An Ancient Street Discovered During Excavations in Arin Berd

During large-scale Armenian-French excavations in Yerevan, archaeologists discovered an ancient 7th-century street in Arin Berd. Experts think that this find can shed some light on the history of the ancient local settlement. Vard Mkrtchyan, a correspondent of TV channel “MIR 24”, reported on the find.

Here, each stone is several thousand years old. To not damage the ancient cultural layers, archaeologists dig into the ground with trowels and carefully clear the ground with small brushes. That’s how the archaeologists discovered the ancient cobblestone road.

“We also discovered the area where the road begins. Now, we have to find out where it ends. Then, samples will allow us to precisely date this find,” said archaeologist Mery Karapetyan. The scientists know that the road at the time led to the temple of Urartian chief deity Khaldi.

Based on the unevenness of the road and also the condition of the nearby walls, researchers concluded that in the middle of the 7th century BC, a strong earthquake destroyed the temple of Khaldi and surrounding buildings, said the French co-director of the expedition Stéphane Deschamps.

What happened in the territory of Arin Berd after the earthquake and before the reign of the Persian Achaemenid dynasty remains a mystery for the archaeologists. One century in the chronology of the fortress is still uninvestigated. The nearest mission of the expedition is to examine it thoroughly.

Yerevan (The Capital older than Rome)