Vasily Vasilievich Struve (; in Petersburg,

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

– September 15, 1965 in

Leningrad Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

) was a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

orientalist from the

Struve family The Struve family (pronounced in German, in Russian) were a Baltic nobility, Baltic German noble family of Eastphalian origin and originated in Magdeburg, the family produced five generations of astronomers from the 18th to 20th centuries. Membe ...

, the founder of the Soviet scientific school of researchers on

Ancient Near East The ancient Near East was home to many cradles of civilization, spanning Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran (or Persia), Anatolia and the Armenian highlands, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula. As such, the fields of ancient Near East studies and Nea ...

history. In 1907 he entered the Department of History at the Faculty of History and Philology of the

Petersburg University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBGU; ) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the Great, the university from the be ...

, where he studied the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

and

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

languages, and

Ancient Egyptian language The Egyptian language, or Ancient Egyptian (; ), is an extinct branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts, which were made accessible to the modern world ...

under the leadership of the famous

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

Egyptologist Egyptology (from ''Egypt'' and Greek , ''-logia''; ) is the scientific study of ancient Egypt. The topics studied include ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end ...

Boris Turaev Boris Alexandrovich Turayev (; – 23 July 1920) was a Russian scholar who studied the Ancient Near East (mainly Ancient Egypt and Nubia). He was admitted into the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1918. After graduating from the University of St ...

. He became proficient in all types of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, including

Demotic Demotic may refer to: * Demotic Greek, the modern vernacular form of the Greek language * Demotic (Egyptian), an ancient Egyptian script and version of the language * Chữ Nôm Chữ Nôm (, ) is a logographic writing system formerly used t ...

.Biography of Struve
at the website of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Science He graduated from the

in 1911 and continued research work and lecturing at the university until 1913, when he left for

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

for profound studies of the

Egyptian language The Egyptian language, or Ancient Egyptian (; ), is an extinct branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts, which were made accessible to the modern world ...

under

Adolf Erman Johann Peter Adolf Erman (; 31 October 185426 June 1937) was a German Egyptologist and lexicographer. Education Born in Berlin, he was the son of the physicist Georg Adolf Erman and grandson of the physicist Paul Erman and the astronomer Frie ...

. During the

Russian entry into World War I The Russian Empire's entry into World War I unfolded gradually in the days leading up to July 28, 1914. The sequence of events began with Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Kingdom of Serbia, Serbia, a Russian ally. In response, Russia iss ...

he changed his name from Wilhelm Wilhelminovich Struve to Vasily Vasilievich Struve. After returning to Russia he became a private docent of the Petersburg university in 1916 and a professor there in 1920.Biography of Struve
at the official website of

Kunstkamera The Kunstkamera (, derived from German ''Kunstkammer'' lit. "art chamber") formally organized as the Russian Academy of Science's Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (, ''Muzey antropologii i etnografii imeni Petra Velikogo R ...

He was the head of the Hermitage Department for Art and Culture of Egypt from 1918 to 1933. Already being a lecturer he began to study

Akkadian language Akkadian ( ; )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages''. Ed. Roger D. Woodard (2004, Cambridge) Pages 218–280 was an East Semitic language that is attested ...

Biblical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew ( or ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite languages, Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Isra ...

and other

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya language, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew language, Hebrew, Maltese language, Maltese, Modern South Arabian language ...

under the Russian

Semitologist Semitic studies, or Semitology, is the academic field dedicated to the studies of Semitic languages and literatures and the history of the Semitic-speaking peoples. A person may be called a ''Semiticist'' or a ''Semitist'', both terms being equi ...

academician

Pavel Kokovtsov Pavel ( Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian: Павел; Czech, Slovene, and (although Romanian also uses Paul); ; ; ) is a male given name. It is a Slavic cognate of the name Paul (derived from the Greek Pavlos). Pavel may refer to: People Given ...

