bellthecat

See what I mean. Thoth's masturbation zone, accompanied by his make-out music.

No, that was the middle of the 13th century.

No, they first settled there in second half of the 11th century. And they made raids there in the middle of the 11th century, (or perhaps a decade or two earlier, depending on who exactly king Senekerim was so scared of that he ceded his kingdom to the Greeks to escape from - but that was Armenia, not Anatolia).

What's so bad about calling someone "tiger", or am I missing something? But, almost nobody here is addressed by their proper name.

There is nothing at all left of Shirakavan, even less than there is of Dvin. "Pussimistic" - good one Arpa!!

Sorry What does the terrorist smilie actually stand for anyway, all dressed up like someone out creeping about the bushes at night, (oops, now that will give you bad dreams )

I remember reading an end of the 19th century description of Van that listed its various exports at that time (most which went to Persia). One of the exports were cats! It's ironic in a way that those "frazzled furry cats" managed to survive their owners. They must have done it on their own, since I doubt that the Kurds kept pets in the 1920s and 30s. Maybe that's why Van cats are described as being very self confident and hardy.

I am not offering criticism. If I thought that there was anything positive to be gained by going through some of ArmenianHighlanders posting's then I would give criticism - but so far they are not worth that expenditure of time.

And another example: Globe and Mail, Canada Sept 15 2004 Chechens live in fear of reprisals Anti-Caucasian discrimination hits new high in wake of Beslan, MARK MacKINNON reports By MARK MacKINNON MOSCOW -- The day after the siege ended at Beslan's Middle School No. 1, terror came to the Khadayev home outside Moscow. Asya Khadayeva, 43, first spotted the car with the dark windows as she left for work at about 7:30 a.m. The car followed slowly as she and her daughter walked to the bus stop, and she was relieved when the bus picked them up and their pursuers didn't follow. An ethnic Chechen, she had been worried about revenge attacks on her family following the tragedy in Beslan. What she didn't know is that the men in the car were waiting for her to leave. After the bus pulled away, about 30 men burst through her home's doors and windows. Some wore masks and security-service uniforms, others carried grenades and automatic weapons. Her three teenaged children, who were still in the house, were forced to lie facedown on the floor with blankets over their heads. A gun was pressed against her 15-year-old son Magomed's skull. Her five-year-old daughter Amina was dragged from under her bed and forced to kneel beside her siblings at gunpoint while the home was searched. "She was screaming, 'Don't shoot me and don't kill my brothers,' " said Ms. Khadayeva, who moved to Moscow with her family four years ago to escape the war in Chechnya. "They wouldn't even let her older brothers comfort her." The children's father, Ramzan Khadayev, said the men identified themselves as members of various Russian security services, including the Federal Security Bureau. They were at the house for several hours, Ms. Khadayeva said. Some of the officers later drove to the food market where both parents and Ms. Khadayeva's brother work, and questioned all three. "One officer told us, 'You should leave [Moscow], it's not your home,' " she said. "I told them, 'Okay, give me back my apartment, which your soldiers destroyed, and the property that was stolen from me and I'll leave tomorrow,' " Ms. Khadayeva said. "They said that wasn't their problem. They told us we are Chechens so we are terrorists." Chechens have been persecuted and feared in Russia since the 19th century, when the armies of Czar Alexander II first tried to subdue the fierce people who live along the north end of the Caucasus mountain range. But the discrimination has hit new heights in recent years as dozens of acts of terrorism across Russia have been blamed on Chechens. The hatred grew again after the hostage-taking at Beslan, where more than 350 people were killed. Yesterday, Russian prosecutors charged a Chechen man identified as Nurpashi Kulayev in the deadly hostage-taking, the Interfax news agency reported. With a fresh wave of anti-Caucasian xenophobia sweeping the country, many Chechens say they now rarely leave their homes, fearful of even their neighbours. In Moscow, police have arrested dozens of Chechens in the past few days, including a group of 20 men yesterday who were renovating schools in the region. They were released later in the day. Last week, in the Ural mountain city of Yekaterinburg, gangs of youths armed with clubs, chains and Molotov cocktails attacked cafés owned by Armenians and Azeris, killing one person and hospitalizing two others. Human-rights activists say the police are among the worst offenders when it comes to anti-Caucasian racism. "They have orders from the authorities to check every Caucasian person, man or a woman. They treat every Caucasian as a potential terrorist," said Yuri Tabak of the Moscow Human Rights Bureau. The situation for Chechens and other Caucasians living in Moscow has become so dangerous that some say they've stopped going outside unless it's absolutely necessary. Fatima Dudayeva fled the ruins of Grozny to join her sister in Moscow a month ago, hoping to find work and "have some fun" in the big city after almost a decade of constant war. But her arrival coincided with a string of suicide bombings carried out by young Chechen women -- two on passenger planes and another outside a Moscow metro station. Denied registration papers that would allow her to look for work or rent a place of her own, she stays with her cousin in a small apartment in the city and says she's gone further than the corner store only once in the past two weeks. During that single trip out, Ms. Dudayeva was stopped by a policeman who asked her to prove she wasn't wearing a suicide belt. She had to pay him a 500-ruble bribe (about $25) to avoid being taken into custody. "They look for a Chechen trace in everything that goes wrong," the dark-eyed 26-year-old said. "The next time something happens in Moscow, the next terror act, it will be better to go back to Chechnya, despite the war there, and stay for a while until things calm down here."

