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This eighteenth-century Armenian leather binding that encloses a mid-thirteenth-century Gospel is decorated with silver studs, now tarnished, in the form of a cross in the upper center. A pair of small silver plaques in the shape of the "evil eye" are set on either side. The crystal, with its cruciform grooves in the center, is particularly notable; it may have held a relic at one time, underscoring the power and importance attached to Gospel books in Armenian culture.