The History of Sebeos

sections also begin with red letters which cannot form a chapter and opposite which there are no chapter numbers in the margins.

"We find the distribution of chapters inconvenient. There are many long chapters with several different contents which should have been divided into several chapters, and there are short chapters. But we did not introduce any changes here, rather we followed the manuscript’s distribution" (p. HE). We also, with insignificant exceptions, followed Malkhasyants’s chapter division, of course, not because the manuscript has the same division (which is not true), but because we find that we have no criteria for a more precise chapter division. In the manuscript, only chapters 11 through 25 are regularly and correctly numbered, which bear the same numbers in Malkhasyants’s publication as well.

After changing the chapter division of Mihrdatyan’s and Patkanian’s publications, Malkhasyants also changed the wording of the headings, which is applied almost unchanged in our current publication as well.

When compiling the text, he did not mark the differences in the "n" definite article ("arkayi" of the king or "arkayin" the king), and he did not preserve the mixed orthography of the manuscript (au=o, eue=iu, gh=l, ov=o). "We have only not been consistent regarding the writing of GH or L (Heragh, Herakl), and we have a basis to believe that even in the seventh century, the uniformity of the writing of the GH sound was violated" (p. HT).

Malkhasyants restored about 20 important textual units, and in general, he proposed "about 100 new corrections, of which a part," he writes, "we introduced into the text as indisputable and important, and a small part we put into the comparisons as a likely hypothesis or unimportant... The correction of the great distortion in chapters 7—8 has special importance, which had arisen as a result of putting a torn-out sheet of the manuscript in another place, and because of which about ten pages remained fragmented, disconnected, and incomprehensible."

Indeed, in addition to this very important correction, Malkhasyants also corrected the following (we provide the incorrect readings of previous publications in parentheses): "zTeanov" ("Ateanov"), "vor ein and i bun" who were there in the foundation ("vor ein and tribuni" who were there as tribunes), "Sormen" ("Suren"), "naev hreapetn" also the chief of Jews ("naev hayrapetn" also the patriarch), "zor anualeal Shahastan-i Nok-koy kochen" ("zor anualeal Shahastanin Oknoy kochen"), "gnats i Meditine" ("gnats i teghi mi" went to a place), "ganzud aydorik zhon's mer arastsuk" of that treasure of yours we shall make our Huns ("ganzud aydorik zHayastan mer arastsuk" of that treasure of yours we shall make our Armenia), etc.

The scholar also supplied his publication with 74 important notes and an index of names.

Especially valuable is the extensive preface of the publication, in which Malkhasyants refers to the discovery of the manuscript of the "History of Sebeos" by Shahkhatunyants (incorrectly noting 1842 as the year of discovery), as well as other manuscripts, constructs their genealogy, describes previous publications, and lists the circumstances of his own publication.

Then, under the heading "Examinations of the History of Sebeos," he lays out...