Egyptian Studies at the Institute of Oriental ManuscriptsThe first Egyptian scholars at the Department of Ancient East, which was formed in 1959, were I.G.Livshits, Y.J.Perepelkin and O.D.Berlev. In 1960 the Department was joined by H.A.Kink and the Coptic scholar A.I.Elanskaya who had just completed their doctoral courses. Two years later they were joined by I.V.Vinogradov.
The Leningrad scholars of that time developed some new academic fields in the Soviet Egyptian Studies.
Isaac G. Livshits explored the culture of Ancient Egypt. He was a great expert on epigraphs and contributed much to their study. His principal papers were devoted to the early sarcophagi kept in Russia at the Hermitage and the Moscow Pushkin Museum. During the 1950s he prepared an album of the photocopies of the sarcophagi from the collection of V.S.Golenishchev (dated to the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 2nd Millennia). Unfortunately, the edition was never published. But his ideas were reflected in numerous papers, the most important of which was that devoted to the Sarcophagus It. He paid a special attention to the study of texts engraved on the sarcophagi.
I.G.Livshits also explored Egyptian Grammar and literature. Unfortunately, he issued just few short papers on the matter while alive. Only in 1979 a great anthology of Classical Egyptian literature in his translations (The Tales and Stories of Ancient Egypt) was posthumously published and it proved to be a brilliant piece of work. It seems that later scholars did not pursue his complex theoretic study of Egyptian literature though, of course, some of its aspects were developed.
Moreover, I.G.Livshits was interested in the history of the Egyptian Studies, though his major papers on the matter were published only in the 1950s. The history of Russian Egyptian Studies was explored then by O.D.Berlev.
During his time as a fellow of the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of History, Yuri J. Pepepelkin completed the first part of his research devoted to the epoch of Amarna. It was entitled The Revolution of Amenhotp IV [Переворот Амен-хотпа IV] and was published in 1967. After he joined the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies Y.Perepelkin went on preparing the second part of his monograph which was published only in 1984. Before it he issued a short monograph entitled The Secret of the Golden Tomb that treated the same epoch on the basis of one text, and the final part of his fundamental academic research entitled Kia and Smenkhkare. On the End of the Sun-Worshipping Revolt [Кэйе и Семнех-ке-рэ. К исходу солнцепоклоннического переворота в Египте] (1979). Both parts (just like the first one before) had been written long before they were published and the second part of The Revolution… was even cut in volume much. One of the chapters of this monograph was later issued in the Bulletin of Ancient History journal (Вестник древней истории) thanks to the efforts by E.S.Bogoslovsky who did his best to publish the works of his teacher posthumously. It remains unclear what happened to the 3rd part of the The Revolution… Anyway the works by Y.Perepelkin turned out to be an extensive study of such a crucial period of the Egyptian history as that of the Revolution of Amenhotp IV, study that was based upon the scrutiny of each and every source on the matter.
In the same manner he wrote his works on the history of the Old Kingdom. In addition to a number of papers he published his first book on it in 1966 entitled Private Property as Viewed by the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom [Частная собственность в представлении египтян Старого царства] and focused on the term djt (flesh), by which the Egyptians designated the idea of property relations. This work was continued by the monograph Economy of Old Egyptian Nobles [Хозяйство староегипетских вельмож] that had been written in the 1960s but published as late as in 1988. These works were the cornerstone of the study of the Old Kingdom in Russia. The books by Y.Perepelkin on the epoch of the Old Kingdom had a great significance for the Egyptian studies worldwide since before him, judging by a number of papers, the social-economic aspects of the Old Egyptian life had never been recognized as important enough. Private Property was translated into German and published in Western Germany in 1986.
Apart from Y.Perepelkin the social-economical side of the Old Kingdom epoch was highlighted by O.D.Berlev in a number of his papers. At the moment I.V.Bogdanov (works at the IOM from the end of 2001) carries on researching into this field.
Encyclopedic knowledge of Egyptian history made possible for Y.Perepelkin to write in the 1950s a number of essays for the academic project entitled Worldwide History [Всемирная история]. Later, also for a collective edition though of less gigantic scale, he wrote a significant chapter on the history of Egypt. The main part of it was published in the second part of The History of the Ancient Orient [История Древнего Востока] in 1988. The entire work (supplied with important additions such as a chapter on the Late Kingdom and a special essay on the Early Dynastic period) was published in 2000 only.
Hilda A. Kink (worked at the Institute in 1960-1976) was an expert on the study of Ancient Egypt. Her PhD Dissertation on the transitory epoch when Egypt moved from the pre-class society to the class one (1963) was published under in 1963 as a monograph Egypt Before the Pharaohs. It treated various aspects of the material life of Ancient Egypt as reconstructed on the basis of archaeological data. Being a follower of Y.Perepelkin, H.Kink wrote a number of monographs such as those on the technical methods of the pyramids construction, all aspects of craftwork in Ancient Egyptian and Syro-Palestine societies (some papers were also devoted to the matter), the structure of Ancient Egyptian temples, etc. H.Kink developed a great understanding of the technological skills of the Ancient Egyptians that resulted in a lot of interesting conclusions and ideas concerning various aspects of both materials processing and craftwork, agricultural and food production.
