Hidden treasures of Armenia: Qarahundj

We like to say that Armenia is like an open-air museum. However , exponents in museums have their precise descriptions and they are all restricted to a certain number, whereas Armenia abounds in its endless number of unique , only partly discovered memorials of ancient times and lives of old Armenian nation, open to be explored and rewarding for a curious eye.

One of the most amazing yet little-known old monuments of Armenia is Qarahundj , a much older brother construction of the English Stonehenge.

What do we know about Stonehenge?

Stonehenge is an ancient monument of huge stones solitarily standing on the Salisbury Plain in the English county of Wiltshire . No one knows for sure who built Stonehenge. The first construction began approximately in 3100 BC by Neolithic people inhabiting Britain. This is about the time of the construction of the Great Sphinx in Egypt. Some historians say that Stonehenge was used as an ancient astronomical observatory because it is aligned so that it can predict eclipses. More theories say that Stonehenge was an ancient calendar , others say it used to be a place of religious ground.

And what about Qarahundj?

Few people know that English famous Stonehenge has a very similar construction

in Armenia, not far away from the Armenian town Sissian. Carahunge is 3,500 years older than England’s Stonehenge and 3,000 years older than the Egyptian pyramids.

More than fifteen years of study has been focused on the stones at Sissian in Armenia, beginning in the 1980's when archeologists first uncovered mausoleums at the site.

Richard L. Ney’s not long ago published article (“The Armenian Stonehenge”) revealed the amazing results of the recent researcheson the site. According to it two researchers: Persamian and Herouni found out the approximate age and the possible purposes that Qarahundj used to serve to. The conclusions and results are wondrous, to say the least.

According to Ney’s article the researches carried out by Parsamian showed that stones of Qarahundj were a particular kind of telescopic instrument. Parsamian noted that stones on the western side of the complex held eye-holes, and that they all pointed to the horizon.

"Those eye-holes were pointingexactly at the horizon," Parsamian says, "they looked at specific points in the night sky in different directions."

Further examination showed that “through these holes you can watch lunar phase and the

sunrise at the solstice"

What does

“Qarahundj” mean?

Since the word “Karahundj” has no meaning in Armenian , there are a number of variants of what it means or could have meant. The word “Karahundj” is made up of “Kara” (from Armenian word stone) and “hundj”.The word “hundj” doesn’t exist in Armenian but the interesting fact is that it sounds very similar to “henge”. Another wondrous fact to note is that the first parts of two names are identical , “kara” in Armenian and “stone” in English are semantically the same.

“Here you have two identical words in different languages," Herouni says. "Stone and Kar. And the village has had that name since anyone can remember. I don't think its a coincidence. Logic tells me there has to be a single source. This is Armenia's Stonehenge.”

“We like to think we are an old country because we were the first Christian state,” Herouni concludes. “But here are monuments thousands of years older than Christianity—these are the first signs of religion itself. And yet who looks at them?”

I honestly hope and believe that very soon Qarahundj will receive the proper attention it deserves and will become as widely known as its western young brother: Stonehenge.