A team of archaeologists from the University of Warsaw has unearthed at the site of Metsamor, in present-day Armenia, the remains of a woman around forty years old, buried approximately 2,700 years ago in the courtyard of a house, in a position that experts describe as “contracted lateral.” What makes this discovery particularly significant is the combination of elements that accompany it: a cylindrical seal of Urartian tradition, bronze objects, and the possible foreign origin of the deceased.

The discovery, published in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, raises fundamental questions about the role of women in Urartian society, a kingdom that extended through eastern Turkey, Armenia, and northwestern Iran between the 9th and 6th centuries BC. Although the researchers caution that the woman’s social status cannot be determined with certainty, all evidence points to her holding a socially significant position within her community.

Metsamor rises in the Ararat Valley, about 30 kilometers west of Yerevan, the Armenian capital. The site is dominated by a hill where a citadel sits, whose origins date back to the Chalcolithic period. During the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, the fortress reached its maximum extent, surrounded by imposing cyclopean walls. This enclave was an important economic center, particularly known for its metallurgical activity for centuries.

At the foot of the citadel stretched the so-called Lower City, where archaeologists have documented a relatively advanced urban organization for its time. There appeared attached houses, a developed street system, and larger buildings, including what might have been a columned hall. However, during the Urartian domination period, the urban space underwent significant transformations. The city’s structure changed notably, adopting features more typical of a rural settlement, with isolated or semi-isolated houses.

House II and Burial Number 11

It was precisely in one of these constructions, called House II, dated to the late 8th and early 7th centuries BC, where the burial currently under study appeared. The tomb, designated “Burial 11,” was not an ordinary grave.

The cylindrical seal found in the tomb. Credit: Krzysztof Jakubiak, Arkadiusz Sołtysiak 2026

The first striking aspect is its location. While most of the Lower City’s tombs correspond to a later phase, when the settlement had already been abandoned and its ruins reused as a cemetery, Burial 11 was intentionally excavated in the soil of House II’s courtyard, at a time when the home was still occupied. This type of intramural burial is unusual and suggests a special link between the deceased and the home where she was buried.

The pit, of considerable size (2.56 x 1.96 meters), was oriented north-south. The woman’s body rested on her left side, in a contracted or flexed position. This arrangement has been the subject of debate among specialists. In preliminary reports, it had been described as a crouched or seated position, but after a more detailed analysis, the researchers have determined that it is more precisely a contracted lateral inhumation.

The tomb showed clear evidence of having been looted in antiquity. This fact complicates the precise reconstruction of the original burial and also explains why the preserved grave goods are relatively modest. Despite this, the objects that survived are extraordinarily eloquent.

The Seal That Speaks of an Identity

Among the finds, a cylindrical seal of Urartian glyptic tradition stands out, belonging to the so-called “common style” of the late production of these objects. These seals, characterized by a slightly concave surface and a loop or perforation that allowed them to be hung from a cord, were not mere stamping instruments but also objects worn on the body and displayed as a symbol of identity.

Although the iconographic details are not perfectly preserved, the motifs seem to include stylized or possibly fantastical animals, a decorative repertoire common in Urartian seals of the period. Similar examples have been documented in other Armenian sites such as Armavir, Karmir Blur, Igdir, and Noratus, reinforcing the dating of the tomb to the 7th century BC.

But what does this seal mean? In ancient Near Eastern cultures, these objects were often associated with property, administrative control, and identity. However, the study’s authors stress that its presence does not automatically prove that the woman held a specific administrative or religious office.

It would be methodologically unsafe to treat the seal as direct proof that the deceased was a priestess, an official, or a member of a formal administrative apparatus, the archaeologists warn. What the seal demonstrates is that the burial included an object of symbolic, personal, and potentially socially recognized value. In this sense, it suggests distinction, but not a precisely definable office.

This interpretation is reinforced by the fact that seals appear in funerary contexts in the Armenian highlands not only in the Urartian period but also in earlier phases, such as the Middle Bronze Age. In some cases, these objects are associated with female burials and particularly rich grave goods, suggesting that their symbolic meaning transcended the strictly male administrative sphere.

A Life Marked by Hardship

The anthropological analysis of the skeletal remains, though limited by their poor preservation, has allowed researchers to reconstruct some aspects of the woman’s life. She was an adult, probably over forty, who showed evidence of having suffered physiological stress during childhood and accumulated physical wear in adulthood.

