gobekli tepe - genesis of the gods (52 page)
Naturally, I wanted to know more about Yeghrdut and its monks who, I felt sure, played heavily on their illustrious heritage and location on the edge of Eden itself. It was incredible to think that this monastery had thrived in the foothills of the Eastern Taurus Mountains just 170 miles (274 kilometers) away from Göbekli Tepe, a true site of the genesis of civilization.
Yet what was Yeghrdut’s connection with Göbekli Tepe, and, more pressingly, where was this monastery? It did not appear on any detailed maps of Taron, and unless its location was found, there could be no absolute confirmation that this was the place of my dream.
36
THE RED CHURCH
I
needed to know where exactly the Yeghrdut monastery was located, so I attempted to use the geographic coordinates provided by Wikipedia to find the site. Yet wherever engineer Rodney Hale and I looked on Google Earth, nothing could be seen (the coordinates were later found to be wrong). All I knew was that Yeghrdut lay somewhere in the vicinity of a village called Kızılağaç (or Kızılhaç, pronounced
kiz-a-large
), a part Turkish, part Kurdish name meaning “red cross,” a sure sign that a Christian edifice lay nearby.
The break came at the end of March 2012, when I learned from my Kurdish contact, Hakan Dalkus, who had managed to contact the person running the Kızılağaç Facebook page, that in nearby mountains were Armenian ruins called Dera Sor, Kurdish for “Red Church.” It took further three-way correspondence to pin down the geographical location of Dera Sor. Then on Friday, April 6, 2012, appropriately Good Friday in the Western calendar, I saw for the first time on Google Earth an enormous rectilinear structure on a forested mountain ledge 2.25 miles (3.6 kilometers) south-southeast of Kızılağaç and 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) west-southwest of the village of Suluca (located at the coordinates of 38°45'1.37"N, 41°20'24.69"E).
The ruins appeared to consist of an outer shell around 70 yards (64 meters) in length and just over 40 yards (37 meters) in width. From what I could make out from the shadows cast by the remaining sections of the wall, they remained fairly high in places. The foundation of a second structure in the southeast quadrant of the perimeter wall was also just visible, its axis skewed slightly more toward north (see figure 36.1).
Figure 36.1. Google Earth image of Dera Sor, located on the northern slopes of the Eastern Taurus Mountains, overlooking the Mush Plain. Does it mark the site of the Garden of Eden? Courtesy of DigitalGlobe 2013.
Immediately outside Dera Sor’s exterior walls were traces of other rectilinear features, showing that this had to have been a monastery of some considerable size, situated in the northern foothills of the Eastern Taurus Mountains, overlooking the plain of Mush and Murad Şu or Eastern Euphrates River. Looking at the site, I got a strong sense of seclusion, isolation, and deliberate remoteness. Unlike monasteries such as Surb Karapet and Surb Arakelots elsewhere in the Mush district, this one cannot have received many visitors, unless it was for a very good reason indeed.
Although I was able to confirm that the Google Earth ruins were those of Dera Sor, the Red Church, I had no way of knowing whether they belonged to the Yeghrdut monastery. Further correspondence between my Kurdish contact and the man from Kızılağaç drew a complete blank. No one seemed to know anything about Yeghrdut or its history.
I tried synching the geographical position of the Red Church with some old maps of Armenia, one of which had the word “Arkhavank,” meaning “King’s Monastery” (probably a reference to Jesus as King of the Jews), in the approximate same position, while another actually had a small diamond marking the position of Yeghrdut. They correlated pretty well, suggesting that Dera Sor, Arkhavank, and Yeghrdut were all one and the same.
