A. O. Bol’shakov, E. V. Stepanova et al.

“Zvuchat lish’ pis’mena”: k 150-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia akademika Nikolaia Petrovicha Likhacheva. Katalog vystavki (“In Written Words Alone…”: [Published] On the 150th Anniversary of the Birth of Academician Nikolay Petrovich Likhachev. Exhibition Catalogue), 9785935724641

St. Petersburg: Herm, 2012. Sewn cl. This is the catalogue of an extensive Hermitage exhibition that aims to show the main stages of writing and written culture on the basis of works originally collected over many years and in many places by the eminent scholar and collector Nikolai Likhachev. Likhachev was a pioneer in Old Russian and Byzantine sphragistics, an expert in paleography, numismatics, and icon painting. Likhachev’s research was inseparable from his collecting activities, and the history of writing from the Near East to the Far East and later in Europe was a subject that engrossed him throughout his career. Taking Likhachev’s special interest as a springboard curators muster works from many fields, introduce each section that puts the works in a scholarly framework. The catalogue is something like an illustrated history of the ways in which civilizations developed through words. Besides works from the Hermitage, the catalogue publishes material from the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts (Institut Vostochnykh rukopisei) of the Academy of Sciences. 600 pp., 9 ½ x 11 ½ ins., 603 color illus., sewn cl., Rus., with title page and summary in ENGLISH. Item #1097
ISBN: 9785935724641

The range of illustrative material is broad: for example, a bronze tablet with Arabian script of the first century from Yemen; a ninth-century grave monument in Arabic from Egypt; a seventeenth-century scroll from Syria with citations from the Koran serving as an amulet; a manuscript of the Koran in Arabic and coming from the Eastern Ottoman Empire; an eighth-century homily on parchment in Syrian; a nineteenth-century letter in Persian from a Russian merchants' group thanking the ruler for his condescension; a diplomatic document in Persian from the shah to Nicholas I; a sixteenth-century land grant in Old Ottoman from the sultan to a vizier; a nineteenth-century Ethiopian scroll.

Price: $143.00