A Lot of Culture is Concentrated in Armenian Cemeteries Around the Globe

• 04.28.2015, 01:34
•  Armenia,  No-politics

A  lot of culture is concentrated in Armenian cemeteries around the globe. Not  only the monuments, their styles and carvings carry rich cultural information but they also provide extensive genealogical data. They carry memories about thousands of genocide survivors, their descendants and relatives spread around the globe. While a lot of very rich Armenian grave yards were destroyed in western Armenia, Nakhijevan and elsewhere (e.g. Jugha cemetery, Khochavank cemetery and etc.).   Hush.am took the initiative of digitizing Armenian cemeteries records around the globe, the first cemeteries are already available online and include records for more than ½ million Armenians mainly in Armenia, Artsakh, Georgia, Russia, UK, Switzerland.

The founder of the Hush.am initiative Mihran Vardanyan comes from a family who miraculously escaped from Bitlis (Western Armenia) in 1914-1915 and he deeply believes that Armenians around the globe should preserve their cultural heritage, their language in order to understand their past and proudly represent true national values wherever they are.

 Hush.am has been initially funded by donations from several individuals and now accepts grave care and flower delivery orders in Armenia, thus providing jobs to people who would have no means of living otherwise. Moreover, by digitizing Armenian pantheons and the last resting places of famous Armenians Hush.am facilitates cultural development and tourism in Armenia, as more and more people get to visit famous burials in analogy with Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Below we list several interesting facts retrieved from Hush.am database.

Top 10 most frequent Armenian names.

 Some of the oldest cemetery records are Mkrtum Hovnatanyan (1765-1845) from Tbilisi Pantheon, and in Armenia Hovakimyants Ter Karapet Avetisi (see photo below) born in 1780 and passed away in 1870 at the age of 90.