RIP by the Waters of the Mighty River Eghegis

YEREVAN—The souls of Elia, Baba, Michael, Esther, and Tsvi and the three-score other Jewish denizens of the ancient city of the dead, by the waters of a mighty river, in a remote region of Armenia, can now rest in peace, safe in the knowledge that their dark night is over, and that the world has finally recognized and remembered them.

For close to seven centuries, the cemetery had lain abandoned and forgotten, its dead unlamented, the weeds running rampant over the site at Eghegis, in Armenia’s once highly prosperous Vayotz Dzor district.

No more.

The cemetery, thought to be the most impressive in the Jewish diaspora, has now been renovated and rededicated in a formal ceremony to which leading figures from the Republic of Armenia, the state of Israel, and friendly nations had been invited.

Among the dignitaries who made the trip to Eghegis to honor the graves at Vayotz Dzor were the governor Vardges Matevosyan, Israeli ambassador Shemi Tzur, the Primate of the See of Siwnik Archbishop Abraham Mkrtchyan, Armenia’s consul in Jerusalem Tzolag Momjian, Armenologist Michael Stone, representatives of the Ministry of Culture, U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovich, Israel’s chief archaeologist David Amit, and Georgian Ambassador Revaz Gachelidze.

The ceremonies included a symposium where leading scholars from Armenia’s Madenataran and Israel’s Academy of Sciences and Hebrew and Ben Gurion Universities spoke about the historical perspective of the Jewish presence in the Armenian homeland.

And to the sound of prayers and psalms wafting into the cemetery’s somnolent air, the sounds of the lapping waters of the river, and the chirps of the birds in the trees, beat a mournful accompaniment.

The 13th-century site was first discovered by Archbishop Mkrtchyan some 10 years ago. Realizing the importance of his find, he promptly got in touch with his old friend in Jerusalem, Armenologist Michael Stone, a man who has been instrumental in discovering and promoting several Armenian sites and artifacts.

Two expeditions followed, and the mystery of the Hebrew inscriptions and of the scattered tombstones were soon unveiled. The expeditions were sponsored by the Ben-Tzvi Institute for the Study of Oriental Jewish Communities, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Charles and Agnes Kazarian Eternal Fund, the Foundation for Biblical Archaeology, the Armenian Research Center at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, the David Jesselson Foundation, and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Stone lauded the Armenian Ministry of Culture for sparing no effort in moving to renovate the cemetery.

“We are particularly impressed by the initiative shown by the Armenian authorities, both of the church and the government, in conserving and restoring this Jewish monument. It bodes well for the future relations between Jews and Israel and Armenia and the Armenian Church,” Stone said.

According to Stone, the cemetery is a unique monument of oriental Jewry. It is an extremely important find for Jewish history, he said, because the “very presence of Jews in Armenia was scarcely known in the Middle Ages,” and the find has heralded the recovery of a lost Jewish community.

The expeditions located 64 complete tombstones and fragments of others. The oldest was dated 1266 CE, and the latest 1346/7.

He noted that the tombstones bear Hebrew and Aramaic inscriptions “that are connected both by their language and expressions, and by their knowledge of Biblical verses and rabbinic traditions, to the Jewish tradition as it is familiar from elsewhere.”

Some of those inscriptions are “unique in Jewish funerary practice because of their long, literary texts. This is particularly true of the tombstones of children and youths, boys and girls, where the parents’ grief is expressed in moving terms,” Stone said.

“Your dead [shall live], corpses shall rise, awake and sing for joy, O dwellers in the dust! For [your dew is] a radiant dew,” reads the epitaph on the tomb of a boy.

Prophetic words, for to those dwellers in the dust, the dew of Eghegis will now forever remain radiant.