The study of sources includes the knowledge of various disciplines: hagiography, archaeology, paleography, ethnography, numismatics, epigraphy, sigillography, heraldry, chronology, diplomacy, metrology, historical geography and others.
Each phenomenon of human civilization requires its sphere of study in the context of a historical discipline and each historical discipline is based on the study of corresponding sources.
Very often only the study of sources gives the opportunity to precise the time, place, milieu, beginning and development of a phenomenon, its author, if there is one, and many other issues, which allow therefore the scientific study of the history of human civilization evolution.
Paleographic documents are subdivided into five main groups: material, ethnographical, linguistic, oral and written documents. Without defining one by one each of these groups, we shall note that some groups of sources may appear separately as well as together. Thus, beginning from the most ancient time one can find on the objects of material culture, i.e. architecture, utensils, tools, weapons, coins, interesting inscriptions and, on the contrary, inscriptions give on their turn valuable information about the development of material culture of a region, arts, crafts and commercial relations existing among different countries, as any written source – clay tablets, polished basalt or granite engraved with inscriptions, papyrus or parchment – is itself, besides its contents, an object of material culture of the region or the country under study.
Historical Armenia, justly called a “museum in the open air”, is one of the rare centers of human civilization where the discovered archaeological material may date back to the tertiary or quaternary eras. The Armenian territory gives evidence about all the phases of human society, beginning with the Paleolithic until the Ages of Copper, Bronze and Iron. Many researches prove that Armenia is one of the human civilization centers where metallurgy knew its first high point.
Nevertheless, unlike many other nations, Armenians, deprived of the nine tenth of their territory as a result of historical circumstances, have no possibility to study the majority of the cultural values created centuries long in Armenia and by Armenians. One must note that in the 19th century, when a general interest arose towards the study and evaluation of historical traces, Armenian people were subject to incessant deportations and massacres which finally ended with the first genocide of the 20th century.
Unfortunately, we must observe that a considerable part of the abovementioned values, being in foreign and often hostile countries, was destructed, falsified or attributed to other civilizations with no connection with the people having created them. In such conditions, it is quite natural that the study and publication of Armenian written sources, especially manuscripts and archive documents have a primordial importance.
It is well known that Armenian manuscripts have shared the tragic faith of the nation and that thousands and thousands of them were destroyed during the Arabic, Turkish and Mongol invasions. It suffices to cite some of the most dramatic examples.
In 1170, seizing the fortress of Balaberd, where the most valuables relics of the Siunik monasteries and especially the manuscripts of the Tathev monastery were then kept, Seljuk Turks destroyed more than 10,000 manuscripts, evidence of which is given by Stepanos Orbelian, Patriarch of Siunik and one of the most remarkable representatives of Armenian historiography.
In 1292, the conquest of the Patriarchal See of Hromkla by the Egyptian Mameluks had fatal consequences, as they destroyed not only thousands of manuscripts, but also innumerable and inestimable pieces of art accumulated during centuries in the Armenian Catholicossate.
The faith of Armenian manuscripts got worse and worse after the loss of sovereignty and disappearance of Armenian feudal houses; it reached the edge of tragic during the genocide perpetrated in the first decades of the 20th century by the Ottoman Turkey against Western Armenians.
Nevertheless, thanks to the veneration of Armenians towards books, the saved part of these manuscripts is of an inestimable value for the study of sources and of the political, cultural and social history of Armenia and many other nations.
