Artemid

Some 12km south west of the city of Van is the district (İlçesi) of Edremit. The name Edremit is derived from the old name of the district's main settlement, Artemid.

Artemid (sometimes rendered as Artamet, Atramit, Ardamed, or Adremid) was one of the best-known settlements in the Van region, partly because of the quality and quantity of its apple orchards but mostly on account of its ancient name and the legends attached to it. It was claimed that the Armenian king Artashes I (2nd century BC) had founded the village as a summer resort for Satenik, his wife. The remains of an ancient structure existed on the summit of a cliff overlooking Artemid and was said by locals to be the fortress and residence of the ancient Armenian kings. The famous Urartian-period Shamiram canal runs through the village and important cuneiform inscriptions have been found nearby.

In 1836, Artemid was described as a large Armenian village of about 350 houses. In the 1820s the explorer Schulz said the village was divided into two districts: the lower half, located beside the lake, was Muslim, the upper half was Armenian. Kevorkian writes that Artemid prior to the Genocide had around 720 Armenians in 130 households, and there were also 2400 Kurds in around 420 households. [see note 1]

Artemid village is now called Sarmansuyu (at some point Sarmansuyu was officially called "Gumusdere", but this name seems to be no longer used).

"Kiz Kilisesi"

In the summer of 2007, Turkish news reports appeared announcing the restoration of an Armenian church in Sarmansuyu, near Van. [see note 2] The reports named the church the "Kiz Kilisesi", (the "Girl(s) Church"). The actual identification of this church is uncertain - the name probably has nothing directly to do with the church but comes from a nearby rocky outcrop that locals call Kiz Taşi or Kiz Kalesi.

Thierry has written that all of the churches of Edremit have been destroyed, with the exception of the Convent of the Mother of God whose apse was seen by him in 1955. [see note 3] He places it between the villages of Zivistan and Edremit. However, it is doubtful if the restored church is this building – more than just its apse survives, and it is located within Edremit, on a cliff edge overlooking the lower sections of the settlement.

The restored church is small, with a rectangular exterior. It is constructed mostly from limestone fieldstones. The entrance to the church was on the west façade - however, almost the entire west wall had fallen before the restoration.

There are a number of khatchkar gravestones reused in its walls, in particular in a row on its south wall. Most of them have simple designs and appear to be from a late period, but there is a single, worn, "proper" khatchkar mounted sideways at the eastern end of the south façade.

The interior is barrel-vaulted and has a single-nave ending in a semicircular apse. The usual chambers on each side of the apse are absent in this church. Pairs of blind arches resting on thick pilasters form deeply inset niches in the north and south interior walls. There is a tiny window in the apse and another in the reconstructed part of the west wall, above the doorway. The interior is now plastered and whitewashed.

The plainness and simplicity of its architecture, together with the crudity of the gravestones reused in its walls, point to a late date for this church's construction - perhaps as late as the 17th century.

The restoration

The firm Kaatalkaya undertook the restoration of the church. It is the same company responsible for the restoration of the church on Aghtamar island. The restoration officially started in October 2006 and ended in September 2007. The cost of the restoration was 185,000 euros, with the funding coming from the European Union's Eastern Anatolian Development Program.

The restoration, like that of Aghtamar, is extremely severe and contradicts accepted practices. The church now appears as a newly built bunker-like structure, devoid of visual attractiveness and scrubbed-clean of any historical patina.

The church has been given an entirely new entrance, made of machine-cut limestone without any attempt at giving it a hand finish. I don't know if the design of the new entrance was based on archaeological or documentary evidence – however, the opening seems rather wide, the lintel far too thin, and the arch would normally be pointed for this period. The church has been given a flat roof, whereas old photographs show it to have had a pitched roof. [see the large version of photograph 1] The creation of the flat roof has meant that the north and south walls have been raised beyond their original height and the gable lost, fundamentally altering the building's original appearance.

When the church was visited the entrance was locked and admittance to the interior was not possible. Some sort of museum-like exhibit is planned for the interior, housed in display cases set into the niches in the north and south walls. However, given the small size of the interior and the remoteness of the building, this activity seems unlikely to succeed and, in the long-term, the church is all but certain to be permanently locked.

The purpose of the restoration should be examined in the light of the Aghtamar church's restoration, whose purpose was almost entirely political. The financing of the restoration by EU funds also indicates its political function. It has been restored in order to silence critics claiming that the Aghtamar restoration was a one-off. The actual quality of the restoration and the historical value of the monument are unimportant in this context. There are Armenian monuments in the Van region far more deserving of those 185,000 euros than this tiny, architecturally unimportant church. Moreover, the restoration has destroyed the value of the church as a memorial object. Nothing is left to touch the emotions of the visitor; it can no longer be interacted with. To make history safe, uncontroversial, on-message, and fully under state-control, put it in a museum or turn it into a museum. Thoughts along these lines are lost on those aforementioned critics – they do not have any answers, they have not even begun to properly formulate the questions.

