Cultural preservation has always been central to Armenian storytelling identity, carried through countless accounts of people safeguarding manuscripts and cultural treasures, even at the cost of their last possessions or lives. From extraordinary acts of heroism, like two women carrying the monumental Homilies of Mush, the largest surviving Armenian manuscript, on their backs to save it from looters, to quiet family histories of protecting inherited manuscripts and eventually donating them to cultural institutions, these stories highlight the importance of heritage preservation and survival and what the Armenian cultural identity represents today.
As AI reshapes how culture is recorded and interpreted, it also forces a return to the question of preservation, now extended into the digital realm, where representation, accuracy, and training data have become part of the responsibility. This article features a historical manuscript and an early printed Bible as entry points into honoring Armenian heritage, all while opening discussions with experts on what preservation means in the age of AI.
Matenadaran
Shurishkan Gospel, 1498, Aspisnak village, Western Armenia
Intercessory and miracle-making Gospels hold a distinct place in the Matenadaran’s collection of medieval manuscripts, surrounded by stories, mysteries, and long-standing beliefs in healing and relief.
Among the most famous ones is the Shurishkan Gospel, written in 1498 in Aspisnak village of Western Armenia. In 1604, during Shah Abbas’s forced relocation of around 500,000 Armenians to Persia, the Tsarougian family, who owned the Gospel, was among those deported. They carried it with them to their new settlement in Shurishkan village, where it remained for nearly 370 years and eventually took the name of the village.
As the legend tells it, when Persia was suffering from an epidemic in the 18th century, the Shurishkan Gospel was taken to three villages and carried in procession through them so that the villages would remain exempt from the disease, and it did help.
Over the centuries, the Gospel became increasingly associated with miraculous accounts—of the deaf and mute beginning to hear and speak, the lame to walk, and even the dying being healed, returning from pilgrimage on their own feet.
In Shurishkan, the Tsarougian family continued to care for the Gospel in their home, allowing pilgrims to visit it, until 1904, when a newly built church in the village became its home. The manuscript was also looted several times over the years, yet the family repeatedly managed to recover it, sometimes even paying ransom. In the 1970s, when they moved to Yerevan, they donated it to the Matenadaran for professional preservation.
Its reputation, however, did not fade. For decades, the Matenadaran has received a steady flow of pilgrims from Armenia and abroad, who come to see the Gospel, express their wishes, and seek relief.
Today, the manuscript is kept in the repository and brought out for display only once a year. The Sunday following Easter, it is also taken to Saint Gevork Monastery of Mughni in Ashtarak, where thousands of faithful gather to offer their prayers, turning to their Christian Faith as their last hope to cure from pains.
For a small nation like ours, it is a responsibility to be conscious of what we feed into AI, because what we receive depends on this very training.
NAASR Mardigian Library
The First Printed Bible of Voskan Yerevantsi, 1668, Amsterdam
Another unique Armenian cultural treasure is the first printed Armenian Bible by Voskan Yerevantsi. Printed in 1668 in Amsterdam, it was based on a manuscript Bible originally commissioned in 1295 by King Hetum II of Cilicia.
Voskan Yerevantsi (1614-1674), an Armenian vardapet and printer born in New Julfa, was educated within the scholarly environment of the Armenian Church while also gaining exposure to European intellectual and technical traditions that later shaped his printing work.
This particular Bible is significant as it reflects the early Armenian printing traditions derived from manuscript art. Yerevantsi translated the traditions of Armenian manuscript culture into print, using multiple Armenian scripts, so that the book would retain the visual and aesthetic qualities of a manuscript. And this Bible alone contains seven such typefaces.
As mentioned by NAASR Mardigian Library Director Ani Babaian, “Printed more than 350 years ago, the Bible also reflects a remarkable tradition of Armenian binding. Its craftsmanship has drawn admiration even from professional restorers, who have noted its exceptional quality. From an artistic perspective, the illustrations show notable affinities with fresco art in New Julfa, suggesting further possibilities for scholarly study.”
Being known only recently, its journey of preservation is no less important. Printed in Amsterdam, it made its way to Aintab, where it was safeguarded by Aintabli Adadour (1805-1887) and used as a church Bible for centuries. He was the first Armenian ordained as a Protestant minister. His son Haig later moved to the United States, trained in Pennsylvania, and served in Massachusetts, while also helping establish Armenian churches in California and Buenos Aires. The family descendant Robert Albiol eventually donated the Bible to NAASR in 2025, passing down another significant family effort that brought the cultural treasure to current generations.
Conversations on AI
Babaian sees the story of Voskan Yerevantsi as a clear example of balancing tradition and innovation. “When he established a printing press, he faced opposition from conservative clergy who feared that scribes would lose their role. Yet, Yerevantsi viewed printing as a way to expand access to Armenian texts, especially religious works that could strengthen the Armenian Apostolic Church. This moment echoes today’s debates around AI, suggesting that we are once again entering a phase where new technologies should be integrated into cultural preservation while honoring the traditions that define it,” she explains.
