Monastery of Shiomghvime or the Cave of Shio in the impossible to pronounce Georgian language
As mentioned in my earlier introductory post on Georgia, Georgian (Kartvelian language family) is a language which is unrelated to any other languages in the world, making it a primary language family. One of the main features of Kartvelian is the crazy groupings of consonants, MGHVime, MTKVari, TSKHoveli… How do you even pronounce them? Why not something simple for cave like ‘gua’ (Malay), or ‘dong’ (Chinese), or ‘puk’ (Mizo)???
By the way, the Caucasus is a treasure trove of impossible consonant-loving languages. It has two other primary language groups (totally unrelated language families) in the world: 1) Northwest Caucasian (languages of the Circassian regions of Russia and the breakaway Georgian state of Abkhazia) and 2) Northeast Caucasian (languages of Chechnya, Ingushetia & Dagestan regions of Russia). There're no other languages like them and they are unrelated to each other, but they all have one thing in common, crazy consonant groups!
Anyway, back to the topic, Shiomghvime is medieval monastery built around a cave where St Shio, a Christian monk and missionary from Assyria (present day Iraq and Syria) spent his last days as a hermit. This was in the 6th century! Pictures coming up.
Shio-Mghvime Monastery, Georgia – it’s a 20-30 mins drive from Mtskheta
The hills surrounding Shiomghvime, Mtskheta, Georgia
Is that the entrance to the cave?? We (the kids and I) went down there and there was something like a tomb. Got out as fast as we could! And we were the only ones in there at that time. Didn’t tell the missus. She’d freak out. (Once she took some photos of a temple in Thailand at night without realising that it was surrounded by graves. She deleted every single photo when she realized what she did)
The interior of the church at Shio-Mghvime
Another church - the plaque names it as the Church of St John the Baptist
Pilgrims at Shiomghvime
Now that’s too colourful for a pilgrim… Oh, it’s you honey!
There. One quick photo post done! Till we meet again, see ya!
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