Matenadaran

Stand at the foot of the steps for a moment and look up. Grey basalt rises in front of you, heavy and smooth, almost like a cliff that someone has carved into a building. The stone is cool to the touch, even on a warm Yerevan afternoon. Behind you, the long straight line of Mashtots Avenue runs down into the city. Ahead, at the top of the hill, sits a house built for one purpose: to keep old books alive.

The name Matenadaran is an old Armenian word. It means, quite simply, a repository of manuscripts. Today the full name is the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts. It is a museum, yes, but it is also a working research institute. Scholars study here. Restorers repair fragile pages in quiet rooms you will never see. When you walk inside, you are entering a library that is still in use, not a place frozen in glass.

Before you climb, look at the large seated figure in front of the building. This is Mesrop Mashtots, the monk and scholar who created the Armenian alphabet in the early fifth century. Beside him stands his student, Koryun, who later wrote his teacher's life story. Behind the pair, carved into the rock face, you can see letters of that alphabet. Most visitors photograph the statue and walk on. Pause instead, and look at the shapes of the letters themselves.

Why does an alphabet deserve a monument? For Armenians, the answer is close to the heart. Before Mashtots, Armenian was spoken but not written in its own script. With his letters, the Bible could be translated, histories could be recorded, and a small nation could keep its own voice between larger empires. Many Armenians will tell you that the alphabet helped the culture survive centuries of invasion. This building is, in a sense, the alphabet's home.

Now look along the facade. A row of statues stands in niches near the entrance. These figures are great medieval Armenian thinkers. Among them are the historian Movses Khorenatsi, the scientist Anania Shirakatsi, the lawgiver Mkhitar Gosh, and the manuscript painter Toros Roslin. Each one represents a field of knowledge preserved in the collection inside: history, mathematics, law, art. Together they form a kind of stone table of contents for the library behind them.

The building itself is younger than it looks. It was completed in the late 1950s, during the Soviet period, and designed to feel ancient and solid. The architect drew on medieval Armenian church and monastery forms. Notice the deep, narrow windows and the thick walls. They are not only decoration. A building for fragile parchment needs steady temperature and protection from strong light, and the heavy stone helps with both.

Here is the first surprise. The collection is far older than the building, and much of it came from Etchmiadzin, the spiritual centre of the Armenian Church, a short drive west of Yerevan. Monks there had gathered manuscripts for centuries. In the early twentieth century, the collection was nationalised and later moved to this hill. Today the archive holds many thousands of manuscripts and fragments. UNESCO has recognised it in its Memory of the World register, a list of the world's most important documents.

Inside, the exhibition halls are dim and quiet. The light is low on purpose. Your eyes will need a few seconds to adjust. Then the colours appear. Gold leaf catches the light. Deep blues and bright reds glow from pages that are hundreds of years old. The air is still, and voices drop almost to a whisper. Even groups of schoolchildren tend to slow down here.

Those reds have a story of their own. Medieval Armenian painters often used a crimson dye made from a tiny insect that lives on the roots of grasses in the Ararat valley. Locals call it Armenian cochineal. Thousands of insects were needed for a small amount of pigment. When you see a red border or a red capital letter, you may be looking at that dye. It has kept its colour for centuries, while many other pigments have faded.

Look for the giant book. One of the most famous items here is the Homily of Mush, a collection of sermons so large and heavy that one person can barely lift it. During the violence of 1915, according to the story told here, two women found the manuscript and could not carry it together. They split it into two halves. Both halves eventually reached safety, and the book was reunited. A few pages are still missing.

The second surprise is at the other end of the scale. The collection also includes tiny manuscripts, small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. Travellers and pilgrims carried books like these on long journeys. The writing inside is so small that a scribe must have worked with extraordinary patience. Do not only read the labels. Lean close to the glass, and look at the steady lines of letters. Each one was written by hand.

The collection is not only Armenian, and not only religious. You will find works on medicine, astronomy, philosophy, and geography. Some manuscripts preserve Greek texts whose originals are lost, kept alive only in Armenian translation. There are also Arabic, Persian, and other languages on the shelves. In recent years, a new wing was added behind the old building, giving more space for storage, research, and exhibitions. The old house and the new one now work together.

When you step back outside, the light will feel very bright. Take a moment at the top of the steps. Look down the avenue, toward the cafes, the traffic, and the trees. Somewhere behind you, a restorer may be lifting a page that was written a thousand years ago. And on the street signs below, the same letters that Mashtots designed are still in daily use. The alphabet did not stay in the museum. It walked down the hill with everyone.