Ancient Writings of the Near and Middle East

The gallery that houses the latest display has been named in honour of the outstanding collector Nikolai Petrovich Likhachev. The Hermitage is indebted to Nikolai Likhachev (1862–1936) for many written artefacts from the Ancient East, as well as other parts of its stocks. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Russia produced no small number of outstanding collectors, and in recent years the Hermitage has held several grand exhibitions devoted to them. However, the uniqueness of Likhachev’s collection lay not only in its richness and diversity, but also in the actual object of his collecting activities – written artefacts.

Nikolai Likhachev’s chief goal was to recreate the history of writing and of the document, from the Ancient East right through to the 19th century. His collection contained documents from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, Greek inscriptions and papyruses, Western European, Russian and Oriental manuscripts, documents and printed books. The prominent Byzantologist Vladimir Liublinsky called Likhachev a collector on a fabulous scale, and that description has become firmly attached to him.

Likhachev’s collection was kept in his home on Petrozavodskaya Street that now houses the Russian Academy of Sciences Saint Petersburg Institute of History. The scholar’s dream was to create a museum of writing. For a time, such a museum did indeed exist – in 1925 Likhachev’s collection became the Museum of Palaeography (as part of the Academy of Sciences), and Nikolai Petrovich himself was appointed its director. The end of Likhachev’s life proved tragic. The museum was closed down, and in 1938 its stocks were dispersed between several scholarly institutions in Leningrad. A considerable portion of the collection came to the State Hermitage.

The newly opened display does not have the aim of recreating Likhachev’s museum. It has been organized in a different era, in accordance with different conceptions about how exhibits should be presented. It features only part of those objects that entered the Hermitage from Likhachev’s collection, but the display has been inspired by Nikolai Petrovich’s dream of a museum of writing. It is a tribute to the memory of the great collector.

The four halls of the gallery (85–88), alongside the displays of the Ancient East, present written artefacts from Egypt, Mesopotamia and other countries of the Middle East spanning a period from the 4th millennium BC to the end of the 1st millennium AD. In this instance, the exhibits are being viewed not as a source of historical information, as is usually the case in displays that inform visitors about ancient civilizations, but with regard to the form and genre of the artefact, the language and graphic shapes of the writing system.

The first two halls (85 and 86) are devoted to the writing of Mesopotamia (the territory of present-day Iraq) and adjoining countries. The invention of writing in the south of Mesopotamia by the Sumerians or their predecessors more that 5,000 years ago was an information revolution, an extremely important cultural breakthrough in the realm of preserving and passing on information. Today’s information technology is only the latest stage on the long journey from there.

In Mesopotamia the material used for writing was clay, which, in contrast to the papyrus and parchment characteristic of other civilizations, survives very well. Tens of thousands of clay tablets have come down to us today, a number that exceeds the total amount of written artefacts we have from all other civilizations of ancient times. People wrote on clay using a reed stylus that left triangular wedge-shaped marks. So, when written artefacts of this type became known in Europe, the script was termed cuneiform from the Latin word cuneus, meaning “wedge”. Cuneiform existed for more than 3,000 years. It was used by peoples in the Middle East to record a variety of languages. Its role can be compared with that of the Latin alphabet in Europe from the Modern Era onwards.

Individual sections of the display are devoted to the means of conveying information that preceded writing, the emergence and evolution of cuneiform, the genres and visual appearance of documents, the direction of writing. Visitors will learn how Sumerian school pupils learned cuneiform and what the functions of a scribe were in Mesopotamian civilization. The cuneiform artefacts do include works of literature and historical texts, but the overwhelming majority are of a practical, economic nature, giving us an insight into daily life and the everyday concerns of people who lived thousands of years ago.

The third hall (87) is devoted to the writing systems of Egypt. Here visitors can see Egyptian texts on stelas, statues, sarcophagi, vessels and papyruses. The evolution of the forms of Egyptian writing is examined in detail.

Egyptian hieroglyphs appeared late in the 4th millennium BC, in the form of scratched symbols with schematized shapes, but they quite rapidly acquired a monumental character. Alongside the monumental hieroglyphs, a cursive, “linear” form also existed. In that, the shapes of the symbols were considerably simplified, and generalized outlines were used that nonetheless precisely conveyed the character of the corresponding “classical” hieroglyphs, so the visual link between them was not lost. The main area of usage for linear hieroglyphs would be religious texts, where the large volumes involved required simplification of the work, while the need to retain the imagery inherent in the symbols prevented the use of versions that could be written more rapidly.

For everyday purposes, a form of cursive writing known as hieratic was employed, the first examples being only a little more recent than hieroglyphs. Hieratic could be written in columns and rows, but only from right to left. Since the hieratic symbols were derived from hieroglyphs, being greatly simplified forms of them, the main principles remained the same as for hieroglyphs, although the symbols were fewer in number. It is possible to come across symbols that do not have a direct equivalent among the hieroglyphs (and which might in turn be adopted into that script) and numerous ligatures (established ways of writing several symbols together). Means of dividing up a text made their appearance in hieratic: the beginning of a section might be written in red ink (Russian still uses the term “red line” with reference to an indented paragraph), while in the time of the New Kingdom they sometimes put red dots above the line to separate syntagmas – units of phonetics and meaning.

The later demotic script represents the following stage in the development of a rapid writing system, in which the shapes of the symbols were simplified to the point where they completely lost the connection not only with hieroglyphs, but also with their hieratic prototypes. The process went so far as to reduce the shapes of many symbols to identical strokes of the pen, which in combination with the widespread use of ligatures, the contraction of regular combinations of symbols down to one and the diversity of different handwriting styles makes it the most difficult Egyptian writing method to master.

The display ends in Hall 88 with Greek and Coptic papyruses from Egypt. After the campaigns of Alexander the Great and the establishment of Greco-Macedonian ruling dynasties in Egypt and the Middle East, Ancient Greek became the language of international communication and also the language of the cultural elite, the bureaucracy and record keeping. We can assess the significance of the Greek language in the East only from indirect data, as papyrus and parchment (specially treated animal skin) both decay rapidly, and only in rare instances have documents written on those media come down to us today. A fortunate exception occurs in Egypt, where the dry climate and sandy soil are good for the preservation of all sorts of materials, including papyrus. Greek papyruses are most often found in Ancient Egyptian rubbish heaps, where they were thrown when no longer needed. Although dirty, torn and eaten by insects, these fragments are priceless historical sources. In terms of quantity and significance, the Greek papyruses from Egypt can only be compared to cuneiform artefacts. The greater part of them are administrative-economic documents and letters, allowing us to picture the everyday life of ordinary people, something almost unparalleled in the Egyptian papyruses of earlier periods or in the works of Greek and Roman authors. It was not just the Greek language that played an important role in the East, but also the Greek way of writing. The alphabetic system in which, as a rule, one letter corresponded to one sound had tremendous advantages over the archaic Egyptian and cuneiform approaches. Greek letters were sometimes used to convey Akkadian and Sumerian texts, testifying to efforts to use the alphabet to create fresh writing systems in various parts of the Hellenistic world. It was, however, in Egypt that the Greek system played its greatest role, being used to record the Coptic language that was the final stage in the development of Ancient Egyptian.

The display is accompanied by scholarly explanations and a film about the creation and evolution of cuneiform. The museum’s latest display does require effort and concentration to take it in properly, but it allows the inquisitive visitor to learn many new things and to get a real taste of history.

Halls 85–88 on the ground floor of the Winter Palace can be visited by all holders of tickets to the Main Museum Complex during the museum’s working hours.