The formation of museum Egyptology in Ukraine: a letter from S.V. Donich to P.P. Kurinny
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15407/uhj2019.02.161Keywords:
History of Egyptology, Ukrainian Museum Egyptology, Donich, Kurinnyi (Kurinnyj), All-Ukrainian Museum Town, Museum of Cults and Everyday Life, Museum of the History of Religion.Abstract
The present paper presents the letter of S.Donich, the head of "Ancient Egypt" department of Odesa Historical and Archaeological Museum, to P.Kurinnyi (Kurinnyj), the Director of All-Ukrainian Museum Town (Kyiv). The letter was written in January, 20, 1930, and it contented the details of the academic investigations of the Ancient Egyptian artefacts’ collection, that resided at the All-Ukrainian Museum Town at that time. Combined with a number of other archive documents the letter cause to conclude about attempt to found a center of the Ancient Egyptian objects studies in Kyiv. It was the Museum of Cults and Everyday Life (later reorganized into Museum of the History of Religion) that was the institutor of the process, and P.Kurinnyi appears to have been the organizer of the academic researches of the Egyptian objects and their restoration as well. It was jointing of the Ancient Egyptian artefacts’ collections of three Kyiv museums into the one collection during 1920-th, that preceded the academic researches of the collection. This collection had to become a sizable basis of primary sources for future Egyptological studies in Kyiv. As it is evident from Donich’s letter, the process of academic research of the jointed collection began in 1928. Serhii Donich (who was the only Egyptologist in the territory of Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic at that time) was engaged in the process. Besides him, two Russian Egyptologists, research associates of State Hermitage M.Matie (Matthieu, Matthiew) and I.Lurie (Laurie) were engaged in the process of scholarly observation and investigation of the Ancient Egyptian objects. Their correspondence with P.Kurinnyi from the Scientific Archive of the Institute of Archaeology, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine proves the participation of the Russian Egyptologists in the process. The publication of the catalogue of the Ancient Egyptian objects from the All-Ukrainian Museum Town was planned as the result of the scholarly research. This edition might be published in Ukrainian. Unfortunately, this process was stopped due to the policy of All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) during 1930-th, in particular "ideological cleaning" of the museums, repressionsagainst Ukrainian intellectuals and intervention of the Marxism-Leninism fiveformations theory into the academic history, that constrained the development of the history of Ancient World and Egyptology in the Soviet Union and completely blockedthe development of Egyptology in Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic
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