38
Herakles Slaying the Lion of Nemea
Marble. Roman copy of Lysippos’ original. 4th century B.C.
39
Portrait oj Lucias Verus
Marble. Rome. 2nd century
40
Portrait of Emperor Philip the Arabian
Marble. Rome. 3rd century
41
Portrait of an Unknown Roman
Bronze. Rome. 1st century B.C.
42
Bust of a silenus
Detail of a bronze decoration of a chariot. Thrace. Late 2nd — early 3rd century
43
Bronze statuette Kithared.
Roman copy of a Greek original. 470—460 B.C.
44
Portrait of Dynamis
Bronze. 1st century
45
The Zeus Cameo
Sardonyx. Egypt, Alexandria. 3rd century B.C.
46
The Gonzaga Cameo with a representation of Ptolemy Philadelphus and his wife Arsinoë
Sardonyx. Egypt, Alexandria. 3rd century B.C.
47
Temple pendants with a head of Athena
Gold. Greece. 4th century B.C.
48
Bracelet
Gold. Eastern Mediterranean coast area. 3rd century
49
Terra-cotta statuette: standing girl
Greece, Tanagra. 3rd century B.C.
50
Terra-cotta statuette: two girl friends
Greece, Corinth. Second half of the 4th century B.C.
51
Mirror-stand with Aphrodite and erotes
Bronze. 5th century B.C.
52
Figured vessel
Clay. Greece, Attica. Made by Charin. C. 510 B.C.
53
Amphora
Glass. Syria. Made by Ennion. 1st century
54
Vessel
Glass. Rome. 1st century
The Department of the Art and Culture of the Peoples of the East
The Department of the Art and Culture of the Peoples of the East was organized in 1920, after the October Revolution of 1917, with the active participation of three outstanding Russian Orientalists Nikolai Marr, Sergei Oldenburg and Vasily Barthold. Their pupil Iosif Orbeli became the first Head of the Department. Today the Department has one of the world’s most important collections of Oriental art.
Interest in Eastern artefacts arose in Russia long ago; the first Russian museum, Peter the Great’s Kunstkammer (Cabinet of Curios), housed a large number of Oriental coins, and a series of prominent works of art from Graeco-Bactria, Syria and Achaemenid Persia. Catherine II had a collection of glyptics that included engraved gems from Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Parthia, Sassanian Iran, Byzantium, and China. Apparently in the 1770s, Admiral Grigory Spiridov brought from the Archipelago a Byzantine marble slab depicting circus scenes, and some relics of classical antiquity. Also around this time Sassanian and Byzantine silver vessels were found at Sludka, a village in Perm province. All these items later formed the basis of the Hermitage Oriental collections.
Interest in Egyptology was aroused in Russia, as in many other European countries, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1826—27 the Academy of Sciences acquired the collection of the Milan merchant Francisco Castiglione (Egyptian sculptures, wooden sarcophagi and objects of the applied arts). The granite sarcophagi of Queen Nechtbasteteru and her son Aahmes, a military chief; the group sculpture of Amenemheb, the governor of Thebes, with his wife and mother; and the statue of the goddess Sekhmet, were also acquired at this time.
In the mid-nineteenth century, Oriental artefacts began to arrive from archaeological excavations. Among these accessions were the golden bowl and ladle, uncovered during Alexander Tereshchenko’s excavation in the 1840s of the town of Sarai-Berke (near present-day Volgograd). A large number of objects characterizing Sarai-Berke’s daily life and handicrafts were presented to the Museum by the Academy of Sciences in the 1860s. Also around the middle of the past century the Hermitage acquired its first Assyrian monuments: large bas reliefs found during Austen-Henry Layard’s excavations at Nimrud and Place’s at Khorsabad, and painted vessels from Susa, excavated by Jean-Jacques de Morgan and Toscanio. It was at this time, too, that the so-called Siberian Collection of Peter the Great, which contained numerous works by Eastern craftsmen, was placed in the Museum. In 1885 the very rich collection of Oriental weaponry previously kept in the Arsenal at Tsarskoye Selo was transferred to the Hermitage; and in 1885 came the Basilewsky collection, comprising many Byzantine works of art (ivories and bronzes, enamels, mosaic icons, and a marble sarcophagus) and objects of Islamic art (a lustred vase, with a game of polo, glass lamps painted in coloured enamels and gold, bronze vessels with inlaid decoration, and a huge silver triptych, dated 1288; this last item, a unique example of its type, belonged to Cilician king Hetum II).
Vladimir Bock, Keeper of the Medieval and Renaissance Department, undertook two expeditions to Egypt in 1888—89 and in 1897—98. He was one of the first scholars to become interested in relics from the Coptic and Arabian periods. Bock purchased a large number of valuable articles and obtained still more by excavating necropoli; he returned to the Hermitage with an enormous collection of patterned textiles, sculptures, glass, leather, pottery, bronze, ivory, and bone objects.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries local interest in archaeology increased in many areas of the country, and many new finds came into the Museum’s collections. Some barrows at the Belorechensky village and burials in the North Caucasus were excavated by Nikolai Veselovsky, and the site of the ancient hill-town of Afrasiab was explored by Vasily Barthold. At the end of the nineteenth century a pair of carved wooden doors from the Gur-Emir mausoleum at Samarkand (Tamerlane’s tomb), joined the Museum’s collection, and in 1910—11, the treasure of the last Khans of Khiva, containing goldwork and jewellery. The excavations of Marr at Garni and Ani and the acquisitions made by Yakov Smirnov at Ashnak (Armenia), the excavations of F. Bayern at Mtskheta and Samtavro (Georgia), and of V. Resler in Azerbaijan, all enriched the Museum’s holdings. The collections of V. Dolbeznev and К. Olshevsky, which entered the Department at the end of the nineteenth century, contained materials from the burial grounds of Kamunta, Kumbulta and Chmi (North Caucasus), dating mainly from the third to the eighth century. Thanks to the tireless energy of Smirnov the Hermitage acquired a number of important pieces of Sassanian silver.
Thus, by 1917 the Hermitage could boast of a fairly large Oriental collection numbering about 10,000 items. However, no special Oriental department existed at that time, and the objects were scattered among different exhibitions. It was only after the Great October Revolution, which had proclaimed national equality as one of the basic principles of the new society, that conditions were created for the formation of the Oriental Department in the Hermitage. In 1921, within a year of its foundation, the Section of Islamic East was reorganized into that of the Caucasus, Iran and Central Asia. The year 1922 saw the opening of the first exhibition of Sassanian antiquities, a landmark in the Hermitage’s Oriental studies.