Boris Borissowitsch Piotrowski

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Boris Borissowitsch Piotrowski (1988)

Boris Borissowitsch Piotrowski ( Russian Борис Борисович Пиотровский , scientific transliteration Boris Borisovič Piotrovskij ; born  February 14, 1908 in Saint Petersburg ; † October 15, 1990 ibid) was a Russian archaeologist and director of the Hermitage in Leningrad .

Live and act

Piotrowski studied from 1925 in his hometown with Natalja Dawidowna Flittner Egyptology and Near Eastern antiquity. During his studies he took part in archaeological excursions to the northern Caucasus and Transcaucasia . He later led an excavation expedition to Nubia and became internationally known because of this and his expedition to the Armenian-East Anatolian border area. From 1931 he was a research assistant at the Hermitage, became its deputy director in 1948 and, from 1953, also the head of the Leningrad Department of the Archaeological Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences . In 1964 he was appointed director of the Hermitage to succeed Mikhail Illarionovich Artamonov . At the same time he also taught at Leningrad University, where he headed the chair for the Ancient Near East.

Memorial plaque in Yerevan

Boris Piotrowski's research was primarily devoted to the cultures of the Scythians , the Near Eastern and Central Anatolian peoples of early antiquity. He paid particular attention to the hitherto largely unexplored history of the Kingdom of Urartu , a state that flourished in the area of ​​Lake Van from the 9th to the 6th centuries BC . He discovered and described the culture of this empire and described its influence and radiation on the Middle East and the early Greek Mediterranean world. Despite the ideological tensions prevailing in the world, he maintained absolute scientific objectivity in the management of the Hermitage and his research results.

In addition to numerous other honors, Piotrowski was accepted as a foreign member of the Order Pour le Mérite for science and the arts on June 5, 1984 . Since 1967 he has been a corresponding member of the British Academy and since 1968 of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

He was married to Hripsime Janpoladjan . His son Michail Borissowitsch Piotrowski (* 1944) has been the director of the Hermitage since 1992.

Web links

Commons : Boris Piotrovsky  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The order "Pour le Mérite" for science and the arts (ed.): The members of the order. Vol. 3: The deceased from 1953–1992. Lambert Schneider-Verlag, Gerlingen 1994, ISBN 3-7953-0374-5 , p. 196.
  2. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed July 17, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Piotrowski, Boris Borissowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Piotrovskij, Boris Borisovič; Пиотровский, Борис Борисович (Russian spelling)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian archaeologist and director of the Hermitage in Leningrad
DATE OF BIRTH February 14, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Petersburg
DATE OF DEATH October 15, 1990
Place of death St. Petersburg