No! No!! NO!!! Not this sad, stupid thread resurrected again. Do we really need yet another masturbation-zone for Thoth to indulge in.

The Fate of Iraq's Christians by Eden Naby Progressivetrail.org 13 sept 04 Just after celebration of the Festival of the Cross (Aida d-Sliwa) on Friday, 10 September, the village of Baghdeda, located southeast of Mosul, on the Nineveh Plains, in the Ninawa Governorate, came under mortar attack. Thus far a complete tally of the dead and injured in this village of 30,000 Christians has not been transmitted abroad. We know that the Sheeto family lost 13-year-old Mark Louis Sheeto and that his brother and sister were critically injured. It is unusual for information from Christian villages to filter outside the area currently under military and political pressure from the Kurdish Democratic Party. Kurds are barring Western journalists from entering villages like Dayrabun ("Monastary of the Bishop") which are not in any danger zone, but are being denied resettlement by their Christian inhabitants (reported by Thiry August, a Belgian who tried to visit the Faysh Khabour area this summer). The KDP is determined to expand its control as far to the west and south as possible into areas now inhabited by ChaldoAssyrians. Under the Transitional Administrative Law, so favorable to Kurds, the objects of Western sympathy and funds, any territory in the three provinces adjoining Dohuk, Arbil and Sulaymaniya (Ninawa, Tamim [Kirkuk] and Diyala) that Kurds can show they controlled on March 19, 2003 (prior to the invasion), may become part of the Kurdish controlled region in northern Iraq (TAL, Article 53A). This provision allows Kurds to create "facts on the ground" in the Mosul and Kirkuk areas in particular, at the expense of unarmed ethnic and religious minorities - to wit - the Christians of Iraq, the Yezidis, the Shabat, and the Turkomens. The advantages of controlling Kirkuk are well known. But the Mosul area, now the scene of fierce attacks on Christians and Turkomens, are less well recognized. - The Nineveh Plains hold Iraq's largest and most fertile agricultural fields (barley, wheat and legumes). The ChaldoAssyrians had been farming these for millennia until the steady pressure of Kurdish population growth combined with Baathist village destruction forced many of them to be displaced. There is considerable evidence that Kurdish pastoralists have had a difficult time becoming productive farmers. (ASSYRIAN STAR, Spring 2004, "Helwa, the Forgotten Tragedy") - The Nineveh Plains, through which passes the upper Tigris River and its tributaries, holds the main water source for central and south Iraq. Control of places like Faysh Khabour (to where thousands of Christian villagers are not being allowed to return [NYT Sept. 12, 2004 "Assyrians in Syria"]) lies at the juncture of both the Tigris as it enters Iraq from Turkey, and where the oil pipeline from the Kirkuk fields enters Turkey on its way to Ceyhan. The KDP, and its strategic allies, are grabbing control of Faysh Khabour and its environs, at the expense of the area's indigenous Christian inhabitants. - The possibility of gas fields on the Nineveh Plains makes control of this region triply attractive for the Kurds. Barzani has already threatened war with regard to Kirkuk (http://nahrain.com/d/news/04/09/10/nhr0910f.html). [it is suspicious] that that the methodical killing of Turkomens and ChaldoAssyrian leaders by "unknown" assailants stands to profit the KDP, whether this organization acts as a Sunni Muslim force or a secular Kurdish one. The attack on Baghdeda, also known as Qaraqosh, marks the long and largely ignored attacks on Iraq's Christians who, with the exception of some 10,000 Armenians, descendents of refugees from the atrocities of WWI, form the one million or more indigenous Christian population of Iraq. The term "Assyrian" by which this community has been known historically (always called so by their Armenian neighbors) includes several church communities of which the largest is the Chaldean Catholic. Also included are two branches of the Church of the East, and members of the Orthodox and Catholic Syrian churches, together with small Protestant and Seventh Day Adventist congregations. Both the Baathists (in Iraq and in Syria) and the Kurds have attempted to divide this community along denominational lines for easier control. But at their own conference of Chaldeans, Syriacs and Assyrians, convened in Baghdad 22-24 October 2003, the unified, albeit artificial term, ChaldoAssyrian, was adopted to forestall Kurdish poliltical manipulation, which nonetheless continues. This term appears in the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) signed on 8 March 2004 by the Governing Council. "Assyrian," dropped from Iraqi census since 1977 as punishment for opposition to the Baath regime, is widely used in the diaspora. But TAL recognition of this community marks a historic first in Iraqi law. The ChaldoAssyrians form the world's last and largest compact community of Aramaic (Syriac) speakers, the oldest continuously written and spoken language of the Middle East, and after Chinese, the second oldest continuously written and spoken language of the world. This now endangered language will become extinct if the ChaldoAssyrians are forced into mass exodus from Iraq, a prospect activated by their inability to maintain a foothold, a safe haven, in northern Iraq. A combination of Kurdish chauvinism and fundamentalist terrorism (both Arab and Kurdish) has already driven large numbers, probably thousands, of ChaldoAssyrians out of the country. As Patrick Cockburn has reported recently with regard to the Turkomens, the US military is apparently being manipulated by the KDP in the attacks on Shiite Turkomens at Tel Afar, also in the path of KDP expansion (http://news.independent.co.uk/world/). Blind sympathy for Kurds is allowing the US to become complicit in the ethnic displacement of Christians as well as Turkomens. Specifically