On 14 February, the Hermitage marks the birthday of Boris Borisovich Piotrovsky (1908–1990), an academician, outstanding archaeologist and Orientalist, who was head of the State Hermitage for over two decades.
On 12 February 2021, the Readings in Memory of Boris Borisovich Piotrovsky were held in an online format. This annual conference traditionally has a very broad range of subject matter, reflecting the breadth of Boris Borisovich’s scholarly interests and the encyclopaedic nature of Hermitage researches.
This year, the first session of the conference was devoted to the Nubian Expedition of the USSR Academy of Sciences that operated in Egypt in 1961–63 under the auspices of UNESCO. The expedition was made up of representatives of various research institutions and was headed by Boris Piotrovsky. Its goal was to save and study ancient monuments in anticipation of the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Some of the archaeological finds that were made in the course of its work are now in the collection of the Hermitage.
The papers presented examined various aspects of the expedition’s activities. Mikhail Piotrovsky spoke about the scholarly and interpersonal atmosphere within the expedition, about its influence in the development of archaeology in its homeland, including the establishment of ties between Soviet archaeologists and their European and Egyptian colleagues, politicians and cultural figures. One of the long-term results of the Nubian Expedition’s work was the exhibition devoted to the treasures of Tutankhamen’s tomb that was held with great success in 1973–74 in Leningrad (at the Hermitage), Moscow and Kiev. Yury Piotrovsky’s presentations concerned the pre-history of the expedition, the organizational aspect of its work and Boris Piotrovsky’s reminiscences. Plans, technical drawings, folders of documents and Boris Piotrovsky’s notebooks still survive and have yet to be processed and published.
The expedition’s finds were interesting from a scholarly point of view, but not the most visually impressive, and its chief significance, as Andrei Bolshakov stated in his papers, lay in the fact that it was an international project, the first exhibition abroad, which became a school for subsequent Soviet expeditions to Iraq, Syria and Yemen, not only from the point of view of scholarship, but also with regard to organization and politics.
Among the most interesting and intriguing discoveries made by the Nubian Expedition was Khor Daoud, a site that displays evidence of intensive animal husbandry but with no signs of a settlement. Natalia Makeyeva spoke about traditional and more recent interpretations of the site.
The papers in the second session were also by tradition devoted to fields in which Boris Piotrovsky was interested: the study of Urartu and the Caucasus, the archaeology of the Northern Black Sea region, and the history of the buildings in the Hermitage complex.
At the end of the conference, Mikhail Piotrovsky brought the audience back to the present day, linking the current situation in the world, including that in the Hermitage, with the Black Death pandemic in the 14th century that preceded the Renaissance. In the Director’s words, the pandemic has brought the Hermitage many trials, but also taught it a great deal. The museum became a luxury for a select few, but it launched strong push on the Internet and social networks, entered people’s lives in the form of Hermitage Television and changed its staff members’ way of life. A sort of casting is going on for visitors to the museum and visitors to the online programmes. In the present-day world, the role of museums as cultural bridges linking people, events and things is clearly in evidence. And the Hermitage, as an innovative conservative and a conservative innovator, is playing a primary role in the establishment of such bridges.