. Struve also began to study

Sumerian language Sumerian ) was the language of ancient Sumer. It is one of the List of languages by first written account, oldest attested languages, dating back to at least 2900 BC. It is a local language isolate that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia, in the a ...

on his own. In 1928 Struve defended the dissertation ''

Manetho Manetho (; ''Manéthōn'', ''gen''.: Μανέθωνος, ''fl''. 290–260 BCE) was an Egyptian priest of the Ptolemaic Kingdom who lived in the early third century BCE, at the very beginning of the Hellenistic period. Little is certain about his ...

and His Time'' for the Master's Degree in history. He received the

Doctor of Science A Doctor of Science (; most commonly abbreviated DSc or ScD) is a science doctorate awarded in a number of countries throughout the world. Africa Algeria and Morocco In Algeria, Morocco, Libya and Tunisia, all universities accredited by the s ...

degree ''

honoris causa An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...

''. In 1935 Struve, nominated by Pavel Kokovtsov, was elected the full member of the

USSR Academy of Sciences The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union was the highest scientific institution of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991. It united the country's leading scientists and was subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (u ...

, becoming an

academician An academician is a full member of an artistic, literary, engineering, or scientific academy. In many countries, it is an honorific title used to denote a full member of an academy that has a strong influence on national scientific life. Accor ...

. From 1937 to 1940, he was a Head of the USSR Academy of Sciences Ethnography Institute, from 1941 to 1950 a Head of the Academy Institute of Oriental Studies, and from 1959 a Head of the Ancient East department of the latter Institute. Struve was a pioneer of research that replaced positivist historical research with a

Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

approach and took far-reaching changes in social and economic structures into account. Struve authored around 400 scientific works in his lifetime. He along with

worked on the

Moscow Mathematical Papyrus The Moscow Mathematical Papyrus, also named the Golenishchev Mathematical Papyrus after its first non-Egyptian owner, Egyptologist Vladimir Golenishchev, is an ancient Egyptian mathematical papyrus containing several problems in arithmetic, ge ...

and published its translation in 1930. As an Egyptologist he translated and published numerous

documents from fonds of museums of the USSR. But his scientific research field was not limited to Egyptology. His major scientific works were also on the history and history of arts of

Sumer Sumer () is the earliest known civilization, located in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. ...

Babylonia Babylonia (; , ) was an Ancient history, ancient Akkadian language, Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Kuwait, Syria and Iran). It emerged as a ...

Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , ''māt Aššur'') was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization that existed as a city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC and eventually expanded into an empire from the 14th century BC t ...

, the

Hittite Empire The Hittites () were an Anatolian peoples, Anatolian Proto-Indo-Europeans, Indo-European people who formed one of the first major civilizations of the Bronze Age in West Asia. Possibly originating from beyond the Black Sea, they settled in mo ...

and other civilizations of the

. He authored numerous research papers and textbooks in these fields, including the generalizing work "History of heAncient East" (1941). Struve was the head of a large research team that began work on the publication of all Greek inscriptions from the Ancient

Bosporan Kingdom The Bosporan Kingdom, also known as the Kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus (; ), was an ancient Greco-Scythians, Scythian state located in eastern Crimea and the Taman Peninsula on the shores of the Cimmerian Bosporus, centered in the present-day ...

. He also published a work on the history of the Ancient Northern Black Sea Coast, Caucasus and Middle Asian civilizations.Профиль на сайте РАН
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References

External links

– at the website of the Centre for Egyptological Science of the

Russian Academy of Science The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation; and additional scientific and social units such ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Struve, Vasily Vasilievich 1889 births 1965 deaths Russian orientalists Russian Egyptologists Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Russian people of Baltic German descent

Vasily Vasili, Vasily, Vasilii or Vasiliy (Russian language, Russian: wikt:Василий, Василий) is a Russian masculine given name of Greek language, Greek origin and corresponds to ''Basil (name)#Given name, Basil''. It may refer to: *Vasily ...

Burials at Serafimovskoe Cemetery Recipients of the Order of Lenin Assyriologists Saint Petersburg State University alumni Academic staff of Saint Petersburg State University Soviet Marxist historians Members of the Saint Petersburg Institute of History Academic staff of Herzen University Russian scientists