The largest and smallest books of the Matenadaran

The largest and smallest books in the Matenadaran collection. The Mush Homiliary weighs 28 kilograms, and each of its leaves was made from the almost entire hide of a two-year-old bull calf. On it, at the right margin, lies a church calendar of 1436, which weighs 12 grams; a single hide of a newborn lamb was used to make the whole of it.

The Matenadaran is considered the world’s largest repository of ancient manuscripts. It holds more than 17 thousand ancient manuscripts and more than 100 thousand old archival documents.

In the photograph the homiliary lies open in a glass display case. Its pages are written in Armenian in two columns, and there is a coloured ornament on the left page.