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Alexander the Great. The Road
to the East On 13 February 2007, one of the largest exhibitions of the year opened in the rooms of the Neva Enfilade in the Winter Palace. The exhibition 's key idea is to show not only the personality of Alexander the Great but the transformations which the Age of Alexander brought in. The main theme of the exhibition is Alexander 's travels, the Eastern campaign and its consequences both for the West and for the East. The exhibition shows how great civilizations met - the Hellenistic world, the ancient empires of the East and the world of nomads. Everywhere that Alexander went, the process of Hellenization was begun. Everywhere he spread Greek architecture and art, the Greek language and way of life. This influence affected a huge territory extending from Greece to India and right up to Mongolia and other states beyond the frontiers of the Oecumena (i.e., the world as it was known to the Greeks). At the focus of attention is the historic role played by Alexander in the destiny of Western Europe, Russia and the East, and Hellenism as a global process of interaction between civilizations and cultures. This is the first time that an exhibition devoted to Hellenism has been organized on such a large scale. The exhibition displays more than 500 artifacts and embraces the chronological period from the 5th century B.C. until the end of the 19th century. Seven departments of the State Hermitage helped to prepare the exhibition. The State Hermitage Publishing House issued a catalogue in time for the exhibition 's opening. The exhibition 's curator and the scholarly editor of the catalogue is A.A. Trofimova, director of the Department of the Ancient World. More than 180 of the exhibits on display are being presented to the public
for the first time. The exhibition is accompanied by a video film about
Alexander of Macedon and his conquests which was prepared by the Sector
of Computer and Information Technologies.
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Copyright
© 2011 State Hermitage Museum |