in the Christian case, the community is regularly denied funds for refugee resettlement and village reconstruction while Kurdish villagers settle on former Christian lands with US and international funding. The early evening mortar attack on the homes of Christians in Baghdeda comes in the wake of a bloody forty days for this community, highlighted by the 1 August simultaneous bombing of five churches, one in Mosul and the others in Baghdad. While it has been impossible to determine the instigators of violence against Christians in Basra and Baghdad, and no doubt some of the Baghdad kidnapping for ransom is the work of criminal gangs possibly allied to the insurgency, the upsurge in attacks on Christians in the north, on the Nineveh Plains especially, is widely believed to be the work of KDP agents. Kurdish attacks on Christians has a long history, stretching well before WWI and the Hamidiya units of Kurdish irregulars that were largely responsible for the Assyrian genocide in southeastern Turkey and northwest Iran. The current attacks appear to be targeted at Christians in the north of Iraq, on the Nineveh Plains, and the villages to which those fleeing Basra and Baghdad are hoping to return. These internally displaced persons (IDPs), as well as the refugees stranded in Jordan and Syria, need both resettlement funds and security from Kurdish attacks and pressure. Yet the community is currently only supported by funds collected from the diaspora - and in some cases - when the diaspora funds a project, such as electrical generators, Kurdish thugs blow them up. In other instances, the KDP has blockaded Assyrian villages and prevented delivery of food supplies. ( http://www.aina.org/releases/1999/blockade.htm). Over the past few days alone, a sharply increased pattern of attack on Christians in the north has emerged as gathered from websites (http://www.bethsuryoyo.com/). What is happening in the more isolated villages remaining in Berwari, Aqra and Zakho may be even more deadly. 1. Mosul, Nineveh Province. 8 Sept. Video of real or enacted beheading distributed in Mosul to frighten Assyrians into leaving the area. "According to residents of Mosul, a group of Islamic terrorists has distributed in the past few days a video CD containing the beheading of two Assyrian Christians from Mosul. To date, the identity of the Assyrian victims is still unknown. Many residents have seen the video and claimed that it was very disturbing." 2. Mosul, Nineveh Province. 8 Sept. Assassination of three women, wounding of another and driver, as they traveled back to home village of Bartilla from Mosul. "On Tuesday August 31, 2004, Tara Majeed Betros Al-Hadaya, Taghrid Abdul-Massih Ishaq Betros and her sister Hala Abdul-Massih Ishaq Betros, were murdered in Mosul. The three Assyrian victims were returning to their homes in Bartilla, from a hospital in Mosul, where they worked, when their car was attacked by a group of terrorists who opened heavy fire at the car. The attack took place in the section between the Television area and the Kokajli area on the main road between Mosul and Bartilla. Also injured in the attack was another Assyrian woman, 'Amera Nouh Sha'ana who was also going home to Bartilla and the Assyrian driver, Naji Betros Ishaq. The three female victims were in their twenties. The residents of Bartilla are followers of the Syriac Orthodox Church, and the town is the birthplace of His Holiness Mor Ignatius Yacoub III, the late Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church." 3. Mosul, Nineveh Province. 9 Sept. Two Assyrian brothers, both community leaders, are riddled with bullets. Community believes goal of intensified attacks is to terrorize them and force the indigenous people to leave, and thus stop disputing Kurdish claims to Mosul, now being vociferously put forward in Kurdish media. "On Thursday September 2, 2004, Khaled Boulos (1972-2004) and his brother Hani Boulos (1976-2004), who are known as the sons of Hasina, were murdered in Mosul in the Al-Sa'a district. The deceased Assyrian brothers were known by many Assyrians for their honorable stands in Mosul in defending and assisting other Assyrians. According to eyewitnesses, on September 2, at noon (local Mosul time) in the Al-Mayasa (Al-Sa'a) district, a car carrying a group of armed terrorists pulled by Khaled and Hani Boulos, where the armed terrorists came out of the car and began firing heavily at the two Assyrians, killing them instantly. The two Assyrian brothers worked for a foreign company in Mosul, which the terrorists used as an excuse to murder them. However, the peaceful Assyrians of Mosul believe that the main goal of the intensified attacks on Assyrian Christians is to terrorize the indigenous Assyrians and force them to leave their homeland." 4. Mosul, Nineveh Province. 9 Sept. Assyrian political activist run over by car without plates as terrorists target Christians. Suspected terrorists are considered part of Kurdish plan to empty the region of Assyrians who dispute Kurdish claim to entire north. "On Wednesday September 1, 2004, during a terrorist attack on the building of the Governorate of Ninawa, Nisan Sliyo Shmoel was injured in his shoulder. Mr. Shmoel was taken immediately to the hospital where he was treated. After treatment, he was released from the hospital that same day, but the terrorists were awaiting his release and targeted him with an unmarked car (not carrying plate numbers), which they used to drive him over in front of the hospital entrance. Mr. Shmoel died immediately. Martyr Nisan Sliyo Shmoel was 43 years old. He is survived by his wife and 6 children (5 daughters and a son). The oldest of his children is 15 years old. Shortly after the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime, Nisan Sliyo Shmoel joined the Assyrian Patriotic Party (Gaba Atranaya Aturaya) to serve his Assyrian people. Mr. Shmoel was also a private in the newly formed Iraqi Army, which he had joined to serve his country."

