from the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Yerevan, a church that was destroyed in 1930. Many intellectuals tried to save that church, Dr Poghosyan said, and “they saved what was possible”.

The Gospel of Sourp Magar

At the end of the case lies the piece that is ours: a fourteenth-century Armenian Gospel lectionary from the Monastery of Saint Makarios, our Sourp Magar, which stands in the Pentadaktylos in the occupied north. The President’s address said that it was stolen by Turkish invaders and ended up in Munich. Its label, like the museum’s own catalogue, says that it came back from Munich in 2015, while the October press notice says 2013. It is kept here with our Prelature’s consent.

Parsy Zartarian, who chairs the Sourp Magar Monastery Renovation Committee and sits on the bicommunal Technical Committee on Cultural Heritage, told me that they cannot be sure what more was taken. The monastery, he said, had been emptied before 1974: in the hard years of the 1960s most of our people left its grounds, and no clergy lived there any more. One thing is missing, he said: an icon of the Virgin Mary, the one meant for the altar, whose whereabouts nobody knows.

Our Prelature added three silver-clad Gospels and an encyclical of a Catholicos of Cilicia. These pieces, Archbishop Ohanian told Araz, show how strongly our people were once bound to their church, “because the church has kept the nation”.

A khachkar, that afternoon

One gift stays for good: a khachkar of red stone with birds carved at the foot of its cross, donated, the plaque says, by the Armenian Prelature of Cyprus with the support of the Petrossian family. Archbishop Ohanian told Araz that he had had it made for this exhibition, from the heart, and that it had been set up that afternoon. It came as a surprise to Dr Poghosyan. For these six months the Archbishop wants every Armenian child to come, to “visit, see, be proud”.

What they told Araz

Anush Harutyunyan, Consul and First Secretary of the Embassy of Armenia, said that the Embassy, the museum and the Foundation will run cultural and educational programmes for six months, and that she hopes the pupils of our Nareg schools will come and feel proud. Mr Mahdessian said that he would gladly go with them. When Araz offered young volunteers, Leon Iagoubian of the organising team said: “We need young people very much.”

Ambassador Torgomyan told Araz that foreign diplomats had said there was much they had not known, for instance about the Kingdom of Cilicia.

What I understood

Four pieces of Armenia are here for six months, and beside them are a Gospel of ours, which was taken and has come back, and a stone from our Prelature, which will stay. If you are in Cyprus before the exhibition closes on 9 April 2027, go and see King Levon’s coin and the Sourp Magar Gospel, and take a child.

The film of the evening, with subtitles, is at the top of this page, and more of our films are on the Aypoupen channel.

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The exhibition, in short

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Thank you to Araz Tavitian Kotchounian for the questions, and to everyone who answered them.