The central dome, which is supported on piers in the interior, consists of a polygonal drum with a window in each face surmounted by a conical roof. A false arcade with slender columns and pointed arches enriches, together with a carved cornice, the simplicity of the design. This dome is believed to date from the seventh century, and to be the work which the Katholikos Komitas (617-625) erected in place of an earlier structure in wood. If this be the case we have an example of this form of dome in Armenia a hundred years before the time when it is supposed by Fergusson to have been developed. [152] It is a pity that some vandal has daubed it over with plaster and paint, which invests it with a grotesque appearance. Above each window is a medallion containing the head of a saint, and I saw traces of spiral carving on the columns. An almost flat-roofed building with this dome in the centre, with four projecting apses, one at each point of the compass and each surmounted by a little belfry--such would appear to have been the original exterior of the edifice which we see at the present day. An ingenious traveller, whose judgment was influenced by the cornice of the building, and perhaps too by certain stone slabs with Greek inscriptions which are inserted in the walls, has conjectured that this exterior, with the exception of the dome and belfries, dates at least in part from the reign of King Tiridates (end of the third and commencement of the fourth century). [153] He has gone so far as to present us with an illustration, showing what he conceives to have been the original form. [154] We know from Moses of Khorene that this monarch erected at Garni in the district of Erivan a building of surpassing beauty to his sister Khosrovidukht; and it is almost certain that the remains of a purely classical building which have been seen by modern travellers upon that site belong to this monument or to one of the same period. [155] The presumption of Dubois is therefore justified that a building of the reign of Tiridates would be likely to display classical features and ornaments. But his conjecture as regards this particular church must at present be considered to belong to the realm of hypothesis. The presence of the slabs with the Greek inscriptions would prove nothing; they may have been taken from an earlier building, or they may quite well be later in date than the invention and use of the Armenian alphabet in the fifth century. Dubois indeed is inclined to ascribe them to a period earlier than the conversion of Tiridates, and to see in them memorials of a Christianity practised in Armenia prior to the preaching of St. Gregory. This conjecture, which is adopted with complacency by Ritter, is probably quite baseless. The