It must have been this Magomed Tolboyev person that was the victim. Russian culture in action: Racist Assaults on the Rise After Terror Attacks By Anatoly Medetsky The Moscow Times Monday, September 13, 2004. Page 1. Staff Writer The recent terrorist attacks caused a spike in assaults on dark-skinned people from the Caucasus region and elsewhere last week, human rights activists said. Decorated former test pilot Magomed Tolboyev said Friday that he was assaulted by police officers during a document check near the Vykhino metro station. The officers said he had a Chechen-sounding last name, he said. In Yekaterinburg, gangs of young people attacked three Armenian and Azeri cafes, killing one person and injuring two, police said. Authorities have blamed the downing of two planes, the explosion near a Moscow metro station and the Beslan school siege on Chechen, Ingush and Arab fighters and suicide bombers. Dark-skinned people have in recent years increasingly been the targets of racially motivated attacks -- attacks that police usually write off as hooliganism. But the increase over the past week can only be attributed to the terror attacks, said Alexander Brod, director of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights. "Anti-Caucasian sentiments always get stronger after terrorist acts," Brod said. "People blame everyone in the Caucasus. This is the stereotype in people's minds. "Unfortunately, the authorities don't do a good job explaining that terrorism doesn't have a nationality," he said. Tolboyev, an assistant to State Duma Deputy Viktor Semyonov and a native of Dagestan, said two police sergeants stopped him to check his papers Thursday near Vykhino in Moscow's southern outskirts. He showed them his Duma ID and told them that he had been decorated with the title Hero of Russia, which he received for his participation in the Soviet space shuttle program, Interfax reported. The officers took the ID. When Tolboyev attempted to get it back, one of the officers went behind him, put his arm around his neck and began to strangle him, Tolboyev said. "My throat still aches, and I haven't been able to swallow for two days," he said, Interfax reported. Asked by telephone Friday why the officers had confronted him, Tolboyev said, "I don't know. Maybe they didn't like something about me." Moscow police chief Vladimir Pronin confirmed Sunday that police had stopped Tolboyev to check his documents. But he said a police investigation found that Tolboyev had been treated properly considering his "disobedience, aggression and abuse." He did not elaborate. Tolboyev said he was stopped as he was returning from the North Ossetian administration's office in Moscow, where he had expressed his condolences over the school siege. He said he finally got back his ID. In the Urals, a group of young people broke furniture in the Azeri Kaspy cafe in Yekaterinburg on Thursday night and then hurled in Molotov cocktails, according to news reports. A 52-year-old relative of the cafe's owner died in the fire, which gutted the building. That same night, about 20 young people armed with sticks and chains broke into an Armenian cafe, Oasis Plus, and beat the Armenian staff, wounding four. Two were hospitalized with skull and brain injuries, news reports said. Attackers tossed Molotov cocktails in another Armenian cafe, the Shartash, on Thursday night, but the staff was able to douse the flames before anyone was injured. In a fourth attack Thursday, unidentified men set fire to the U Davida, an Armenian cafe in Verkhnyaya Pyshma, a village near Yekaterinburg, police said. Cafe staff quickly put out the fire. Yekaterinburg police said they have detained two suspects but dismissed any possible racial motive in the attacks, calling them hooliganism. "They are in no way related to Beslan or any ethnic issues," said Valery Gorelykh, spokesman for the Sverdlovsk regional police, which includes the city of Yekaterinburg. Mikhail Matevosyan, deputy chairman of the regional Armenian association Ani-Armenia, said he has no doubt that the cafe attacks were connected to the recent terrorist attacks. Whenever Chechen rebels score a victory over federal troops in Chechnya or commit terrorist attacks, groups of young people begin targeting Caucasus natives, he said. "They probably think, 'You hit us there, and we'll hit you here,'" he said by telephone from Yekaterinburg. He ruled out a Armenian-Azeri turf war as a possible reason for the attacks. Elsewhere, four young men with close-cropped hair beat to death a North Korean citizen in Vladivostok the weekend after the school siege ended, Noviye Izvestia reported. Unidentified assailants painted a swastika on the gate of a Jewish cemetery in Irkutsk on the night of Sept. 6-7, the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights said.

