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HISTORY The Armenia ns once had a temple literature of their own, which was destroyed in the 4th and 5th centuries by the Christian clergy, so thoroughly that barely twenty lines of it survive in the history of Moses Of Khoren (Chorene). Their Christian literature begins about 400 with the invention of the Armenian Alphabet by Mesrop . This was probably an older alphabet to which Mesrop merely added vowels; but, in order to pacify the Greek ecclesiastics and the emperor Theodosius The Less , the Armenians concocted a story that it had been divinely revealed. Once their alphabet was perfected, Sahak , the Catholicos Of Armenia , formed a school of translators who were sent to Edessa , Athens , Constantinople , Alexandria , Antioch , Caesarea in Cappadocia , and elsewhere, to procure codices both in Syriac and Greek and translate them. From Syriac were made the first version of the New Testament , the version of Eusebius ' History and his Life of Constantine (unless this be from the original Greek), the homilies of Aphraates , the Acts of Gurias and Samuna , the works of Ephrem Syrus (partly published in four volumes by the Mechitharists of Venice ). 19TH CENTURY During the 19th Century , writer Mikael Nalbandian worked to create an Armenian literary identity. Nalbandian's poem "Song of the Italian Girl" may have been the inspiration for the Armenian national anthem, Mer Hayrenik . REFERENCES |
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