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At the foot of Mt. Ararat
The exhibition in the Fore-Hall of the Winter Palace is dedicated to
the 100th anniversary of the birth of an outstanding Orientalist and archaeologist
who devoted a considerable part of his life o archaeology in the Caucasus
- the founder of Urartian studies in the country, Boris Borisovich Piotrovsky
(1908-1990).
The items from the collections of the Museum of the History of Armenia
and the Erebuni Fortess Museums reflect Boris Piotrovsky’s many-sided
scholarly interests and his invaluable contribution to the study of the
ancient cultures that existed on Armenian soil.
The exhibits can be divided into several groups. The first group consists
of artefacts of the 12th to 2nd millennia BC from various archaeological
sites on the territory of Armenia: small-scale plastic art, ceramics,
gold and bronze articles and jewellery. The items presented show clearly
the transition from the use of stone to bronze. The character of the depictions
changes - from coarse, schematic images to carefully finished cast articles,
in which the finest details are emphasized. Particularly outstanding are
the bronze weapons - a sword and battle-axe.
The second group comprises artefacts belonging to the Urartian culture
of the 9th to 7th centuries BC. Urartu was an ancient Middle Eastern state
that formed on the Armenian uplands in the 9th century BC. It arose out
of an alliance of tribes created to resist the might of Assyria. Urartu
is notable not only for its military successes, but also for its advanced
art. This includes monumental architecture (Teishebaini, Erebuni, Argishtikhinili),
fresco painting (Erebuni) and artistic crafts. The exhibition includes
sculptural depictions of deities in bronze and clay, bone and stone figurines
of animals, ceramics, gold and silver ornaments and vessels, and also
bronze armour, military accoutrements and cult utensils bearing dedicatory
inscriptions of the Urartian kings and a few clay tablets carrying cuneiform
texts. The majority of the Urartian artefacts come from the excavations
of the Teishebaini fortress (present-day Karmirblur on the western outskirts
of Yerevan) that were carried out from 1939 to 1971 by a joint archaeological
expedition of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR and the State
Hermitage under the leadership of Boris Piotrovsky and made the systematic
study of Urartian civilization possible.
The exhibits of the third group date from the 6th and 5th centuries BC
and represent the post-Urartian period on Armenian territory. Notable
among them are two rhytons (figured drinking vessels): a ceramic one in
the form of a calf and a silver one featuring a half-figure of a horseman.
The last group includes glass items from mediaeval Dvin (8th-13th centuries
AD) and is a tribute to the memory of the prominent scholar and archaeologist
Ripsime Dzhanpoladian, Boris Piotrovsky’s wife, who devoted her life to
the study of mediaeval Armenian culture and made a major contribution
to the study of glass-making in Armenia.
The Hermitage Publishing House has produced an illustrated catalogue
raisonne for the exhibition. The curator is Anna Nikolayevna Novikova,
a junior researcher in the Hermitage’s Department of the East.
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At the press-conference
Ruben Vardanjan, Head of Department of the Numismatic Department of the
Museum of the History of Armenia
Tamara Chelingarjan, curator of the Erebuni Museum
Mikhail Piotrovsky,
Director of the State Hermitage Museum, and Anna Novikova, curator of
the exibition, at the opening/ of the exhibition
At the exhibition
The exhibition catalogue
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