Bishop UKHTANES OF SEBASTIA

Concurrent with the English translation of the History of Lewond, the work of an 8th century Armenian historian of the Arab invasions, published in Philadelphia (1982), this edition of Part II of Bishop Ukhtanes' History of Armenia, again for the first time in this most widely read of Western languages, emerges as a necessary addition to the recently translated and edited Armenian historiographies. This too, undoubtedly, will fill a serious lacuna in the as yet unexplored area of the history of the two Caucasian countries - Armenia and Georgia -particularly in what is known as the severance of the Georgian church from the unity with the Armenian church, which happened at the dawn of the 7th
Part II of Ukhtanes' History, which we are presenting herewith in its entirety is definitely important and represents an indispensable addendum to the main contemporary source of the event known as Girk' T'k'oc' (Book of Letters), survived only in one manuscript text, published only once:in 1901 and translated only partially into French by M. Tallon. Part I of Ukhtanes' work is more elementary and, as explained in the Introductions of this edition, reflects a rough summary of the history of the Armenian people, written by leading Armenian historians of the 5th century.
For the two most unusual proper names which occur so often and repeatedly in the text, it is helpful to list them here with their approximate pronunciations in Armenian: Curtav - Tsurtav K'ert'ol = Kertogh. Unfortunately, for technical reasons proper diacritical marks are not provided to meet the requirements of the standard transliteration a system which we have principally complied with nevertheless.
THE AUTHOR