The Martyrdom of the Holy Queen Shushanik (also translated as The Passion of Saint Shushanik; Georgian

Georgian language

Georgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...

: წამებაჲ წმიდისა შუშანიკისი დედოფლისაჲ, C’amebay C’midisa Shushanikisi Dedop’lisay) is the first extant piece of Georgian

Georgia (country)

Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

 literature. Purported to have been written between 476

476

Year 476 was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Basiliscus and Armatus...

 and 483

483

Year 483 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Aginantius without colleague...

, the earliest surviving manuscript dates from the 10th century. The author is Iakob Tsurtaveli

Iakob Tsurtaveli

Jacob of Tsurtavi also known as Jacob the Priest was the 5th-century Georgian religious writer and priest from Tsurtavi, then the major town of Gogarene and the Lower Iberia....

 (Jacob of Tsurtavi), a contemporary and participant of the events described in this hagiographic novel.
The Armenian version that exists is a translation that was translated 400 years after Tsurtaveli wrote the masterpiece.

The novel describes the martyrdom of Saint Shushanik

Shushanik

Saint Shushanik was a Christian woman who was murdered by her husband Varsken in the town of Tsurtavi, Georgia. Since she died defending her right to profess Christianity, she is regarded as a martyr...

, an Armenian noblewoman, at the hand of her spouse, bidaxae (high prince) Varsken, who had renounced Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

 and embraced Zoroastrianism

Zoroastrianism

Zoroastrianism is a religion and philosophy based on the teachings of prophet Zoroaster and was formerly among the world's largest religions. It was probably founded some time before the 6th century BCE in Greater Iran.In Zoroastrianism, the Creator Ahura Mazda is all good, and no evil...

. Shushanik, whose father was the sparapet

Sparapet

Sparapet was a hereditary military rank that originated in the 2nd century BC, under the reign of King Artashes I, and was used in the Kingdom of Armenia and the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia , was supreme commander of the armed forces. It was the equivalent of the Parthian Spahbod Sparapet was a...

 (military leader) of the Christians in Armenia, refused to follow him, and died as a martyr

Martyr

A martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce, or accept, a belief or cause, usually religious.-Meaning:...

 after years of imprisonment and tortures.

The work was first published in 1882. It has been translated into Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

, French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 and Hungarian

Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....

. In 1979, UNESCO

UNESCO

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

marked the 1500-anniversary of the Martyrdom of the Holy Queen Shushanik.