STRANGE DECREE
Something else pretty curious was then discovered about Yeghrdut by a researcher colleague named Janet Morris. On my behalf, she had been studying and, where necessary, translating accounts of European travelers who had crossed the plain of Mush over the past four hundred years. One such person, she found, was the French geographer Vital-Casimir Cuinet (1833–1896), who was sent to eastern Turkey to survey and count the Ottoman Armenian population. He made a very curious statement following a visit to the Yeghrdut monastery:
On the opposite side of the plain, at the summit of a picturesque hill, covered with a thick wood and whose view extends a long way over an agreeable country, is found a convent under the decollation of St John the Baptist. Its construction as that of Mar-Johanna goes back to high antiquity. Amongst other precious titles, this convent holds a firman of the fourth Caliph Rachedi, Ali, son-in-law and first cousin of Mohammed, who accorded certain autonomous privileges falling into disuse over the course of time.
1
That Ali (AD 601–661), the son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, seen as the first imam in the Shia Muslim faith, signed a firman, or religious decree, on behalf of Yeghrdut begs the question of what might have been behind this decision. Clearly, Ali cannot have spent his time issuing and signing religious decrees for every Christian edifice the Arab armies came across as they conquered large parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe, so why was this monastery singled out for special attention?
In the year 15 AH (
anno Hegirae;
i.e., after the foundation point of the Islamic faith, thus AD 637), the Commander of the Faithful, Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab, issued a written decree acknowledging the due rights of all non-Muslim sects, including Christians. This was done to protect churches and monasteries in general. Yet the one issued for Yeghrdut seems entirely different and suggests that, like Saint Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai, which was issued a firman by Muhammad himself, it was believed to contain important holy relics. Somebody wanted whatever it contained preserved and not destroyed by the first marauders who came along looking for the spoils of battle. It hinted that Yeghrdut’s claim to house holy relics belonging to Jesus, Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist, and Joseph of Arimathea was known at the time of the Arab-Muslim invasion of Armenia in the seventh century. (Much later I discovered a second reference to Yeghrdut’s firman, which states that it was signed not just by Ali, but also by the Prophet Muhammad himself.
2
If nothing else, it tells us that Yeghrdut once held a religious status equal to that of Saint Catherine’s monastery in the Sinai, which makes it a highly important place indeed.)
ONLINE APPEAL
I was getting frustrated. I really needed to know whether Dera Sor, the Red Church, was Yeghrdut, the Eden monastery of my dream, so I posted a message on an online forum called AniOnline that addresses matters relating to Armenian architecture in the Lake Van area. I asked for confirmation of the monastery’s exact geographical coordinates and anything else anyone might come up with, citing exactly what I knew already.
3
As I waited for a response, my Kurdish correspondent, Hakan, returned with more information on Dera Sor from the Facebook contact in Kızılağaç:
It is easy to reach the Red Church from Suluca and Kızılağaç. Walls and two arches stand. . . . They say Red Church was a monastery. Monks, priests and sisters etc. were educated there. It was a very rich monastery. Farmers of the surrounding lands were giving 50 percent of their crops to the monastery. No other info.
4
A few days later, Raffi Kojian, the mediator of the AniOnline forum, posted a few lines on the Yeghrdut monastery paraphrased from a Russian-Armenian dictionary of Armenian architecture:
From the monastery the following were visible: Aradzani and Meghraget [both rivers], S. Karapet Monastery, a few villages [and mountains, viz.], Byurakn [Bingöl], Nemrut [Dağ], Gurgur, Sipan [Suphan Dağ], and in the further distance, the gray top of Massis [Mount Ararat]. That last one seems like a stretch, but that’s what it says.
5
Rodney Hale used Google Earth to check whether each mountain peak—Bingöl Dağ, Nemrut Dağ, Suphan Dağ, and Agri Dağ (Mount Ararat or Mount Massis)—was indeed visible from Dera Sor. Sure enough, if one were to stand on the mountain ridge immediately above the monastery ruins, all the peaks mentioned would have been visible on a particularly fine day.
