Antiquities of the Tapan Museum in the Hermitage

On 15 February 2020, an exhibition of antiquities from the Tapan Museum opens in the Winter Palace, in the halls of the culture and art of Armenia.

The exhibition has been organized by the State Hermitage, the Armenian museum Tapan in Moscow and the Russian and Novo-Nakhichevan Diocese of the Holy Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church.

According to the scriptures, after the flood it was Mount Ararat that became the mooring place for Noah’s Ark. Since that time, the biblical mountain has served as a reminder the God Himself chose those lands for the regeneration of humanity and thus Armenia is considered the cradle of civilizations.

The very name of the museum is symbolic – tapan means “ark” in Armenian. Ark in this sense is a sort of repository of history and culture, both of Armenia and of the whole of humanity’s cultural heritage. The museum’s unique collection has come to contain exhibits from the earliest period of the genesis of Armenian statehood onwards, demonstrating all the richness of the nation’s history.

The display laid out in the State Hermitage’s hall of the culture and art of Armenia presents unique historical artefacts of the pre-Christian period and priceless Christian relics from the main display of the Tapan Museum.

These include skillfully made bronze knives and a clay vessel from Urartu, handwritten and printed books – demonstrating the high development of literature and the printer’s art– an 18th-century collection of church canticles printed in Amsterdam, an illuminated Gospel in Armenian and other works.

The art of the blossoming in the late Middle Ages and Modern Era is represented by church plate used during services and objects of everyday use testifying to the creative imagination and high professionalism of the Armenian craftspeople who created them.

The foremost items in the exhibition include one of the most sacred objects for the whole Christian world – a Cross containing a particle of the True Cross, and reliquaries holding relics of Saint Gregory the Illuminator (or Enlightener) and Saint Blaise of Sebaste, as well as ancient artefacts made of bronze – a ritual belt and daggers.

The exhibition “Antiquities of the Tapan Museum in the Hermitage” is being held in the halls of the permanent display of the culture and art of Armenia, which spans a period from the 1st to the 19th century. The main materials date from the Middle Ages and include metalwork from Cilician Armenia in the 1100s and 1200s, fragments of architectural decoration from the 11th–15th centuries and also a khachkar or ”cross-stone”. A special place is occupied by examples of mediaeval monumental painting and a collection of book miniatures.

The exhibition curator is Yury Alexandrovich Piatnitsky, senior researcher in the Byzantium and Middle East Sector of the State Hermitage’s Department of the East.