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An International Scientific Conference: Central Asia from the Akhemenids to the Timurids: Archeology, History, Ethnology and Culture. The 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Alexander Belenitsky On 2 November 2004 a conference jointly directed by the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of the History of Material Culture, the State Hermitage and the Oriental Department of St Petersburg University opened in the Hermitage Theater. The conference sessions are dedicated to the renowned Orientalist scholar and archeologist Alexander Belenitsky. Specialists from institutes and scholarly institutions the world over are taking part. Director of the State Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky opened the conference. The reports which scholars delivered on the first day dealt with major milestones in Belenitsky’s life, reminiscences about him and also his role in bringing together Oriental studies and archeology. A paper by B.I. Marshak and V.I. Raspopova entitled A.M Belenitsky and Penjikent elicited a great deal of interest. Materials from excavations carried out in the urban settlement of ancient Penjikent (7th-8th centuries), a medieval Sogdian town 60 kilometers from Samarkand where Belenitsky headed the archeological work, are among the Hermitage’s proud possessions. The excavations were begun in 1947 by a combined expedition of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Sciences of the Tajik SSR and the State Hermitage. These very rare finds give us an idea of the multi-faceted pre-Islamic urban civilization of Sogda, which was little known prior to the archeological digs. |
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