The leading Italian journal, Archaeological Viva, dedicated 14 pages to the Erebuni Fortress. The director of the Erebuni Historical and Archaeological Museum-Reserve, Mikayel Badalyan, spoke about this with Aravot Daily in an interview. He noted that the international recognition of their work and the museum is very important for the museum. He added that in this context, serious contacts have been established with partners from the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Museum of Fine Arts, universities in Austria, Hungary, and the United States, UCLA, and French and Italian specialists.
“We also began a very close cooperation with the world-famous Italian archaeologist, a professor at the University of Bologna, Pierfrancesco Callieri, who visited Armenia in the winter of 2020 prior to the outbreak of the pandemic. I delightfully invited him to Erebuni, where he got acquainted with the work being done by our team and was impressed. Then, we established regular contact with him. The professor was constantly following Erebuni.
Then, one day, he told us that there is a leading journal in Italy, Archaeological Viva, which presents archaeology in a popular scientific way in different parts of the world, and it mainly discusses Italian monuments. Professor Pierfrancesco Callieri said that after seeing our work, he wanted to see that be evaluated elsewhere, and since Erebuni is a very important site, it must be popularized. He contacted the editor of the journal. Then, we presented the type of article we wanted to have, and we listened to the proposals from the Italians.
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We worked with them very intensively for several months via email while working on the articles. We wrote the articles in English, and they were then translated into English. We sent them high-quality photos. The article was constantly being edited. Finally, they liked the article, and they even asked us to make it longer. As a result, we had a 14-page article in that journal about the Erebuni Historical and Archaeological Museum-Reserve, which I consider to be a major accomplishment. The article will be in the May-June edition of the journal,” Mikayel Badalyan said.
They began working together in December with the intention that the pandemic would start to subside by May, and Italian tourists would want to come to Yerevan after reading the article about Erebuni. “Thus, they began by learning more about our capital city and the ancient site of Erebuni. It was also important to me that the article was accompanied by two photos from our photographer Harutyun Stepanyan, who sacrificed his life during the second Artsakh War. The photos of Erebuni and Ararat had a special meaning because it seemed that Harutyun’s work survived in that way.”
According to the director of the museum, the article was very well-received in Italy. “Professor Pierfrancesco Callieri also wrote about the Erebuni Museum in a special column in the journal. He described his impressions of the Erebuni Museum. He is one of the archeologists whose opinion is valued in the world because he has a great reputation. I consider this to not only be the result of our good work and a major accomplishment for Erebuni, but also for our whole country.”
Gohar Hakobyan
