numerous items on display, including manuscripts and religious objects. Among its notable exhibits are the Holy Lance (Spear), relics belonging to Apostles of Jesus and John the Baptist, and a fragment of Noah's Ark. Significance The locus of Etchmiadzin is "a sanctified soil" similar to Temple Mount and the Golden Temple, for Jews and Sikhs, respectively. In his first encyclical (1893) as Catholicos, Mkrtich Khrimian called the cathedral the "Zion of Ararat." In 1991 Catholicos Vazgen I described the cathedral as "our Solomon's Temple." The cathedral complex has been called "Armenian Vatican" or "Armenian Mecca" as it is a major pilgrimage site for Armenians worldwide. Since the cathedral has been so important to the development of Armenians' sense of identity, a pilgrimage to Etchmiadzin is "as much as ethnic as a religious experience." Anglican archdeacon and historian Theodore Edward Dowling wrote in 1910 that Etchmiadzin and Mount Ararat are the "two great objects of Armenian veneration." For many centuries, Etchmiadzin was the national and political center of the stateless Armenian people, with one journalist describing it as "the focal point of Armenians everywhere." Before the foundation of the First Republic of Armenia and the official designation of Yerevan as its capital in 1918, Western sources emphasized Etchmiadzin's political significance. A 1920 book prepared by the Historical Section of the British Foreign Office acknowledged that Etchmiadzin "was regarded as the national capital of the Armenians." "Deprived of a political head and even a political capital the [Armenian] people have, for at least five hundred years, looked to Etchmiadzin as the home of their people, the centre to which they looked for guidance, unfailing sympathy, and practical aid," wrote W. Llewelyn Williams in 1916. Oldest cathedral Etchmiadzin is considered by a number of scholars as Armenia's first cathedral. It has sometimes been described as Armenia's first church building, but this claim has found little support among scholars. Robert W. Thomson, Stepan Mnatsakanian, Vrej Nersessian, and Grigoryan have all rejected it and posit that Armenia's first church was in Ashtishat, in the Taron region of Western Armenia. Thomson argues that Etchmiadzin was neither the first church, nor the first cathedral in Armenia. A 2020 book on the cathedral, authorized by the Armenian Church, insisted that Etchmiadzin is the first church of Christian Armenia, although earlier Christian places of worship such as chapels or shrines existed prior. A number of scholars also hold that