Among the documented pathologies are degenerative changes in the knee joints, which could reflect age-related processes, prolonged mechanical stress, or habitual activity patterns. The observed changes certainly indicate sustained physical effort over time, but do not allow confident inferences that the woman was overweight or performed a particular type of work, the authors note.

Her dentition showed advanced carious lesions, consistent with regular exposure to cariogenic foods, probably rich in carbohydrates. However, the researchers warn that dental health depends on multiple factors, including food preparation, oral microbiology, and general health.

The most revealing finding was the presence of enamel hypoplasia in the upper canines. This alteration, manifested as grooves or depressions in the dental enamel, is usually interpreted as an indicator of physiological stress during childhood, potentially caused by disease, malnutrition, or other forms of biological stress. Its presence suggests that the woman experienced hardship in her youth, even though the treatment she received in death suggests a certain social distinction.

The combination of these data paints a complex biography: a woman who, despite suffering childhood deprivation and significant physical wear in adulthood, received a funerary treatment that sets her apart from most documented burials in Metsamor’s Lower City.

Archaeologists’ hypothesis regarding the burial. Credit: Krzysztof Jakubiak, Arkadiusz Sołtysiak 2026

Science at the Service of Archaeology

To deepen understanding of this discovery, the researchers used two key scientific techniques: radiocarbon dating and strontium isotope analysis.

Radiocarbon dating, performed on a sample of human bone collagen, yielded a conventional age of 2480 ± 40 years BP (before present). After calibration, the result places the burial in a broad period ranging from 775 to 430 BC. However, the researchers note a problem known as the Hallstatt Plateau, which significantly reduces chronological precision for the late 8th and early 5th centuries BC. Despite this limitation, they consider the dating compatible with the chronology suggested by the archaeological context and seal typology, pointing to the late 8th or early 7th century BC.

Strontium isotope analysis, performed on the dental enamel of an upper incisor, allowed the investigation of the woman’s possible movements during childhood. Strontium is a chemical element incorporated into dental enamel during the first years of life, reflecting the geology of the place where the person grew up. By comparing the enamel’s isotopic signature with that of the local environment of Metsamor, researchers can determine whether the person was native to the area or came from elsewhere.

The value obtained for the woman (0.70740 ± 0.000009) lies slightly outside the range established as local for Metsamor (approximately 0.70689 to 0.70736). This result suggests that the woman probably did not grow up in the immediate surroundings of Metsamor. However, the researchers are cautious in their interpretation, as strontium isotope values can vary considerably over relatively short distances depending on local geology. In addition, the currently available baseline for Metsamor is limited.

Despite these cautions, the authors consider the isotopic analysis an important dimension of the study. The fact that the strontium value lies outside, or near the edge of, the local baseline suggests that the deceased probably did not grow up in the immediate surroundings of Metsamor. Mobility thus formed part of her biography, they note. This mobility could have been due to multiple reasons: marriage, kinship alliances, family relocation, craft specialization, or broader social and economic connections.

An Emerging Funerary Pattern

The overarching question of the research is whether the Metsamor burial represents an isolated phenomenon or part of a broader funerary pattern. The authors approach this cautiously, aware that the available comparative material is limited, heterogeneous, and of uneven quality.

They cite three reference cases. The first comes from Oshakan, a site about 18 kilometers north of Metsamor, where a tomb with an adult woman in a contracted or possibly seated position was documented. However, the poor preservation of the remains prevents secure determination of the original body position, so it cannot be considered a direct parallel.

A second example comes from the Estark necropolis in northern Iran, where a tomb contained the remains of two individuals, one of whom was a probable adult woman in a contracted position. Although this example is relevant in showing that similar body dispositions occurred outside the South Caucasus, it differs substantially from Metsamor as it was a secondary inhumation in a pre-existing tomb.

The most significant parallels come from the Van region, where burials of women in strongly contracted positions have been documented, accompanied by objects continuing Urartian traditions, including seals and small metal items. These burials are generally dated to a post-Urartian or transitional context, although their chronological position and cultural interpretation remain debated.

The authors conclude that these examples do not support the idea that contracted female burials formed a clearly defined and widespread funerary tradition. What they indicate is the existence of a small group of broadly comparable cases, still poorly understood, distributed across different regions and chronological horizons, often involving adult women, they explain. Metsamor thus appears unusual, but not completely isolated.

