Khatchar

Lori Province, Armenia, 1100-1200
Basalt
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
(On loan from the History Museum of Armenia, L.2008.11)

According to the Metropolitan's label, khatchars of this sort were used as memorials to the dead and to mark the location of important events. At left is a rare example of khatchar with symbols of the four evangelists at the foot. Usually the figure below the cross is a solar disc or a stylized mountain.

Detail: the symbols of the four evangelists. — The large face is St. Matthew's human figure. Below that are smaller images of Mark's lion and John's eagle, with Luke's ox pictured sideways at the bottom.

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Read more about Crosses and Crucifixes and about The Four Evangelists.

Photographed at the Metropolitan Museum by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.