The STaTe hermiTage muSeum annual reporT

permanent exhIbItIons permanent exhIbItIons
Scenes of fight between a deity and predators. Wall painting. Varakhsha. Late 7th – early 8th century.
Fragment of a wall painting from the so-called Red Hall
and military life of Central Asia from the 7th century onwards.
Here, one can see stone sculptures of dead heroes, an
inscribed tombstone, silver vessels of the nomads. The culture
of the Turks was greatly influenced by that of the Sogdians,
who traded all over the steppe. The walls of the room
are decorated with Penjikent paintings containing an image
of a female warrior. The lower tier of the painting is given
over to fables which have a lot in common with the Indian
Panchatantra. Some of them are familiar to the Russian
visitors from their retellings by Ivan Krylov: the fable of the
goose bearing golden eggs; the story of three wise men who
resurrected a tiger who then proceeded to eat them; the
fable about a stupid monkey who killed its beloved master.
The next two rooms tell the story of Devashtich, the ruler
of Penjikent who managed to weave his own thread
into the intricate tangle of Sogdian policies of the early
8th century, when the country was claimed by the Chinese,
Turks, and Arabs. He, in turn, laid claim to the rule of
Sogd. After the city was taken by the Arabs, Devashtich fled
with some loyal retainers to the fortress of Abgar in the
mountains to the east of Penjikent (modern-day Mount
Mug). The finding of mediaeval manuscripts from Abgar
has given us most of the information about Devashtich’s
rule. The mountainous climate has preserved organic remains.
The excavations on Mount Mug carried out in the
1930s discovered the unique Sogdian culture. A separate
room contains the wall paintings from Devashtich’s palace
in Penjikent, one of which may be an illustration of the
storming of Samarkand by the Arabs. The penultimate
room of the exhibition houses the sculpture and paintings
from Ajina-tepe, a Buddhist monastery which functioned
in the 7th – 8th centuries in North-Eastern Bactria (in the
south of modern-day Tajikistan). In the centre of the room
there stands a stupa, a cult pyramid-shaped structure which
was meant to contain sacred objects.
Finally, the last room contains the paintings from the Kakhkakha
site (Shahriston District, Northern Tajikistan,
mediaeval land of Osrushana), dating back to the 8th –
9th centuries. They are the last manifestations of the pre-
Islamic pictorial art of Central Asia. One of the paintings
shows two infants suckled by a she-wolf – an image which
goes back to the Roman prototype of the Capitoline wolf,
while others follow Sogdian canons but have an astonishing
delicacy of pattern and an unusual colour scheme.
The exhibition has not only been renewed, but also significantly
expanded. New acquisitions from the Institute
of the History of Material Culture under the Russian Academy
of Sciences have been added to it, including finds
from nomadic burial sites and from the Kushan-Sassanid
site of Zar-tepe. Monumental paintings from Penjikent
featuring Amazons, harvest and hunting scenes, a number
of paintings from Shahriston, and small sculpture from
Sogdiana are displayed for the first time. The paintings Lament
and Feasting Painters have returned after many years
of thorough restoration and conservation.
By Pavel Lourie
SiBerian anTiQuiTieS.
The fifTh paZyryK Burial mound
7 december 2010. room 26
The winter palace: ground floor
The exhibition at the Department of the Archaeology
of Eastern Europe and Siberia tells the story of the excavation
of the Fifth Pazyryk Burial Mound, one of the most
interesting archaeological sites from the Scythian period
in the Altai Region.
Here, one can see the results of excavations conducted under
the supervision of S. Rudenko (1949) in the Pazyryk
Valley in the Altai Mountains. The natural climate conditions
of this area created pockets of sub-burial permafrost
which preserved items made of wood, felt, leather, fur, fabrics,
and other organic materials. The exhibition focuses
on the finds made during the exploration of a horse burial
found on the outer side of the burial chamber in the north
part of the burial pit. Despite the fact that the barrow was
plundered many centuries ago, the burial remained undisturbed.
The rich harness of one of the horses was completed
with a leather mask crowned with a wooden stag’s head
with branching leather antlers, and a saddle-cloth (cheprak)
lined with Chinese silk. The saddle-cloth of another horse
was lined with a Persian woollen fabric.
The horses were buried together with a ladder, parts of
drag sledges, wheels, draft poles and axles of a dismantled
wooden cart, felt figurines of swans, a large felt carpet and
parts of a funeral “tent”. The oldest woollen tufted carpet
in the world was also found here.
The exhibition also includes a burial chamber which contained
a log coffin with mummified bodies of a man and
a woman interred in the Fifth Pazyryk Burial Mound.
Chinese silks and Persian wool make it possible to outline
a circle of contacts between the Scythian tribes of the Altai
and the ancient civilizations of Central Asia and the Near
East in the 4th – 3rd centuries B.C.
On 20 May 2009, five rooms illustrating the cultural and
historical evolution of the Sayan-Altai Region, Southern
Siberia and the Transbaikalia from the Early Iron Age up
to the Mongol Conquest (8th century B.C. – 13th century
A.D.) were opened to the public. Materials on display
in Room 26 complete a permanent exhibition which makes
it possible to feel the everyday life, traditions and customs
of the people who once lived in these areas of Central Asia.
In accordance with the research and education policy
of the museum, the exhibition provides a powerful illustration
of the rich and varied cultural heritage of the peoples
of Russia.
By Nikolai Nikolayev
28 29