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ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
78
which runs round the church wall outside. It must be
derived from heathen temples, as will be seen later. There
is a remarkable likeness between the church we are considering
and that of Hripsime at Echmiadzin, mentioned elsewhere
(in Chapter IX).
The bareness of the interior gives one the impression that
the church has never been used, or possibly it was never
made properly ready for use. It is strange, too, that the
churches in Georgia were so often built on high inaccessible
cliffs, where no doubt they could easily be seen by the people
and the Deity, but where it was not so easy to visit them.
One cannot help thinking of a remark made by the Frenchman
Chardin, who travelled in Georgia in 1672 :
" The Georgians . . . have a very curious custom of
building most of their churches on high mountains. . . . You
look at them and salute them at a distance of three or four
leagues ; but you never go to them ; and you may be pretty
sure that the majority of them are not opened oftener than
once in ten years. I have never been able to understand the
motive for this extravagance. . . . But I can only suppose
that they build them in these inaccessible places in order to
avoid decorating them or keeping them in repair."
Possibly the custom of building churches on high cliffs
may be connected with the religious observances of the
Persians, of whom Herodotus says (I, 131) that "they are
wont to ascend high hills and bring offerings to Zeus there,
Zeus being the nåme they give to the whole heavenly sphere."
This would also agree with the supposition that there was a
place of sacrifice on this mountain in olden days.
Beside this large church is quite a small, long-shaped one
with a dome (see the sketch on p. 77), said to have been
built by Mthavar Guaram I between a.d. 545 and 586. We
were conducted into a little room with an apse, and here we
saw a stone seat which, according to our informant, was the
throne of the ancient kings. At last in the same room with
Thamara ! And I stood reverently before the time-honoured
stones where perhaps she once sat in all her dazzling beauty.
But on second thoughts it seemed less likely. The Georgian
rulers left Mtskhetha as long ago as the beginning of the
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