Two days later, Raffi Kojian again posted on his forum. He said he now had in his possession a lengthy entry on Yeghrdut taken from a Russian-Armenian encyclopedia on the churches and monasteries of the Taron Province, published in 1953. He had uploaded the opening lines to the Yeghrdut webpage on Armeniapedia, the online database for Armenian church architecture, which were now available to read.
6
Clicking the link, I found the following:
Located four to five hours west of Mush, in front of S. Garabed/Karapet Monastery, in “Yegherits” region (
yergir
), on Sim Mountain (
Sim ler
) or on Black Mountain (
Sev sar
), on the south side of Yeprad/Yeprat River [i.e., the Murad Şu or Eastern Euphrates]. The location of the monastery is unmatched. On four sides are cold springs and forest. The air is pure, but cold. The view is indescribable. Almost all of Mush’s plain is flat like a floor, its green worked fields open up before your eyes.
7
This place sounded incredible, situated at a near perfect location to perpetuate the belief that it was founded in some quiet corner of Eden itself. I later discovered that four springs surrounded the monastery, one on each side, beyond which lay forests containing oak, hazel, and cedar trees.
8
HOLY TREE AND SACRED SPRING
The contact at Kızılağaç was shown this entry on Yeghrdut and confirmed that this was indeed the topographical description of Dera Sor, adding that one spring in particular flowed from beneath the shade of an ancient walnut tree. Indeed, there was no other tree quite like it in the whole of Mush Province (walnut trees are considered sacred in Kurdish tradition). People came here from all over the district to drink the waters of the spring in the belief that it could cure ailments and maladies, and rejuvenate the body by as much as twenty years.
9
This was, it seemed, the latest incarnation of the “evergreen tree” beneath which Thaddeus supposedly deposited the various holy relics in the first century AD.
Clearly this was an important holy shrine and one that was venerated extensively in the past by Christians and Muslim Kurds alike. It almost seemed as if, with the presence at Yeghrdut of a piece of the Tree of Life, together with the bottle that contained the sacred Myron, or holy anointing oil, the monks might have seen this evergreen tree and sacred spring as earthly representations of the Tree of Life with its spring that watered the Garden of Eden. Indeed, the stream that takes its rise from the spring beneath the monastery’s holy tree, which bears the name Kilise Şu, “Church Stream,” flows into the Eastern Euphrates, making it a source of one of the four rivers of Paradise.
DERA SOR IS YEGHRDUT!
That same day, Thursday, April 12, 2012, a member of the AniOnline forum posted the geographical coordinates of Yeghrdut, which were those of Dera Sor, the Red Church. The two were the same. The person in question said he had walked the hills from Mush to the location and could confirm that it is identical to the topographical description of Yeghrdut. In response, Raffi, the mediator of the forum, added a Google Earth link to Yeghrdut’s entry on Armeniapedia, which now clicked through to the site of Dera Sor.
10
There could no longer be any doubt—Dera Sor was Yeghrdut, which for me now became the absolute site of the Eden monastery first glimpsed in dream almost exactly one year earlier. To say I was elated is an understatement, for it almost seemed as if something I had created in my mind had now taken root in reality. Yeghrdut was certainly real, and with its fragment of the Tree of Life, the bottle containing the holy Myron, the “evergreen tree” with its sacred spring, and, of course, its “indescribable” setting, it was everything one could hope for in a monastery located in Paradise itself. Yet still more research was required to truly understand the site’s greater importance to this gradually emerging picture.
SIM MOUNTAIN
Something in the opening lines of the Yeghrdut entry in the Russian-Armenian encyclopedia on churches and monasteries of the Taron Province then caught my attention. It was the statement regarding the monastery being located on Sim Mountain (
Sim ler
) or Black Mountain (
Sev sar
). The latter is a quite common name for hills and mountains in the region, usually under the Turkish word for black, which is
kara.
However, Sim Mountain needed further investigation, as it seemed somehow familiar. So I checked the history and topography of Taron and found something very interesting indeed.
