Personalia

From the history of Russian Egyptology

Vladimir Semenovitch Golenischeff
(1856–1947)

V.S. Golenischeff was the first Russian professional Egyptologist. He was born in a family of a well-to-do merchant and got a very good home education. In his youth he was greatly interested in Egyptology.

First of all his name is connected with the world famous collection which is known to be the core of the Egyptian collection kept in the Pushkin museum of Fine Arts. V.S. Golenischeff began gathering Egyptian antiquities in his youth and considered this matter to be very important. When he visited Egypt he always tried to find a new monument. The fate was favorable to him: he was a well to do man and succeeded in buying about six thousand valuable monuments of Egyptian antiquity. In addition he took part in sixty archaeological and epigraphic expeditions.

Not only new monuments and finds were the results of his travels. He found many mistakes and inaccuracies in the copies of the texts published by his predecessors, in particular by R. Lepsius. Owing to his correct interpretation of epigraphic monuments of Wadi Hammamat these important historical sources were introduced to the scientific world. His works were published in a great number of foreign and some Russian scientific journals.

In 1870 V.S. Golenischeff graduated from the University and started his work in the Hermitage. In 1886 V.S. Golenischeff the only egyptologist in this museum became the curator of the Hermitage Egyptian collection.

Working in the Hermitage V.S. Golenischeff studied ancient oriental monuments, compiled and published catalogues of Egyptian and Assyrian collections. Of special mention is papyri collection. He made a sensational discovery that «the Papyrus No 1 from Saint-Petersburg» consisted of two papyri rolls: the first one contained the precept of Merikara — the king of the X-th Herakliopolis' dynasty to his son («papyrus 1116A»); the second was an unknown before pattern of prophetic literature of ancient Egypt («papyrus 1116B»).

In 1881 V.S. Golenischeff discovered a well-preserved papyrus of the Middle Kingdom contained a text of «The tale about a ship-wrecked person» — a masterpiece of ancient Egyptian literature. Even nowadays every Egyptologist starts learning ancient Egyptian language with this wonderful tale.

In 1887 V.S. Golenischeff was a full member of the Department of Oriental Archaeology under the Russian Archaeological Society. In 1891 he wrote a short but substantial description of the Hermitage collection paying a special attention to the monuments containing information about religion, customs and traditions of ancient Egyptians.

At the end of the life a fate was very cruel to such a wonderful person and scientist as V.S. Golenischeff. The bankruptcy of the Middle-Ural gold-mining joint-stock company (his family was a shareholder of this company) completely changed his life. Vladimir Semyonovich found himself on the verge of ruin. Such a misfortune forced him to think of selling his collection. A lot of museums of the world dreamed of having this collection but V.S. Golenischeff did his best to leave it in Russia. In May 1909 the State Duma approved the law according to which V.S. Golenischeff's collection of Egyptian Antiquities became the state property.

In 1911 I.V. Zvetaev the founder and the first director of the Pushkin museum of Fine Arts bought this collection. It was brought in Moscow and placed in a special hall decorated as an ancient Egyptian temple. On the 12th of May 1912 at the opening of the museum the collection was shown to the first visitors. Thousands of people attended the museum.

V.S. Golenischeff continued to increase the collection sending his finds to B.A. Turaev, the Head of the Egyptian Department of the museum. He also donated his private library to the Hermitage.

After the Great October revolution V.S. Golenischeff with his wife Zizilia Matten settled in Nice. The most part of the year they spent in Cairo. In 1923 V.S. Golenischeff was invited to give lectures in Cairo University and laid the foundations of egyptological studies. From 1917 to 1947 he was a professor of Cairo University and at the same time he taught in an archaeological school in Munir and was the head of the Department of Egyptology of the University of Fauda I in Zaafaran.

V.S. Golenischeff knew 13 foreign languages and contributed greatly to understanding of the ancient Egyptian grammar: he studied one of the verbal forms, the so-called pseudoperfect, discovered the imperative form of the verb.

However his main work «Some remarks on Egyptian syntax» has not been published yet. V.S. Golenischeff wrote more than 50 monographs and articles and laid down the foundations of study of the history, culture, religion, language and art of ancient Egypt. V.S. Golenischeff paid much attention to the future of Russian egyptological science. In his letters to B.A. Turaev he advised to draw more young people into Egyptology.

V.S. Golenischeff died in Nice in 1947 and was buried at the Russian cemetery. All his archives including letters, manuscripts of unpublished works he had left by will to a French Egyptologist Jean Garneau, who passed these materials to an educational college in Paris where the Center of Vladimir Golenischeff was established.

G. Belova

List of main publications by V.S. Golenischeff >>>>

Bibliography:

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© G. Belova, 2003
© Centre for Egyptological Studies of RAS, 2004–2006