"The Art of Carpet-Weaving among Armenians" - Volkmar Gantzhorn

Volkmar Gantzhorn's article is devoted to the study of the historical origins and artistic specificity of Armenian carpet weaving, as well as its role in shaping the tradition of the Oriental carpet as a whole. The material was prepared for the exhibition at the Bochum Museum "Rediscovering an Ancient Cultural Landscape" (1995) and summarizes the results of the author's many years of scholarly research, previously set forth in his fundamental work "The Christian Oriental Carpet."

Introduction and Methodology
The author states that the initial hypothesis of his research was the assumption of a parallel existence of Christian and Muslim carpet-weaving traditions; however, the scarcity of reliable Muslim examples forced him to abandon this opposition. As a result, he concluded that the history of the Oriental carpet and the Armenian carpet were, in fact, identical up until the mid-19th century.

Key Thesis
The central thesis of the article is that the Armenian Highlands, including the Araxes valley, is one of the cradles of the birth of human culture, from which metalworking and textile production technologies, including carpet weaving, originate. The oldest surviving example — the Pazyryk carpet of the 5th century BC — is regarded as a product of the Urartian cultural tradition.

Historical and Cultural Context
Gantzhorn traces the spread of Armenian ornamental forms through:
– Late Hittite, Urartian, and Phrygian art;
– Greco-Roman and early Christian mosaics;
– the "carpet pages" of Lombard and Irish manuscripts;
– marriages of European nobility with members of the Armenian dynasty (Theophano, the Crusaders).

Particular attention is given to the migrations of the Armenian population resulting from the Arab conquests, the Turkic expansion of the 11th–12th centuries, and the deportations under Shah Abbas, as a result of which Armenians came to be present in virtually all carpet-weaving regions — from Persia and Anatolia to Turkmenistan and Europe.

The Symbolism of the Armenian Carpet
The author identifies specifically Armenian elements of ornamentation:
– cross motifs (the "star" cross and the "light" cross) as a reflection of the carpet's Christian liturgical purpose;
– the letters "S" and "E" as abbreviations for the words "Lord" and "Jesus," used for apotropaic purposes;
– "dragon" patterns, tracing back to Caucasian mythology and reinterpreted in a Christian context as a symbol of divine power and protection.

"Dragon" Carpets
A separate section is devoted to the dating and origin of "dragon" carpets, which the author attributes to the 16th century and links to Armenian craft centers in the districts of Van and Sivas, corroborating his conclusions with reference to the studies of Martin (1895–1908). The tragic connection is noted between the mass extermination and deportation of the Armenian population in the 1920s and the subsequent appearance of these carpets on the Western antiques market.

Conclusion
The key conclusion of the article is that the entire history of Oriental carpet weaving is inextricably linked to Armenian cultural and religious tradition: the diversity of patterns despite a limited number of original forms, the characteristic symbolism of the cross and apotropaic signs, and the geography of the craft's dissemination all attest to the central role of the Armenian population in shaping the art of carpet-making throughout the Mediterranean and Asian world.