Muriel Mirak-Weissbach
A
revolutionary technology developed in Germany has made it possible to
reconstruct an early version of Saint Gregory of Narek’s Book of Prayers (or Lamentations),
conserved in the Matenadaran in Yerevan. The work is a manuscript
dating back to the 13th-14th century, and is one of the earliest copies
of the 10th century original, which has been lost. The task presented to
restorers seemed hopeless due to the desperate condition of the
manuscript. The book had fallen into decay, its pages reduced to
fragments, and those were in utter disarray so that it was impossible to
place the individual pieces of pages in their original order.
There are three stages in the reconstruction process. The
fragments are digitized, to make it possible to process them virtually.
“Then the ePuzzler processes the digital copies and reconstitutes them
into full pages. The third stage goes beyond the reconstruction of
single pages to embrace mechanisms both for the automated match-up of
single pages to form complete files and for development of their
content.”
Funded by the German Foreign Ministry, the Fraunhofer scientists
organized two workshops in Yerevan, in which they presented the virtual
reconstruction technology and preparation and procedure of
digitalization work to the members of the staffs involved in
restoration, digitalization, research and archive at the Matenadaran.
Together they drew up potential applications scenarios, and selected and
digitized exemplary material for sample processing. The results were
very promising and work continued. At the end of last year, the Narek
project was completed, with the financial support of the Foreign
Ministry. The word was conducted by Fraunhofer collaborators Siranoush
Varderesyan and Henry Zoberbier under the direction of Dr. Bertram
Nickolay, head of the Department for Security Technology. It is
expected that in September the results of the project will be presented
to the public in Germany.
The advantages of the virtual reconstruction method pioneered by
Fraunhofer should be obvious: in the case of ancient and damaged
documents, it is important to reduce manual handling to an absolute
minimum. Once the virtual reconstruction has been completed, work can
proceed on actual physical restoration.
For the Matenadaran this technology may prove to be a godsend.
The world famous institute in Yerevan houses a collection of inestimable
value, parts of it have been welcomed into the “Memory of the World
Register” of UNESCO. Its experts enjoy recognition internationally for
their advanced skills in restoring books and documents and the
institute, as FUTUR writes, “is the key reference point and port of call
for all enquiries regarding restoration and reconstruction in the
region.”[1]
Despite this high level of expertise, work on restoring the immense
amount of manuscripts has been hampered by the lack of adequate
technical support.
Sharing the Fruits of Revolutions
There is a wonderful irony in the fact that this particular
technology from Germany should come to the aid of cultural protection in
Armenia, at this particular moment in history, when Armenia is going
through a profound revolutionary transformation. Many Germans, following
the events of the past weeks in the media, have been reminded of the
peaceful revolution carried out by East Germans in 1989, which brought
down the Berlin Wall and led to national reunification — an unthinkable
development, during which not a shot was fired. The events unfolding in
Armenia in April and May recalled that experience, for its steadfast
commitment to non-violent, peaceful change.
Now, it turns out that the revolutionary technology developed by
Fraunhofer became famous for its application to the reconstruction of
documents belonging to the files of the Stasi, the Communist East German
State Security Service, which had been torn, shredded or otherwise
physically destroyed at the time of the 1989 peaceful revolution.
Through the Stasi Fragments Project, the Fraunhofer group reconstructed
the files of that entity, beginning a four-year pilot phase in 2007.
This was no mean task. There were 15,000 sacks of documents that had
been ripped by officials seeking to destroy the evidence, and 400 sacks
were slated for processing in the pilot phase.
On the cultural level, this method has been successfully applied
to reconstruct books that were destroyed in the collapse of the
Historical Archive of Cologne, as well as works of the great German
scientist Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz. There are 200,000 pieces of paper,
on which this seminal thinker noted down his ideas on a vast array of
themes, handwritten fragments now being deciphered, ordered and
published thanks to the Fraunhofer method. The technology can also be
applied to three-dimensional objects, making it possible to recover
statues and frescoes that have been damaged by natural decay or even
terrorism.
And now the precious work of Gregory of Narek has been recovered.
The Armenian saint who lived from 950 to 1003, has been honored in
recent years by the Pope, in the spirit of Christian unity. On the
centennial of the genocide, Pope Francis officially declared him a
Doctor the Church and on April 5 of this year he unveiled a bronze
statue of Gregory of Narek at the Vatican (https://mirrorspectator.com/2018/04/12/new-statue-of-st-gregory-of-narek-unveiled-in-vatican-gardens/).
"The Armenian-Mirror Spectator," May 31, 2018
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