Who Was This Woman Really?

After analyzing all available data, what can we really say about the identity of this woman? The authors insist that the evidence does not allow assigning her a specific institutional role, neither as a priestess, nor as an official, nor as a member of a clearly defined elite. However, this is not an insignificant burial.

The most persuasive interpretation is not that the woman held a specific institutional office, but that she occupied a socially significant position within the community associated with House II, they affirm. That distinction may have derived from domestic status, biography, symbolic affiliation, mobility, or a combination of these factors. In other words, the burial is best understood as a socially marked funerary context whose meaning cannot be reduced to a single label.

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This conclusion is supported by the combination of elements that make Burial 11 an exceptional case: its intramural location in an inhabited house, the contracted body position, the presence of a cylindrical seal and bronze objects, and the probable non-local origin of the deceased.

The authors themselves are aware of the study’s limitations. The tomb was looted, the grave goods are incomplete, and the comparative dataset remains small and heterogeneous. The isotopic baseline for the broader region is still insufficiently developed. These limitations do not invalidate the burial’s importance, but they do impose clear restrictions on its interpretation.

A responsible conclusion must therefore balance the unusual nature of the tomb with the incompleteness of the available evidence, they argue.

The study concludes with a call for future research to expand the comparative dataset, improve regional isotopic baselines, and more fully integrate funerary evidence into broader debates about mobility, gender, and social differentiation in the South Caucasus during the Iron Age.

The Metsamor burial, despite its modest materiality, opens a fascinating window into the complexity of Urartian and post-Urartian societies. It reminds us that behind the grand historical narratives of kings and conquests were real people with complex lives, who moved between regions, experienced childhood hardships, endured the physical toll of labor, and yet received funerary treatment that set them apart from their neighbors.

9 July, 2026Social partnership, collective bargaining and fundamental rights were the themes of a Summer school IndustriALL Global Union held with Armenian affiliates in Yerevan on 1-2 July 2026.

There is a deep irony in the situation — that a government committing a genocide in the present recognises one committed more than a century ago.

In 2021, when the US officially recognised the Armenian Genocide, I had been studying in Italy with a variety of people, all from countries in conflict. At that time, my then-Israeli friend came up to me and said: ‘At least the US recognised the Armenian Genocide’ — but my reaction was different.

That day, I saw many posts of gratitude across social media. Yet my thoughts were focused on why now? The genocide had occurred over 100 years ago — nothing was new. The only circumstances that had changed was in regards to US–Turkey relations; the US resolution on the Armenian Genocide came shortly after the US Senate voted to impose sanctions on Turkey. The recognition was never about actual Armenians, the generations of those who survived.

At the same time, alongside the posts thanking the US, many asked: ‘What has this recognition actually given us?’. The same question has resurfaced as Israel appears to be on the verge of recognising the Armenian Genocide, though the vote in parliament has currently been postponed.

As part of previous discussions, many have argued that Israel should never have turned recognition into a bargaining chip to be used in its relations with Turkey or used as a means of ‘punishment’. Others have pointed out that as people who survived their own genocide, Israeli Jews had a moral obligation to recognise the Armenian Genocide long ago.

This time, however, the main emotion, alongside gratitude and scepticism, has been rage, especially among those who had closely followed Israel’s atrocities in Gaza since 2023, those familiar with the broader Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and those from Syria or Lebanon, or with family ties there. This is a feeling I deeply resonate with. After all, as the descendants of genocide survivors, did Israelis not have a moral obligation to not perpetrate another with their own hands?

The question no longer simply why Israel might choose to recognise the Armenian Genocide now — it’s instead about the deep irony of the situation, that a government committing a genocide in the present recognises one committed more than a century ago.

The Armenians who witnessed Palestine’s transformation

When looking at the parallels between then and now, it is worth mentioning the Armenians whose faith brought them to Palestine after the genocide.

In May, an exhibition in Marseille of rare photographs from Gaza drew attention to the archive of Kegham Djeghalian, a photographer who survived the Armenian Genocide and founded the first photo studio in Gaza in 1944. He spent the next four decades documenting everyday life in Gaza.

As his grandson noted in an interview during the exhibition, ‘It’s a Gaza we no longer know. A joyful Gaza, one full of hope, connected to the world, with trains and an airport’.