The cemetery site

On the slopes of a hillside overlooking Edremit are the remains of a once-extensive Armenian graveyard. The hillside also contains the remains of walls that may date from the Urartian period. The eastern end of the hillside has been disrupted by the cutting of a road up to apartment-blocks on a hilltop overlooking Edremit. The western end of the hillside has entirely vanished, having been quarried away. There are two disused lime kilns located below the western end of the site that were operating into the 1970s.

The Turkish archaeologist Oktay Belli identified this hillside site as part of the Urartian town of "Alniunu" and described it as consisting of two zones, a housing area and a stone-working area. A cuneiform inscription on a section of Urartian-period walls at Van castle states "Sarduri, son of Lutipri, speaks thus: I brought these stones from the city of Alniunu and built this wall".

On my two visits to the site I saw nothing that pointed to ancient stone working having gone on there, but there are walls and that appear to be Urartian-like. Within the "stone-working area" Belli identified several blocks with rectangular cavities he said were designed to hold Urartian steles. However, this so-called stone-working area is actually part of the cemetery site, and the stone blocks with cavities are the in-situ bases of now vanished Armenian khatchkar monuments.

The blocks with the cavities are arranged in a long row that runs in a north-south direction (i.e. the khatchkars would all have faced west, the normal orientation for khatchkars). There are at least twelve cavities: most of the blocks contain only one cavity, though one block has three. The row runs along the highest point of the graveyard site and any khatchkars would have been visible from a great distance. At the northern end of the row is a khatchkar base that measures 1.25m by 0.95m, with a cavity that is 0.43m by 0.40m. In front of it is a grave covered by a limestone slab that is 2.55 metres long by 1.25 metres wide. [see photographs 13 and 14] West of this grave is a level area of uncertain extent that is paved with flat, irregularly shaped stones. There is a rectangular, similarly paved area immediately to the north of this grave, but at a marginally lower level. It extends out to the west and may possibly have been a ceremonial approach to the site.

Some surviving gravestones are located in areas to the west and south of the row of khatchkar bases. These stones are probably from a later period than the row of khatchkars. Many of them are now toppled and their graves dug up by treasure hunters. Most of these gravestones bear nothing more than a plain cross. However, two stones have more ornate designs – one is now lying partially face down, the other is lying face upright. The design of the latter [see photograph 17] consists of a cross within a decorated hexagonal frame, with an inscription in Armenian running along the inside of the top four sides of the hexagon. In each corner of the cross is a roundel-like motif, two of them containing eternity symbols.

A photograph taken in 1973, found on Wikipedia, appears to depict the same graveyard. It shows a gravestone that no longer exists on the site but which has stylistic similarities to the above-described stone. [see photograph 18]

NOTES:
1. Raymond H. Kévorkian and Paul B. Paboujian, Les Arméniens dans l'Empire Ottoman à la veille du Génocide, p.535, Paris, 1992. The other population data is taken from H. F. B. Lynch, Armenia, Travels and Studies, volume 2, p.121, London, 1901.
2. See for example dakp.gov.tr/haber_yorumla.php?haber_id=52&kat_id=1 and gayanpo.org/?lng=en&id=13.
3. Jean-Michel Thierry, Monuments arméniens du Vaspurakan, p.157, Paris, 1989.

1.  Artemid in a photograph taken sometime before 1915


2.  A similar view, but this time taken in 2007


3.  The "Kiz Kilisesi" church seen from the north-east


4.  The west and south facades of the restored church


5.  What the church looked like before the restoration


6.  The rebuilt west facade and the new entrance


7.  Gravestones reused in the south wall of the church


8.  The restored interior, looking along the nave towards the apse, from a photograph found on a Turkish website


9.  A signpost giving information about the restoration


10.  A section of the probable Urartian-period walls on the hillside above the church and overlooking Edremit


11.  The row of blocks that were khatchkar bases


12.  A block containing three slots


13.  The grave at the northern end of the row of blocks


14.   A different view of the same grave


15.  Some of the surviving gravestones in the cemetery


16.  Most of the stones only have a simple cross


17.  One of the two stones with a more elaborate design


18.  This photograph, taken in 1973, seems to depict the same graveyard - the mountain in the distance is Varag