You are appearing more ludicrous with each post you make. That's MY version of YOUR history here so far. Your extraordinarily backward, insular, almost medieval, outlook on history is about 500 years out of date. But if you really want believe in fantasy rather than the truth, then at least keep that fantasy to yourself.

Now, 200 billion dollars later, over 1,000 deaths (plus a minimum of 12,000 Iraqis), and counting.

History advances. Mythology resists.

What about Kars? And Shirakavan? Maybe also Geben?? (Well, it was where the last king of Cilician Armenia was besieged for several months before his capture by the Mamkuks, so it probably does count as a capital.)

To use the "todays active topics" function, we now have to be logged in. Same for the search function. This didn't use to be the case. Can it be switched back so that anyone can search, and see the active topics, without first logging in? A few days ago I was mentioning to someone about a particular thread from several moths ago, and said that they could easily find it by searching for it. But he couldn't, because he was not a member and did not want to go through all the bother of registering just to see one thread.

Who wants to be touched by someone with calloused hands?

His three reasons have no importance whatsoever, and are yet another indication that politicians are now so out of touch with reality, and so engrossed with their power-fantasies, and so lacking in care for the voters that they allegedly represent, that only firing a bullet through each of their brains is going to cure the world of them.

Found it! GENOA HOSTS MYSTERIOUS MANDYLION PANEL by Elisabetta Povoledo ANSA English Media Service June 14, 2004 Genoa (ANSA) - Genoa, June 14 - More than a thousand years ago, in 945, a triptych with the sacred image of Christ and the two panels that served as doors to cover it were split up. The central panel of the miraculous imprint of Christ s own face, or Mandylion as the Byzantines called it, was taken from Edessa to Constantinople and then on to Genoa, where it has been venerated for more than 600 years in the church of San Bartolomeo degli Armeni. The two doors ended up in the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai. This year, panels and image have been reunited in the Ligurian capital as the centerpiece of an intriguing exhibit that runs to July 18 at the city s Diocesan Museum: "Mandylion, concerning the Holy Face, from Byzantium to Genoa." "It was my idea to write the mayor of Genoa about having the icon and the panels meet," said Gerhard Wolf, director of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, and the curator of the exhibit. The aim was to stimulate new discussion about the icon, which has been virtually ignored by scholarship save for a book written 30 years ago by Colette Dufour Bozzo of the University of Genoa, who co-curated the show. The bishop of the Egyptian monastery and his entourage will visit the exhibit in July, and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, of the Genoese diocese, will return the courtesy call. "We didn t just put objects together but persons, and it s right that we worked to do this," Wolf said. "As art historians we can't change the world, but we can contribute to more cross-cultural dialogue." In keeping with the theme of the "voyage," which is the leitmotif of the celebrations of Genoa as one of Europe s two capitals of culture in 2004 (they other is Lille, France), the exhibit follows the Mediterranean journey of the Mandylion from one Middle Eastern capital to a Western one. "In this sense the show is very topical because it touches on issues like multicultural conflicts," said Wolf. It also underscores the common roots of eastern and western Christianity. In addition the show brazenly deconstructs, literally, one of the most venerated icons in Christendom, separating the various elements of the image (frame, fabrics, gold screen) to the delight of Byzantine scholars who flocked to Genoa last month for a rare chance to see the figure in a state of undress and probe its parts. A three-day conference was held for the occasion bringing together top-notch scholars who spoke on matters arcane and otherwise. The Mandylion is an impression of the face of Christ. The story goes that King Abgar of Edessa, who ruled the ancient titular archiepiscopal