Note 32 — Chapter XVI · EDGMIATSIN AND THE ARMENIAN CHURCH

The entrance from the portal to the church is through a rather low doorway, conducting you into the apse-formed projection on the west. The stone panels about and above this doorway are richly carved and show traces of gilding (Fig. 54). In the south wall of the building you are shown an old door, long walled up, which is supposed to date from a hoar antiquity and is called the door of Tiridates. Lastly you will probably be taken to the belfry above the portal and be shown the famous Tibetan bell. It bears the thrice repeated legend Ôm a hum, the mystic formula of the Buddhists.32 Before the portal are several tombstones, commemorating deceased pontiffs, and among them that of the enlightened Nerses V. One in marble is raised over the remains of Sir John Macdonald, British envoy to the court of Persia. The bald inscription contrasts with the eloquence of the situation under the shadow of this St. Peter’s of distant Armenia and among the graves of the highest dignitaries of her national church.33