One image from the archive, as described by France24, shows children forming a human pyramid in the courtyard of a school for Palestinian refugees displaced after the creation of Israel. Djeghalian, himself displaced and rebuilding his life in another society, was documenting the experiences of displacement in his host community decades before 2023.

To complete the collection, his grandson reached out to a Palestinian man, Marwan al-Tarazi, who had preserved part of the archive after inheriting the studio. Part of the exhibition, titled ‘Zoom Call’, included screenshots of conversations with al-Tarazi in 2021. In October 2023, Israeli strikes killed al-Tarazi, his wife, and his grandchild.

This layered history of displacement forms part of a broader Armenian presence in Palestine. British Mandate records estimate that around 10,000 Armenian refugees settled in Palestine after the genocide, residing mainly in Haifa, Jaffa, and Jerusalem.

In the latter city, however, the Armenian presence is far older, stretching back 1,500–1,700 years, making it one of the city’s oldest continuous communities. Therefore, the basic needs of the Armenians who fled to Jerusalem in the early 20th century were largely managed by the Armenian Patriarchate, based at the Cathedral of St James, which functioned as the de facto authority of the Armenian Quarter in the city.

Today, the Armenian community in Jerusalem lives under Israeli control and, like Palestinians in East Jerusalem, holds residency rather than citizenship, leaving them effectively stateless.

In recent years, this legal and political precarity has been accompanied by documented incidents of harassment and violence. The Rossing Centre, which tracks anti-Christian attacks in Jerusalem, recorded around 20 incidents targeting Armenians and church property in 2023 alone, including settlers spitting at clergy and graffiti reading ‘Death to Christians’.

These pressures on the community have unfolded not only on the ground but also in public discourse and media representation. In May 2025, during a live broadcast of the Eurovision Song Contest on Israel’s Kan 11 channel, a commentator said shortly after the Armenian performance: ‘I can’t believe we gave a whole quarter in Jerusalem to these guys’.

The remark was more than an offhand comment. It reflected the ease with which a community’s centuries-long presence could be dismissed, ridiculed, and treated as a political concession rather than as an undeniable historical reality.

That kind of dehumanisation does not emerge in a vacuum. It grows in societies where impunity becomes normalised and where violence, once justified, gradually reshapes moral boundaries. In that sense, I would argue that the gravest consequence of the Armenian Genocide, and of more than a century of political hesitation, denial, and impunity, is not only the injustice done to its victims — it is the genocide unfolding before our eyes today.

The cost of silence and inaction

‘Who remembers the Armenians now?’, Hitler supposedly remarked in August 1939, a week before Germany’s invasion of Poland. Whether or not the quote was actually spoken, it has come to symbolise a larger truth: the confidence that crimes will go unpunished creates the conditions for new ones. The connection between the Holocaust, the profound trauma it inflicted on Jewish communities, the fear and victimhood that became embedded in parts of Israeli society, decades of occupation and apartheid, and ultimately the dehumanisation of Palestinians. Pain that remains unaddressed does not simply disappear. It returns in new forms, repeating itself until it is confronted with honesty and care.

As the British–Jewish actress Miriam Margolyes put it: ‘My heart is broken, and the terrible thing I have to face is that Hitler won. He changed us. He made us like him’.

During the 2025 Golden Apricot International Film Festival in Yerevan, I watched Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid’s film Yes.

‘Israelis, who grew up asking, “How can people who committed such horrific atrocities go on living their lives?” have themselves become the answer to their own question’, says the narrator’s voice, heard intermittently throughout the film, which could just as easily have been set in fascist Germany of the 1930s and 1940s, depicting the ruling fascists and their jesters, complete with the aesthetics of that era.

Yes is about the half-step from ‘patriotism’ to villainy and moral degradation, and about a society that crossed that line long ago. Its style, rhythm, aesthetics, and content all speak of the madness of a society, of those who have given their silent consent to the most horrific atrocities. People walk down the streets, cars pass by, buses drive through the city, and from every horn, every street corner, you can almost hear that single word: ‘Yes’.

But in reality, this silent ‘yes’ goes beyond Israeli society. Living at a time when we witness a genocide unfold online, day after day, changes the way we relate to it. It ceases to be a distant horror that occasionally appears in the headlines of a newspaper. Instead, it becomes an inseparable part of our social media feeds. And with that constant exposure comes a dangerous normalisation: even one of humanity’s gravest crimes begins to feel disturbingly ordinary.

