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.
