The Last Ani Expedition of Nikolai Marr in the Context of Unknown Archival Documents
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18688/Keywords:
Ani expedition, Nikolai Marr, Alexei Udalenkov, church architecture in Ani, excavation of the mausoleum, archival documents, Scientific Archive of IHMC RAS, history of science, the Institute of History and Archaeology in the Caucasus, 1917Abstract
The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (Project No. 22-18-00354–П, https://rscf.ru/project/22-18-00354–П ‘The Architecture and monumental art of Ani as a phenomenon of world artistic culture. Making of the metropolitan school of Armenian architecture of the 10th–14th centuries’), at the National Research Moscow State University of Civil Engineering.
The systematic archaeological and architectural restoration research of ancient Ani and its surroundings was conducted by an academic expedition led by the renowned orientalist, archaeologist, and philologist Nikolai Marr from 1892 to 1917. The reports were published annually in leading scientific journals, but the information contained therein was often brief. Due to political circumstances, the expedition had to be halted in 1918, with the majority of materials being lost. In 1934, based on Nikolai Marr’s pre-revolutionary lectures, a comprehensive monograph was published, entitled “Ani: A Literary History of the City and Excavations at the Site”. The book completely missed out on describing the last years of the expedition’s work. The Scientific Archive of IHMC RAS and the St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive RAS are responsible for the preservation of documents that characterize the 1917 research in Ani: diary entries, photographs, drawings, and manuscripts. Archival sources made it possible to establish the participants of the 1917 expedition, the objects and types of work. Excavations took place at two sites. The excavations conducted north of the Gagik church uncovered the ruins of a church, and to the south of the cathedral, the remains of a Muslim-period tomb with an octagonal base. Architect Alexei Udalenkov took detailed measurements and made drawings of the church excavated in 1917, the six-apsidal monastery church in Vyshgorod, and the Ani Cathedral. Under his supervision, minor repairs were also carried out in the cathedral and in the “domed church of Vyshgorod”.
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