The History of Sebeos

it did not include. European Armenologists studied the Armenian historian's work for the first time through Mihrdatyan’s publication.

2. History of Bishop Sebeos on Heraclius and the Beginning of the Newly Discovered History of Mkhitar Anetsi. Published by K[herob] P[atkanian]. St. Petersburg, 1879.

The second publication of the "History of Sebeos" belongs to K. Patkanian. The basis for this publication was Mihrdatyan’s edition and a manuscript from the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg, which had been copied in the 19th century. K. Patkanian calls this manuscript a "most recent copy" (Preface, p. A). This is the very same manuscript that was copied in 1850 and is currently kept in the manuscript collection of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad (for details, see below in the section regarding that manuscript).

In September 1878, Patkanian came to Etchmiadzin from St. Petersburg to compare the Petersburg copy with the manuscripts mentioned by Mihrdatyan, but he did not find any of those manuscripts in Etchmiadzin. Apparently, Patkanian's informants did not know that one of the manuscripts (now No. 2639) was in the Matenadaran12, and the other, as it appears, belonged to private individuals and, not being in the Matenadaran, was not registered in any manuscript catalog.

Patkanian was forced to publish the most recent manuscript he possessed (which was also copied from manuscript No. 2639) without comparing it with the Etchmiadzin manuscripts, "here and there only correcting the scribes' omissions and reading errors against the most recent copy and against those parts of Sebeos that were borrowed by our other historians and have reached our days in their works" (Preface, p. A).

Patkanian’s manuscript had no chapter divisions, so the publisher copied Mihrdatyan’s chapter divisions and the extensive chapter headings, which Mihrdatyan had introduced into the text and which do not exist in the manuscripts (except for rare exceptions). The total number of chapters is 38 (38).

Unlike Mihrdatyan, Patkanian placed the title "History of Bishop Sebeos on Heraclius" not on the Anonymous’s sections ("Writing A" and "Writing B"), but only on the original "History of Sebeos," because he was convinced that the Anonymous sections did not belong to the author of the "History of Sebeos." He expressed his conviction in the following lines:

"Of the three writings in this book, we consider only the third to be by Sebeos... The first is the writing attributed to Agathangelos, remnants of the oldest historiography of our nation, equal to the excerpts of Khorenatsi from Maribas Catina. The second is a Chronicon taken from the histories of Khorenatsi and Asoghik. It seems to belong to someone else, the passage about the origin of the Mamikonyans, not at all consistent with the author who heard from the mouth of the angels of the King of the Chinese, having come not to the palace of

12 G. Ter-Mkrtchyan accidentally discovered that manuscript in the Matenadaran in 1892 (see the section on the description of manuscript No. 2639).