Michael E. Stone, Senior Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, will present a lecture titled “A Hidden Treasure: The Armenian Adam Epic by Arakel of Siwnik” at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 23, in the Mumford Room, sixth floor of the Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C.

The event is sponsored by the Library’s John W. Kluge Center and the Near East Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress in cooperation with the Embassy of the Republic of Armenia. The public is invited to this free event.

Michael E. Stone is professor of Armenian Studies and Gail de Nur Professor of Religious Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. A scholar with impressive credentials in Judaica, Hebraica, and biblical and Armenian studies, Stone is the author of numerous books and articles. In addition, he is a poet with a longtime interest in the “Adam” literature and has been focusing his research at the Library of Congress on an original extended Armenian poem, the “Adamagirk” (“Book of Adam”), written by Arakel of Siwnik.

Arakel of Siwnik (ca. 1350 - ca. 1421) stood at the end of two traditions. He was abbot of the Monastery of Tat’ew, the last of Armenia’s university monasteries, and he was the last to write an Armenian biblical epic. “Adamagirk” exhibits a combination of brilliant poetic narrative with homiletics. Stone is preparing an annotated and literary translation of the work that will be accessible to both scholars and the lay community. His talk will set the epic in the context of literary and religious thought during the period when Armenia was under Mongol domination.

The Library of Congress established the John W. Kluge Center in 2000 through a generous endowment from its namesake to bring together the world’s best thinkers to stimulate, energize and distill wisdom from the Library’s rich resources and to interact with policymakers in the nation’s capital. The Kluge endowment also funded a million-dollar prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities and social sciences, which will be awarded for the first time this fall, on Nov. 5.

The Kluge Center houses five senior Kluge Chairs (American Law and Governance, Countries and Cultures of the North, Countries and Cultures of the South, Technology and Society, and Modern Culture); other senior-level chairs (Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations, Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in American History and Ethics, and the Harissios Papamarkou Chair in Education and Technology); and nearly 25 postdoctoral fellows.

For more information about fellowships, grants and programs offered by the John W. Kluge Center, contact the Office of Scholarly Programs, Library of Congress, 101 Independence Avenue S.E., Washington, DC 20540-4860; telephone (202) 707-3302, fax (202) 707-3595, or visit the Web at www.loc.gov/kluge More information about the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division can be found on the Web at