Praise and Glory to the Kartuli Language is the first written Kartvelian manuscript discovered on Mount Sinai by Alexandre Tsagareli in 1886. The manuscript exists in four copies: one written in the Kartuli Asomtavruli Alphabet (photo on Homepage) and three in Nuskha-Khutsuri, used only by priests. The text had great religious significance and was recited as a prayer during religious services. Three manuscripts are thought to have been copied by Ioane Zosime in the 10th Century; however, the work itself is dated much earlier, 342 A.D. The mysterious language of the homily provides ample grounds for various views and interpretations which are reflected in the two English translations made by Anna Meskhi (2002) and Zviad Gamsakhurdia (1991), and offered below.
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Buried is the language of Kartuli
To be tortured until the Second Coming of the Lord,
As God opens all tongues through this language.
And, this language named Lazarus in the Gospel
Is dormant to this day.
And, converted by new Nino and Queen Helen
Who are two sisters like Mary and Martha.
And, the herald spoke of friendship
Since all mysteries are buried in this language.
And, this tongue beautified and blessed in the name of the Lord,
Belittled and rejected, awaits the day of the Second Coming of the Lord.
And, its miracle sign is a hundred and four years
Prior to other tongues since the advent of Christ to date.
And, all that’s been written will be declared by one hundred and four
And letter Tsili of the alphabet.
And, David the Profit said four-days dead since “a thousand years is to a single day.”
And, Tsili the letter heads the chapter of Mathew in the Kartuli Gospel
Declaring four thousand prophesies.
And, like the four days and the four-days dead
This language was buried and baptized in its own death.
Ioane Zosime, Copyist, IX c.
Anna Meskhi, Translator, 2002
The translation follows the text published in Old Georgian Poetry V-XII cc.,
Vol. I,
Nakaduli, Tbilisi, 1979.
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