The State Hermitage Museum has launched a project entitled “Eastern Mosaic” to mark the centenary of the Department of the East, currently one of the largest research departments in the museum. The department is responsible for the preservation and study of objects of a great chronological and geographical span, from the ancient civilizations of the Middle East to the contemporary art of countries in the Far East.
The collections of the Department of the East number more than 150,000. The department has a staff of 47 that includes orientalists, art historians, philologists, archaeologists and scholars specializing in various fields. The department operates eight archaeological expeditions, conducting excavations in the Crimea and Buryatia, as well as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Iran, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
The first video of the “Eastern Mosaic” Series was released on August 20, 2021. In the video, Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, the Hermitage Director, Orientalist and Arabist, talked about a bronze aquamanile in the form of an eagle, one of the Hermitage’s most celebrated works of Islamic art. In the future, a video will be published every second Friday. By the end of the year, ten videos should have come out, including a cuneiform legal document, the gifts of Nadir Shah, a carpet from a burial of the nomadic Xiongnu people, a statue of Queen Cleopatra, Urartian bronze bowls, Chinese woven pictures, a Byzantine ivory triptych, a Sasanian silver dish and the Emir of Bukhara’s tent.
Source: State Hermitage Museum (Abridged)