Friday May 16, 2014
We headed back to Yerevan, stopping at a recently discovered Jewish Cemetery. A local bishop looking for a source of water came across some stones with lettering that was later identified as Hebrew. Scholars from Hebrew University dated the 70 odd tombstones to a period straddling the 13th and 14th centuries. It is not known where this community came from or where the went. There is no documentary evidence of a Jewish community there. Apparently, they were there about 100 years. The symbols accompanying the Hebrew and Aramaic inscriptions suggest some connection with the ruling class from Georgia.
Lunch was the usual salads and grilled pork, perhaps the best meat we have had.
Our last stop was the caravanserai at the top of the pass linking Armenia with its eastern panhandle and the Ngoro Karabakh region, about 7500 feet up. It served to shelter merchants and their animals using this part of the Silk Route:
Our group departure dinner was hastily arranged. We shared the dining room at the Ararat Restaurant with a group of 20 Russian military personnel. They were very large and determined to get drunk. Public drunkenness is very rude in Armenia. The band stopped playing and walked away.
May 17. The group departs, but we remain in Yerevan a couple of days. We are exhausted. We revisited the manuscript museum (incorporated in earlier report) and slept.
No lunch. Dinner at Yerevan Tavern: soupy dumplings, tolma, "province chicken stew".
May 18. We went to the National Art Gallery which shares its building with the History Museum. The quality of the art was not enough to keep Leslie, who returned to the hotel for more sleep. Bruce continued with the paintings and went on to the historic maps and ethnology sections.
Bruce then walked across town to the Cascade, a public park with a lot of opportunities for people watching.
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