Oleg Dmitievich Berlev studied the social-economic history of Middle Kingdom or, more exactly, of the period from the end of Old Kingdom to the beginning of the New Kingdom. He started with a number of papers and a PhD dissertation on “the king’s slaves” which eventually brought about two monographs such as The Working People in the Middle Kingdom Of Egypt [Трудовое население Египта в эпоху Среднего царства] (1972) and The Social Relationships in the Middle Kingdom of Egypt [Общественные отношения в Египте эпохи Среднего царства] (1978). The third part of his research of the Middle Kingdom society was never published. O.Berlev felt quite at ease in the limitless sea of the sources and his books are full with notes on most various aspects of the history and culture of Egypt. These books are treated now as classical ones and turned out to be the cornerstone for the later researches into social structure of Middle Kingdom. In some short papers devoted to the same matter he treated also economics of Egypt from the end of the 3rd to the beginning of the 2nd Millennia BCE.
Another important aspect of academic research by O.Berlev was that on dynastic history of Egypt and it resulted in several papers and annotations. Those on the royal genealogy of the Second Transitory period and on the king Userkare of the Sixth Dynasty are among the most important.
A special place in the academic activity of O.Berlev is occupied by works on the royal ideology (i.e. the role of the king as both a deity and a ruler) in Egypt. A number of ideas expressed in some of his early papers and books resulted in the conception that O.Berlev rendered in the paper Two Kings as Two Suns [Два царя — Два Солнца] written in the 1970s and published in 2003 in Germany IN A commemorative collection of papers. The conception exerted a certain influence on scholars interested in the matter. He enlarged it later with some new notices reflected in a few papers (the most important among them is entitled Geb’s Heritage [Наследство Геба], 1999) and editions of texts. His works on the history of the Egyptian religion, the principal of which are devoted to “the Nemti problem”, also brought about some discoveries. Thus, O.Berlev was first to find out this name in the hieroglyphic, hieratic and other texts, and the first to study his role in the history of religion. This discovery was met with a great interest in the academic society and made a new impetus to the research activities (later a monograph on Nemti was published and the reading of the king’s name proffered by O.Berlev was comfirmed by new evidence).
In cooperation with S.O.Hodjash O.Berlev edited two big volumes of the Ancient Egyptian artifacts of the epoch kept at the Moscow Pushkin Museum. In them the talents of O.Berlev as an epigraphist and historic with a really fresh vision revealed themselves clearly. These works may be described as true encyclopedias of the Ancient Egyptian life.
Igor Vladimirovich Vinogradov developed the project Agrarian Relationships in Egypt at the Epoch of the 20th Dynasty [Земельные отношения в Египте эпохи XX династии] mostly based upon the Wilbour papyrus. He published a few papers on this subject and in 1970 defended the PhD dissertation. Right after that he moved from the Institute to Leningrad State University, the Department of Asian and African studies, the section of the history of the Ancient Eastern countries.
Eugene Stepanovich Bogoslovsky was a great expert on the texts from the New Kingdom. He paid a special attention to the study of Deir el-Medina, the famous community of workmen and craftsmen located near to Thebes. He wrote three monographs, and the first of them was dedicated to the texts and artifacts from Deir el-Medina kept in the Soviet collections (1972-73). Another book, that was in fact his enlarged PhD dissertation, Servants of Pharaohs, Gods and Private Persons and Craftsmen of Ancient Egypt [„Слуги“ фараонов, богов и частных лиц. К социальной истории Египта XVI–XIV вв. до н. э. ] (1979) treated the social category of the so-called “obedient to the call” at the epoch of the New Kingdom. Most documents on the matter are also from Deir el-Medina. The third book, and the principal one, Ancient Egyptian Craftsmen. According to the Data from Deir el-Medina [Древнеегипетские мастера. По материалам из Дер эль-Медина] (1983) was written with the use of 19000 documents. The books present a vivid picture of the life of the community members, creative professionals and workmen. The Bogoslovky book is among the best studies of the history of the Ancient Egyptian society because it scrutinized and generalized a very rich and unique set of documents. E.Bogoslovsky was one of the principal international experts on Deir el-Medina who had equally good skills of art critic, paleographer, epigrapher and theoretician of history. He wrote also many papers, devoted first of all to the edition of various texts and study of certain aspects of the New Kingdom history. His papers on the economic system of Ancient Egypt of the second half of the second Millennium BCE are especially interesting.
Our scholars achieved great success in the sphere of Egyptian philology. Alla I. Elanskaya studied Coptic Grammar, her works bringing her the worldwide fame. Alexander S. Chetverukhin (at the Department from 1971 to 2007) studies the syntax of Old Egyptian and, from the standpoint of Common Afrasian linguistics, its vocalization and morphology. He also pays attention to Coptic studies and texts of the Pyramids, and has published an important monograph The Ancient Afrasian Nominal Sentence: Analysis and Reconstruction [Древнейшее афразийское именное предложение: проблемы анализа и реконструкции].
Dr Ivan V. Bogdanov
(Translated by Dr A. Zorin; proofread by S. Wickham-Smith) |
