The Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts was formed on the basis of manuscripts (more than 23,000) created and stored in various educational centers of Armenia and the world. The scriptorium of the Holy See of Echmiadzin, which functioned from early Middle Ages, is the predecessor of Matenadaran. It was nationalized in December, 1920. Matenadaran’s collection was moved from Echmiadzin to Yerevan in 1939 and stored at the Alexander Miasnikyan State Library. On March 3, 1959, the Council of Ministers of the Armenian SSR voted in support of the establishment of a repository to maintain and house the manuscripts in a new building, which became one of the biggest Institutes of Scientific Research in RA. Attached to it departments such as scientific preservation of manuscripts, their cataloguing, their research, or the special departments for publication and translation of manuscripts were established.
Involved researchers:
Dr. Gor Yeranyan is a researcher at the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts (the ‘Matenadaran’). He graduated from Yerevan State University and received his PhD from the Institute of History at the National Academy of Sciences for his thesis on the ethnic composition of medieval Armenia. His current research at the Matenadaran in Yerevan focuses on Kurdish manuscripts written in Armenian letters. His academic interests include the study of the Armenian-Kurdish and Armenian-Turkish ethnic and cultural spheres. His most recent monograph is entitled “The average number of Armenian family members according to the 15th century colophons in Armenian manuscripts (by the example of Vaspurakan)”, Yerevan, 2015.
Greta Nikoghosyan MA is a translator and a PhD student at The Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts (Matenadaran). Her specialties are the research of Armenian scientific minds as translators of European values in the 18th/19th centuries and the civilizational role of cultural contacts of the time. Her research interests are connected to the Black Sea region regarding Mekhitarists’ Congregation and their translations from French into Armenian in 18-19 centuries. Nikoghosyan’s objective is correspondingly to explore these literary processes in comparative manner and to define the cultural environment one could see there in the 18th century. She graduated from YSU’s Faculty of Romance and Germanic Philology in 2007 (bachelor’s degree), then she studied in Sweden, at the European Studies department of Malmo University. In 2015 Nikoghosyan graduated from the Yerevan Brusov State University of Languages and Social Sciences (Master in Specialized Translation and Project Management Technologies).
KEAC-BSR 