Yerevan City Day
Description:
The inhabitants of the city from time immemorial were engaged in agriculture and cattle breeding. But the findings of samples of material culture - iron tools, swords, daggers, bronze minted belts, beads of black crystal and gold jewelry - indicate that they were no less experienced in blacksmithing and metallurgy and very skilled in various crafts. And long before the birth of Christ, our ancestors, Proto-Yerevan, used the products of the oldest melting pots of Metsamor.
Crafts have developed in Yerevan for centuries. Experienced tanners, blacksmiths, carpenters, weavers, dyers and jewelers were united in craft shops - amkarstva, which had their own coats of arms and played a very significant role in the life of the city. Yerevan was one of the centers of Armenian art. Many famous scientists and chroniclers, poets and scriptors, printers and mathematicians were born and worked here, whose names are crowned with bright deeds.
The history of centuries past convinces us that the Yerevan who sowed bread and raised cattle, smelted iron and decorated manuscripts, was also a brave warrior who spared no life for the sake of freedom and independence of the country.
There were many black and bright days in Yerevan, and our chroniclers and everyday writers were guided, as it seems, by the age-old Armenian wisdom: “Without mentioning evil, you will not wait for good,” for the pages of parchment manuscripts are full of descriptions of the disasters that struck the heads of Yerevan citizens.
Located on the crossroads of trade routes, since time immemorial called “Yerevan road”, the city has always been an attractive target for foreign invaders. How only the robber hordes did not have to resist Yerevan! Mongol noyons and sultans of the Turks Kara Koyunlu, Arab Vostikans and Seljuk emirs, Persian Sardars and Russian governors came and went in his memory.
And the underground forces showed their black power against Yerevan, as if there were few atrocities and savageries of foreign conquerors. Dozens and hundreds of earthquakes had to endure Yerevan for its centuries-old history. And on June 4, 1679, a terrible earthquake began on the Ararat plain, when during the month almost every day tremors were repeated. Many villages and villages, churches and monasteries turned into ruins. The Garnia temple collapsed. To the ground destroyed the elements and Yerevan. And then locusts came from the Persian sides, and famine seized the Armenian by the throat.
If we can judge the times of foundation and the ancient period of Yerevan mainly by rock inscriptions, excavation materials and legends, then written sources are added to them in the restoration of the appearance of medieval Yerevan. It is primarily about Armenian chroniclers.
The appearance of medieval Yerevan was captured and visited in the XVI-XVIII centuries by foreign travelers.
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... In September-October 1968, the Armenian people celebrated with great pomp and solemnity the 2750th anniversary of their city of Yerevan. Having experienced many hardships in this world and seen few joys, our people established and made a tradition of celebrating another historical date - the birthday of Yerevan-Erebuni.
At the same time, Paruyr Sevak’s poem “Erebuni – Yerevan” was born, which became the capital’s anthem (music by Edgar Hovhannisyan). The name of this song and began to call the city holiday, which was first celebrated in 1968, when the city was 2750 years old. Until 1988, it was celebrated annually, but after the country's independence, this tradition resumed only in 1998.
Since 2005, the holiday has been called “Yerevan City Day”.
Yerevan.ru