While NAASR Mardigian Library is currently digitizing its archival materials for preservation and accessibility, AI training is a relatively new process that requires strategic, even national-level thinking about what to prioritize and how to train these systems. “For a small nation like ours, it is a responsibility to be conscious of what we feed into AI, because what we receive depends on this very training. Therefore, we must now double our efforts in expertise, making conscious and strategic entries and carefully differentiate truth from falsehood.”
Historian Dr. Khatchig Mouradian focuses on the expanding meaning of preservation today, explaining that while traditionally, it implies stabilizing what remains, AI allows us to reinvigorate cultural heritage, moving toward an environment where collections existing in isolation can be linked and studied as part of a dynamic whole. For him, one such successful project is Calfa, which connects Armenian cultural archives in ways that enable AI systems to recognize, interpret, and represent them more accurately.
Beyond preservation, AI also provides vast opportunities for restoring and reviving damaged or incomplete works—from recovering faded details to reconstructing missing parts. In this context, Matenadaran Museum Director Yvette Tajarian believes that the careful and informed use of AI may open multiple possibilities, including the discovery of rare techniques that would otherwise remain inaccessible to restorers.
One such example is a recent exhibit at the Matenadaran, restored by Lusine Toumanyan. The work was initially believed to be an oil painting, yet traditional analysis did not produce clear results. “One of my colleagues noticed that the surface was completely flat, and the depiction of the Venice Cathedral made us question whether it could have been hand-painted at all. In the end, we turned to AI, and it pointed to a rare photomechanical print—a mix of photographic and manual processes, unusually produced on canvas rather than paper,” Toumanyan recalls.
Yet, the boundaries of how far technology should go in reimagining the past are not properly set. Such ethical risks are outlined in UNESCO’s 2025 report on AI and culture, warning about significant disadvantages, including generative AI’s ability to create deepfakes and alter historical narratives. “In politically sensitive or contested regions, such fabrications could be weaponized to legitimize territorial claims, erase minority histories, or promote exclusionary nationalism,” the report states.
Toumanyan herself illustrates this dual reality. She is currently facing identity theft on social media, where her content is being reposted under the name of a Georgian girl, presenting her work as part of Georgian culture, while she shares Armenian contemporary and historical art. “The fake pages are run from Brazil, and I still do not understand the intention, but alongside other risks I also sense a kind of racism toward small nations, where it does not matter whether it is Armenian or Georgian art, the nuances are overlooked,” she explains.
Endangered Heritage and Cultural Trafficking
AI is also becoming increasingly relevant for documenting endangered cultural sites and monuments. In the Armenian context, this has taken on renewed urgency, as heritage sites face risks of loss or destruction. One notable initiative has been led by students at the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies, who have worked to digitally preserve Armenian cultural heritage through detailed 3D scanning of historical sites and monuments under the newly established Armenian Cultural Heritage Institute.
Dr. Mouradian is optimistic regarding intangible cultural heritage as well, such as language preservation. “AI systems will not only become effective and accessible tools for teaching Eastern and Western Armenian, but also open possibilities for reviving dialects by drawing on recordings and memory books (houshamadyans). One can have digital environments in which AI converses, narrates, or composes songs in, say, the Kharpert dialect, reconstructing and animating forms of speech that are otherwise fading,” he notes.
Additionally, AI technologies are increasingly used to combat cultural looting and trafficking by improving the detection, prevention, and recovery of stolen cultural property. Globally, key initiatives include the Italian Carabinieri’s SWOADS system and INTERPOL’s ID-Art app, which uses image recognition to match scanned objects with a global database of over 52,000 stolen items reported by 134 countries.
Yet, on the ground, Tajarian urges alertness, noting that the field is often marked by fake experts authorizing forged artifacts as authentic. “In some cases, newly created works are presented as older pieces to increase their value. For example, an expert backed by a prestigious cultural institution may label a manuscript as dating from the 11th century even if it was produced much later. No matter how hard others try to show that such paints or techniques did not exist at the time, they remain at a disadvantage. As a result, these items enter auctions, are sold at high prices, and may even end up in museums with incorrect dating and descriptions. This misleading information then feeds into artificial intelligence systems, creating further confusion and allowing inaccuracies to spread, making them increasingly difficult to correct.”
Scholars Beware
While Babaian and Dr. Mouradian emphasize the human factor and the need for highly trained scholars to prevent misinterpretation and the inaccurate feeding of AI systems, Tajarian, who has taught art at Yerevan State University for over twenty years, raises concerns about the future of Armenian art scholarship. She notes that despite her efforts to explain to students that AI-generated information, especially at this stage, lacks scholarly reliability and often functions as a new form of Wikipedia, many continue to rely on it in their work, with results that are sometimes traceable, but often not. This, she argues, raises serious concerns about the preparation of the next generation of scholars, who will bear responsibility for the careful and informed preservation of Armenian cultural heritage.