Once we begin explaining atrocities primarily through geopolitics, their moral dimension gradually fades. What remains is the language of political realism: strategic interests, alliances, calculations of power, and expediency. I have seen many people, including in Armenia, justify what is happening in Gaza through precisely these arguments. Yet, these are the very arguments we have long rejected when they were used to excuse the Armenian Genocide. We have criticised governments that placed political interests above moral responsibility, insisting that genocide must be recognised and condemned regardless of geopolitical calculations.

I believe that one day, the world will condemn what is happening in Palestine. Governments that remain silent today may eventually recognise the Palestinian genocide, if geopolitical interests align with recognition, or in an act to ‘punish’ Israel. Whether the current Israeli government is ever held accountable before international courts may ultimately depend less on the gravity of the atrocities than on shifting international alliances. If our current world order remains unchanged, this is the uncomfortable reality we are left with. Yet regardless of whether states choose to recognise atrocities or ignore them for political convenience, the trauma does not disappear. It lingers, it is carried across generations, and it continues to fuel new cycles of violence elsewhere in the world.

In recent days, as I have spoken about recognising the Palestinian genocide, I have repeatedly been asked: Why should we do that? What would it give Armenia? Why should we follow a ‘radical left’ agenda? But perhaps these questions reveal how deeply we have accepted political realism as the only legitimate way of thinking. We have already seen where that logic has brought us as a global community. Should morality really be dismissed as a partisan or ideological position? Is it too much to imagine a world that sees atrocities, speaks about them, and acts before they become irreversible?

As descendants of genocide survivors, do we not bear a particular moral responsibility to condemn what is happening and to speak out? We ask the world to show moral clarity when it comes to our own history, yet too often we hesitate to extend that same clarity to others.

This is why the question is not only political, it is profoundly human. Perhaps one day, the political and the human will no longer stand in opposition.

As the Jewish-Hungarian trauma specialist and Holocaust survivor Gabor Mate put it regarding what is happening in Gaza: ‘It’s impossible to have your eyes open and not to have your heart broken. So I hope your hearts are broken, and I hope they are broken every day, because what’s going on happens every day’.

Six graves and a fountain inside the Surp Garabet Armenian Cemetery in Üsküdar, İstanbul, were damaged in an attack on he nght of Jul 7, the Armenian Patriarchate of Turkey announced.

An unidentified individual climbed over the cemetery wall to enter the grounds and damaged six graves in “an incident that deeply saddened our community,” said the patriarchate. The incident was immediately reported the situation to law enforcement.

“The Patriarchal Seat strongly condemns this heinous attack against the sacred values and eternal resting places of our community, and thanks the law enforcement units continuing their sensitive work to clear up the incident,” the statement said.

Rafi Kirkoryan, the president of the Üsküdar Surp Garabet Church Foundation, told Agos newspaper that the basin section under the fountain was broken during the attack. He added that cross motifs on six separate gravestones were also destroyed. Police teams are continuing their investigation to identify and apprehend the suspect.

Former President of Georgia, ex-head of the Odesa Regional State Administration, and Advisor to the President of Ukraine (2015-2016) Mikheil Saakashvili believes that amid defeats in Ukraine, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin may occupy Georgia and Armenia. He provided a written response to questions from DW, reports UNN.

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Putin is losing to Ukraine, and I am convinced that in parallel he will launch an expansion towards Belarus, Georgia, and Armenia to establish full control

 – Saakashvili stated.

He added that the Russian dictator “has already made a demand” to former Prime Minister of Georgia and businessman Bidzina Ivanishvili, founder of the “Georgian Dream” party, to recognize the Russian-occupied Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.

According to him, Ivanishvili has effectively destroyed the Georgian armed forces at Russia’s demand. The economy is 99% dependent on Russia.

I believe this will escalate into a complete takeover of Tbilisi, and it is not a difficult task at all. Georgia has no friends left capable of helping it. So the only question is when full control will be established. At the same time, Putin will try to capture Armenia, as he despises Pashinyan and can rely on a powerful fifth column there. It is impossible to capture Armenia without already controlling Georgia

– Saakashvili said.

Recall

According to the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, Russia is trying to return to the public space of Georgia not through diplomacy, but through culture.