History of Vardan and the Armenian War

Although the history of the holy Vardanants by Eghishe has been published many times, the needs of this golden book are such that it has not yet reached the hands of the public as it deserves.

The purpose of our printing is not to satisfy the needs of the public, but rather to make the public aware of the treasure that, by fortune, fell into our hands at a time when we were wandering in the city of the Parisians. It happened there that we met a certain honorable man, a lover of antiquities named original: "Srb [presumably "Monsieur"] Jan-uayth", who was passing through there on his return from the East, and was carrying many riches of antiquity which he had collected from our lands and other parts of the Asian world.

Leaving to another place and time the detailed description of each of his precious riches, especially those which were taken as gifts or purchases from our homeland, we saw in his manuscript a History of the Vardanants, which, although it did not have a date of writing on it, the parchment and the form of the iron-script letters with which it was written strongly showed that the book was from very ancient times: a work of the seventh or eighth century, if not even more ancient. And the witnesses to this are the colophons which could be seen here and there in the margins of the book, reaching to the ninth century. As, for example:

Remember the great Atom, Lord of the Andzevatsyats,

worthy of memory.

For although there is no year number, it seems certain to us that this is the same Atom whom the historian Catholicos Hovhannes calls "great" when he says: "He inherited that lordship, the Great Atom, son of his [Gurgen's], along with him." And since this Atom flourished under Smbat I, the Bagratuni king, then the writing of the Eghishe book must be older than him.

At the end of the book, we found this colophon:

Written in the true history of the Mamikonean house.

By the order of

Shmavon, Lord of the Andzevatsyats,

for memory and intercession for this land.

But who this Shmavon is, we cannot say, because the scribe does not add the date of the time. History reminds us of a certain Shmavon, Lord of the Andzevatsyats, who participated alongside Vardan the Red in the great war, and later endured with patience along with the blessed nobles. But it does not seem plausible to us that he is the same Shmavon who ordered this book to be written. However, he was undoubtedly held in great honor by the lords of the Andzevatsyats house, for their names are found here and there in the pages of the book, such as...