see in what is now Sanli Urfa in South Turkey in the first decades of the first millenium, was ill and sent a letter to Christ asking him to come to the city. Christ said he couldn t come but sent back a painted portrait that Jesus miraculously created by washing His face and drying it with a towel, on which the likeness appeared. The icon, of which another copy is in the Vatican, is known as the Mandylion by the Byzantine word used to describe this particular image. It was venerated in Edessa - where it was a palladio, or protective image, placed at the gates to the city - for centuries before it was transferred to Constantinople in 944, where again it was adopted as a protective image for the imperial city and placed in the royal chapel. It came to Genoa in the late 14th century as a gift from the Byzantine Emperor John V Palaeologus to the Captain Leonardo Montaldo, a crusader who later became a Genoese Doge. So the story of the Mandylion is closely tied to the contacts that the crusaders had with Genoa. Shortly before his death, Montaldo bequeathed the image to the Monastery of St. Bartholomew of the Armenians, where it has been housed and venerated since then. Until the recent show at the Museum, and with the exception of the 2000 Jubilee, the relic had only been shown to the public for eight days a year, in early June. The two tempera doors that have been brought here from St. Catherine s on Mount Sinai date from 945 and show King Abgar in the likeness of Constantine VII Porphirogenitus, the emperor of Byzantium, receiving the Mandylion. Dating and corresponding size make it a good bet that the so-called Abgar Diptych may have originally been one with the Mandylion, or so some scholars believe. The story of the Mandylion and its voyage is illustrated in the small gold relief panels on the frame that surrounds it. One image, showing a wild-eyed demon being freed from a sailor s body in the presence of the sacred icon traveling with a bishop, has been chosen for the exhibit s logo. Professor Mario Milazzo of the University of Milan carried out carbon testing on the image. The results suggested that the image dates from 1250-1280. "We used to think it was very ancient, now there s some doubt, clearly from the esthetic point of view it seems to have been over painted," Wolf said. The wood frame was found to date to around 100 years later. There s bound to be friction between faith and science, and the church hasn t always enthusiastically embraced requests for scientific testing on images or religious relics like the Turin shroud (which, incidentally was believed to also have been in Edessa before it came to Constantinople and then to France and Italy). But Wolf said that the Barnabite Fathers who care for the icon had been open-minded both about letting the image be tested, and then letting it go on show in the Diocesan Museum. "They were a little skeptical at first and were worried that the image could be desecrated, but they came to understand that the exhibit was more like a trip that offered space for reflection in which to emerge oneself in the icon," said Wolf. But the idea was not just to carry out scientific tests on the icon. "It wasn t a question of determining what style it had been painted in but rather to probe the theological, anthropological, historical and politics aspects of the image," Wolf said, a task that was amply carried out in the impressive catalogue by Skira. Testing done on the cloth that was glued to the back of the icon in 1370-80, depicting a winged animal within two wheels, a reference to the Imperial cosmology of kings, was found to date to the 10th century when the silk industry was booming in Islam. Scholars posit that this cloth may have come directly from Edessa. "We joke that this is more authentic than the Mandylion," Wolf said during a tour of the exhibit. The exhibit also shows the precious objects found inside the case with the Sacro Volto, like reliquaries from Byzantium and famous 11th and 12thcentury illuminated manuscripts that illustrate the history and legend of the image. Other works have iconographic ties with the Mandylion. The exhibit also includes a sculpted copy of the Mandylion that stood atop of the city gates in the 16th century (there were nine gates in all). "By putting the face atop the gates, Genoa became the new Edessa," Wolf said.

