2,500 miles from Rome and 1,500 miles from Athens in a remote corner of the South Caucasus, sits an unmistakably Hellenic temple of colossal proportions—the only remaining standing structure of its kind in the former Soviet Union, the Smithsonian magazine says in an article about the Temple of Garni in Armenia.
“I gazed, mouth agape, at its geometrically impeccable colonnade, reminiscent of the Maison Carrée in Nîmes or the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis. Beneath it, double-height stairs wrapped around the entire foundation, and above it, triangular pediments rested on its capitals. Pedestals displaying carvings of Atlas, the Greek sky-bearing Titan, flanked the entrance. My mind was racing: How did a Greco-Roman architectural masterpiece end up in Armenia, and what was its purpose?” says author Benjamin Kemper, a freelance food and travel writer.
The leading theory is that the temple was erected in 77 AD during the reign of Tiridates I, who, 11 years prior, had been crowned by the Roman emperor Nero. The story goes that as a token of goodwill, Nero sent the Armenian monarch back east with a cadre of Roman craftsman and a generous sum of money, resources that were used to build the fortified city of Garni and its central temple, a shrine to the ancient Armenian sun god Mihr.
Another band of academics maintains that Garni isn’t a temple at all but rather the tomb of one of the Romanized Armenian kings of the 2nd century, based on architectural similarities between Garni and contemporaneous mausoleums in Asia Minor.
“If everyone can agree on one thing, it’s that Garni Temple is pre-Christian, making its existence today somewhat miraculous: When Armenia adopted Christianity as its national religion in the 4th century—one of the first nations in the world to officially do so—King Tiridates III’s regime razed virtually all of the pagan temples. It remains a mystery why the temple at Garni survived,” the article says.
“It almost didn’t, for more natural reasons. In 1679, a violent earthquake toppled the temple and reduced it to rubble, and for three centuries the structure sat in utter disrepair. It was only in 1975—following the imprimatur of the Soviet Union—that the edifice was fully, meticulously restored to its former glory. It may seem odd that the U.S.S.R. would fund the restoration of a supposedly holy structure, given their crackdown on religion generally, but as Christina Maranci, professor of Armenian art and architecture at Tufts University, explained, “The Soviet aesthetic often prized classical forms, so Garni Temple was an inspirational place.” While most of the stones you see today are original, any missing fragments were purposely replaced with blank gray rock, so as to differentiate between the new and old materials.”
Today Garni Temple welcomes some 136,000 visitors each year, and a handful of those are Armenian Neopagans, who call the site their spiritual capital. Armenian Neopaganism is a relatively new grassroots religious movement that aims to reclaim the pre-Christian Armenian faith.
“Regardless of how visitors choose to experience Garni Temple today—as a primeval shrine to pagan gods or simply an enigmatic archaeological site—this ancient structure, with its many untold secrets, is sure to spur everyone’s imagination long into the future,” the magazine says.
A gleaming white structure topped with seven domes, set to be the world’s biggest Yazidi temple, is being built in a tiny village in Armenia.
SULAIMANI, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— The Zoroastrians opened their first official temple in the Kurdish city of Sulaimani in Iraqi Kurdistan on Wednesday. They lit a fire and played the frame drum or daf to celebrate the occasion, two elements of their rituals.