«Ես Տիգրանակերտի քար չեմ» - Համլետ ՊԵՏՐՈՍՅԱՆ

The article, published under the title "I Am Not a Stone in Tigranakert," is an interview with Hamlet Petrosyan, Doctor of Historical Sciences, the discoverer of Artsakh's Tigranakert. The piece is devoted to rethinking traditional Armenian symbols of identity and to the political and institutional difficulties associated with the author's scholarly work.

Introduction and Methodology
The conversation is built around H. Petrosyan's hypothesis concerning the relationship between symbols of identity and the myth of salvation: as external contacts intensify, symbols of universal Christian significance (the Sacred Mountain, the Garden of Eden) become more prominent among Armenians, whereas in periods of isolation these same images are transformed into Armenocentric concepts of the nation's chosenness.

Sacred Geography and the Transformation of Symbols
Particular attention is paid to the evolution of conceptions of Mount Masis:
• the mountain's original sacredness as the "abode of the gods" and the center of the Armenian cosmos, not directly linked to the biblical Ararat;
• the subsequent convergence of the images of Ararat and Ayrarat under the influence of the era of the Crusades;
• the persistent preservation of garden and mountain symbolism in philosophical and memorial culture (funerary reliefs) up to the nineteenth century.

The Flexibility of Cultural Tradition
The author challenges the thesis that traditionalism is the defining feature of Armenian culture, showing, through the example of funerary monuments of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, that even in the most difficult periods complex conceptions of the eternity of the soul were preserved, and that the symbolism of identity did not "slumber" but rather transformed. Separately examined is the Europeanized view of Armenian heritage (the work of Raffi) and the compensatory symbols of the Soviet era (the apricot, the grape), which arose in the absence of any engagement with deeper images (Ararat, the khachkar).

The Problem of Dual Identity
The discussion touches on the debate within Western Armenology (G. Bardakjian, R. Suny) concerning the existence of two variants of Armenian identity — the Constantinopolitan and the Eastern Armenian — which today are united only by shared symbols that have grown weaker in emotional depth.

Tigranakert and the Politics of Armenology
A significant part of the interview is devoted to the author's personal experience connected with the excavations of Artsakh's Tigranakert:
• pressure on the researcher under the pretext of compliance with the Hague Convention and the "policy of the unresolved conflict";
• the disintegration of a support group for the excavations formed in Los Angeles, under the influence of institutional political correctness at American universities;
• the refusal of foreign organizations (Project Discovery) to fund research in "disputed territory";
• the impossibility of official participation by foreign specialists in the expedition.

Key Position
Petrosyan insists that Tigranakert is, first and foremost, a monument for the Armenian people itself, addressed to national culture, and only secondarily an object of interest for the world scholarly community — funded, in the absence of institutional support, almost exclusively by private means and by the government of the NKR.

Conclusion
The article's key conclusion is that the symbols of Armenian identity have historically possessed an outward orientation and have flexibly transformed depending on contacts with the outside world, whereas under present conditions of globalization and political circumstance they are losing their constructive function, and scholarly work connected with Artsakh runs up against the systemic pressure of Western academic political correctness, which demands of researchers personal integrity and national responsibility.