How early Armenian Christians repurposed the ancient scripts of the Iron Age
This lecture by Brown University professor Felipe Rojas Silva explores how people manipulate physical traces of the past. Discover how early Armenian Christians deliberately reused Urartian cuneiform stelae around Lake Van during the first millennium AD.
In this presentation, Felipe Rojas Silva examines the intersection of colonial contact and religious conversion through the lens of material culture. He focuses on the region around Lake Van—encompassing parts of modern-scale eastern Turkey and Armenia—to investigate how Iron Age stelae bearing cuneiform and hieroglyphic inscriptions were repurposed by early Armenian Christians.
While scholars have noted these instances of reuse since the 19th century, Rojas provides a holistic interpretation by combining archaeological and literary sources. He frames these interactions as clashes of historical consciousness, identifying distinct trends in how Armenian populations engaged with the ancient scripts of their territories throughout the first millennium AD.
Source: Felipe Rojas Silva | Cuneiform and Cross: Early Armenian Reuse of Urartian Inscriptions