This icon of Abgar's, which still survives, was the subject of investigation recently. Unfortunately I don't think I kept the news message (will have a look for it). But they found that the frame of it was far older than the actual image of Christ, which only dated from the medieval period.

Thank you Arpa. The editorial is forgiven. It is from an Armenian monthly periodical called GEGHARUEST, volume 1, 1908. It was on ebay. Steve

Yes? Whatzitsay, Arpa, Nairi, anyone, (P.S. - sorry about the quality of the scan, it's all I have. It's from a book published in Tblisi in 1908.) http://mysite.freeserve.com/virtualani/ani_poem.jpg

Was this the same on-its-knees army that four months later had marched all the way to Baku and captured it? Sardarabat was a victorious battle, not a victorious war - let's not forget that the treaty that Armenia signed with Turkey shortly after the battle resulted in an even smaller republic that that of 1919. Most of the Turkish army was still intact (and with the capacity to get re-inforcements - something Armenia could not get) but busy elsewhere. If Turkey's defeat of Greece was not a military victory than what was it? Though in some sence you are correct, since if the allies had helped Greece then maybe they would not have been defeated. So it was allied inactivity that saved Turkey. But since Greece had advanced against allied advice, why should that help have been expected.

I am taking about now, and for the next generation or two. Obviously I am not talking about 100 years from now because nobody can predict that far ahead. Nor am I talking about 12 years ago. I was in Igdir in the summer of 1993, and saw with my own eyes the Turkish military build up on the border. Steve