Note 110 — Chapter XVIII · ANI, AND THE ARMENIAN KINGDOM OF THE MIDDLE AGES

The inscriptions, which unhappily I had not leisure to identify, have been already published and translated.110 The earliest in date appears to have been found upon the doorway of the chapel, and identifies it as a work of the period of the kings. It records that in the year 480 (A.D. 1031) Apughamir, son of Vahram, prince of princes, bestowed an endowment upon this church of the Apostles for the health and long life of his brother Grigor. My reader is already familiar with these names of members of the Pahlavid family. The inscriptions upon the portal are of much later dates, ranging over the period of Georgian occupation when the city was governed by the Mkhargrdzels. Some are in the name of the Mongol overlord. Most are of the nature of public proclamations; and from the one latest in date we learn that in A.D. 1348 members of this Georgian family were still personages at Ani, and that the city had not yet been abandoned by her inhabitants.