• About Us
• Plan A Visit
• Events & News
• Exhibitions
• Collections
• Education
• Image Gallery
• Support The Library
• Shop

• Back to Homepage

• Introduction
• The East Asian Collection
• The Islamic Collection
• The Western Collection
  • Papyri
  • Manuscripts
    • Armenian
    • Byzantine
    • Coptic
    • Ethiopian
    • Hebrew Samaritan
    • Slavonic
    • Syriac
  • History of the Book
  • Prints & Drawings
• Reading Room
• Archives
• Preservation & Conservation

Armenian

The Armenian Collection of the Chester Beatty Library consists of 124 volumes - eighty-seven in manuscript form, twenty-four printed and thirteen detached silver bindings.

These were acquired by Sir Alfred Chester Beatty over a thirty-year period. His earliest purchases in this area are not known but he had certainly obtained some Armenian material by 1920.

One book (CBL Arm Ms 621), bequeathed to the Library in 1958 by Wilfred Merton (Beatty's friend and publisher), had been purchased by Merton at a Sotheby's sale in London on 27 July 1920, the vendor being Alfred Chester Beatty.

Another volume, known to have been acquired in 1920, is a gospel-book dated 1655 (CBL Arm 578), which was purchased either in Vienna or Berlin by Beatty's librarian.

Beatty's purchasing of Armenian material increased towards the end of the 1920s and gathered pace in the 1930s, when nearly thirty illuminated manuscripts were acquired. Some of most impressive material was not acquired until just after the Second World War - between 1946 and 1948. The highlight of Beatty's purchases from this period is a thirteenth-century gospel-book (CBL Arm 558), acquired from the Robinson sale of the Phillipps Collection (London, 12-17 May 1947).

Beatty employed several Armenian scholars to write the descriptive entries for his manuscripts, but a published catalogue did not appear until 1958.

Publications

The Chester Beatty Library: A Catalogue of the Armenian Manuscripts (Dublin: 1958) by Sirarpie Der Nersessian introduced scholars to the richness of the collection. A supplementary catalogue for additional manuscripts purchased after this publication is currently underway.

Michael and Nira Stone, The Armenians: Art, Culture and Religion London: D. Giles for the Chester Beatty Library, 2007. http://www.clipperdistribution.co.uk/clientdata/abi/07may/the_armenians.pdf or available from Chester Beatty Gift shop.