Daghavarian Egyptian Artifacts
Diana Daghavarian Colpitts' grandparents Dr. Nazaret and Arsine have always been incredibly important, yet enigmatic figures in her life. Growing up, her father Oursa (between 4 and 8 as the genocide happened) was generally reserved when talking about the experiences of their family throughout the genocide. She didn't know much about her grandfather apart from what her aunts and uncle were able to tell her, and knew even less about her grandmother. She knew vaguely about the importance of her grandfather to Armenian identity, particularly his martyrdom. Despite this, her relation to her grandparents, especially Nazaret, was crucial to the formation of her identity. As she recalls;
"Well, he's always loomed over the family larger than life. And you felt like he was there keeping track of you. But it was a matter of pride. We were proud and we always knew that there was an Armenian genocide and what they had been through. His portrait hung over my aunt's couch in her apartment in New York. And so he was always with us."
After her mother's death, Diana was given her grandfather's collection of artifacts. Most were from Cairo, Egypt, bought back to her grandmother/his home after travelling for the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU). Diana assumes the pieces of jewelry in the collection were gifts from her grandfather to her grandmother. It is for this reason that she feels they connect her to the memory of her grandparents, and time passed.
Diana Daghavarian Colpitts' grandfather Nazaret Daghavarian is perhaps one of the faces of the genocide: an incredibly well-educated, well-travelled activist who fought tirelessly until his literal last breath to represent the peace and gentleness of his people. In the later half of his life, Dr. Daghavarian devoted everything to thwarting senseless Armenian removal from their ancestral homeland.
While in Cairo, he co-founded the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU), an organization devoted to offering crucial aid and resources to Armenians within the country and overseas. He became one of the first people apprised of the Ottoman plan of Armenian forced removal through representing Armenia in the Ottoman Parliament in 1915, the year the genocide began. He was working as a member of parliament when he was arrested from his home in Constantinople with his wife and children (the youngest of which was Diana's father Oursa, four years old at the time).
He was martyred in April 1915 during deportation. His wife and children, who barred themselves in Constantinople for four years after his arrest waiting for him to return, never recieved his body.
In his youth, Dr. Daghavarian was an incredibly renowned medical doctor, biologist, agriculturist, astrophysicist, linguist, archivist, writer, and activist for Armenian freedom. He educated himself to the highest degree in any subject that interested him. His life was prosperous, and his contributions to the field of both science and activism are vast. Dr. Daghavarian serves as a prime example of the heinous and violent nature of genocide: a well-educated man with a family and prospects was killed, with all that pivotal world knowlege lost to brutality and erasure.
Although very little is known about these artifacts, they were considered ancient when Dr. Daghavarian bought them in Cairo markets during his travels for AGBU business. Diana, during her pre-interview, revealed she had seen similar objects in an exhibit about ancient Egypt at Brooklyn Museum, some dating to even before the year "AD". It is clear, through examining these artifacts, that Dr. Daghavarian revered objects as memory, and he placed heavy importance in the cultivation and preservation of history.
Diana's grandmother Arsine (Haretz) Daghavarian was born in 1878 in Sebastia. After marrying Nazaret and having four children, she recieved news that the Ottoman Empire wanted to kill her husband, and wrote to him begging him to stay in Cairo, in safety. He, deciding not to cower in the face of impending death, returned home to be with her and their children before he was arrested.
His fate was unknown by Arsine, who stayed waiting for him at their home in Constantinople for four years after he was taken. In 1919, she emigrated to France, carrying a trunk full of his books and artifacts, several of her items, and family photos. She took very little of her own possessions other than a mother-of-pearl and golden photo album, which contained memories from her youth and young adulthood; from a time before she and Nazaret were married. This was clearly the most important possession she owned since, along with the trunk of Dr. Daghavarian's things, it's the only thing taken out of Armenia when they left. For Arsine (from a wealthy family, married into a wealthy family) to leave every piece of jewelry and clothing and furniture she owned and deem a decorative photo album as her most prized possession tells us a lot about Arsine's values. Despite material wealth, she realized, especially through the harrowing experience of genocide which robbed her of her ancestral homeland, her home, and her husband, that the most prized thing was love, and memories of love.
Arsine died in 1924, just five years after emmigrating to France, leaving two of her children who were still minors in the care of a governess. This photo album is one of the ways Diana finds herself connecting to the memory of her grandmother.