Boris Piotrovsky

Boris Borisovich Piotrowski (Russian Борис Борисович Пиотровский, scientific transliteration Boris Borisovic Piotrovskij; born February 14, 1908 in Saint Petersburg, † October 15, 1990 ) was a Russian archaeologist and director of the Hermitage in Leningrad.

Life and work

Piotrowski studied since 1925 in his native city Egyptology and Near Eastern Archaeology. During his studies he participated in archaeological excursions in the northern Caucasus and Transcaucasia. Later he led an excavation expedition to Nubia and became known internationally and because of this and his expedition to the eastern Anatolian Armenian border. Since 1931, he was then a research associate of the Hermitage, in 1948 the deputy director and since 1953 also the head of the Leningrad Department of the Archaeological Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In 1964, he was appointed director of the Hermitage. At the same time he also taught at the Leningrad University, where he chaired the Department of the Ancient Near East.

Boris Piotrowski's research is primarily devoted to the cultures of the Scythians, the Near East, as well as the Central Anatolian peoples of early antiquity. His special attention was paid to the hitherto largely unexplored history of the kingdom of Urartu, one in the period from 9th to 6th century BC, around the area of Lake Van flourishing state. He discovered and described the culture of this realm, and described its impact and influence on the Middle East and the early Greek Mediterranean world. In the management of the Hermitage and its research results he maintained absolute scientific objectivity despite the prevailing ideological tensions in the world.

In addition to numerous other honors Piotrowski was taken on June 5, 1984 in the Order Pour le Mérite for Arts and Science as a foreign member.

His son Mikhail Borisovich Piotrowski ( born 1944 ) is the Hermitage director since 1992.