The Hermitage guide

In 1925 the very rich collection of objects of applied art from the Museum of the Stieglitz School in Leningrad was transferred to the Hermitage. This collection included examples of Byzantine art and a magnificent selection of Central Asian, Iranian and Turkish carpets, textiles, glazed tiles, ceramics and bronzes. These articles formed the basis of a number of sections within the Department, notably that of the Far East. In 1934 a collection of articles of Buddhist art, fragments of temple murals and loess sculptures, that had been gathered by Oldenburg’s expeditions to the northern oases of Sinkiang in 1909— 10 and 1914—15, came to the Hermitage from the Academy of Sciences’ Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. In 1933 the Hermitage received from the Ethnography Department of the Russian Museum the finds of two expeditions (1908 and 1926) of the famous Russian explorer Piotr Kozlov — the man who conducted the excavations of Khara-Khoto — and in 1934, the world-famous relics discovered by him in 1924—25 in the Hunnish barrows in the Noin-Ula Mountains (Mongolian Peoples’ Republic). About the same time the Hermitage bought the rich collection of terra-cottas, ossuaries and glyptics, formed by Boris Kastalsky, a student of local lore. In 1931 many items, albeit far from all, once in the Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantinople, were returned to the Soviet Union. Among these was a good selection of Palmyrene reliefs and a rich collection of Byzantine lead seals. In 1930 and 1934 a number of Byzantine and Greek icons, some collected by the outstanding Russian scholar Nikolai Likhachov and the others probably by the expedition of P. Sevastyanov, were transferred from the Russian Museum to the Hermitage. It is also largely due to Likhachov’s work that the Hermitage has such a rich assortment of cuneiform tablets, Egyptian papyri, ancient Oriental glyptics as well as palaeographic and epigraphic materials of later date. The Section of the Ancient Orient was enlarged by the inclusion of the collection of the famous Egyptologist Boris Turayev and numerous items from the collection of Alexander Bobrinsky who for many years was Chairman of the Archaeological Commission.

The Hermitage sent out special expeditions with the aim of comprehensively studying the culture of Eastern peoples. Valuable artefacts were acquired at the North Daghestan village of Kubachi. This village is a site which has remained peculiarly intact and preserved unique textiles, ceramics and bronzes made by craftsmen in the Transcaucasia, Iran and Egypt. From the same site came bronze cauldrons and stone slabs with relief decoration, of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and of more recent date. Since the middle of the 1920s the Hermitage collection have been enriched with scientifically documented materials from archaeological excavations in Central Asia, the Transcaucasia, and other regions.

The Department’s increasing scientific activity kept up with the continued growth of its collections. Young scientists came to work there alongside such outstanding Orientalists as Vasily Struve, Natalia Flittner, Ernst Kwerfeldt, Vasily Alexeyev, Nikolai Nevsky, and Camilla Trever. By the end of the 1930s, the progress in Soviet Oriental studies necessitated a fundamental revision of the existing exhibitions, with the materials traditionally organized in three main sections: the Ancient Orient, the Medieval Near and Middle East, and the Far East.

This scheme, however, did not reflect clearly enough the actual historical development of the cultures of these different countries and peoples. The first exhibition of a new type, The Culture and Art of the Peoples of Central Asia, was held in 1940. Archaeological activity was also expanding, highlighted by the successful excavation of Karmir-Blur (near Erevan) begun in 1939 under the direction of Boris Piotrovsky, and the excavations at Paikend (Central Asia) started in 1939 by Alexander Yakubovsky and Vladimir Kesayev. Scientific work was continued during the Great Patriotic War of 1941—45, in besieged Leningrad as well as in evacuation areas.

Today the research and exhibition work of the Department is divided between four sections: the Ancient Orient, the Near and Middle East and the Byzantine Empire, India and the Far East, and the Caucasus and Central Asia.

The Section of the Ancient Orient houses cultural and artistic material from Ancient Egypt (including the Ptolemaic, Roman and Coptic periods), and from Babylonia, the Palmyra, Assyria and the neighbouring countries.