Vol 7, No 4 (2021)
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13-31 1
Abstract
This article, based on the works of foreign and domestic Egyptologists, examines the theory of “democratization” of the funeral cult in Ancient Egypt in the First Intermediate Period (late III - early II millennium BC). The main purpose of this study is to trace the evolution of this theory. First of all, its emergence at the beginning of the 20th century is of interest, since there is no consensus, who of the scholars first proposed it. Then, over the course of almost a century, the theory gained followers, acquired new additions and concepts, which, as we can see, were accepted by Egyptologists all over the world; however, contemporary scholars have criticized it. One can conclude that, despite more than a century of its existence, there is no consensus among researchers on this issue. One questions even the basic points of the theory, such as the initial difference between the concepts of afterlife for the king and for ordinary people, the transformation of the Pyramid Texts into the Coffin Texts, the identification of the deceased with Osiris - the deity of the afterlife. The controversial nature of the theory of “democratization” of the funeral cult in the First Transitional Period makes it relevant for further research.
32-53 1
Abstract
The author investigates the origins and development of scholars’ reception of Egyptian officials who cooperated with the Persians during the period of the First Persian domination as “collaborators” and betrayers of Egyptian national interests. This conception was first introduced by E. Revillout, D. Mallet and J. V. Prašek, who treated the figure of Udjahorresnet as a traitor and compared him with different traitorous characters known from Greek sources. Though their views were criticized by different scholars (G. Posener, B. A. Turaev), the perception of Egyptian officials as traitors was revived after World War II by A. Klasens and J. Cooney. The latter one introduced the term “collaborator” to describe the treasonous nature of Egyptian officials’ actions. The use of the above-mentioned term, which implied a negative comparison between Egyptian officials of the First Persian domination and the Axis countries, had become a common practice in Egyptological literature up to the 1980s-1990s, when several works (A. B. Lloyd, G. Godrone, T. Holm-Rasmussen, W. Huss, G. Vittmann) provided a new perspective on the problem of Egyptian officials’ “collaboration” and led to reevaluating the scholars’ reception of the character of Egyptian-Persian interactions.
54-79 3
Abstract
The article deals with the correspondence between the outstanding Russian Egyptologist V. S. Golenischeff and his British and French colleagues A. H. Gardiner and G. Lefebvre. The letters under consideration (archives of the Griffith Institute at Oxford and the Archives of Vladimir Golenischeff at Paris) discussed the discovery of the tomb of the Hermopolitan priest Petosiris at Tuna el-Gebel in 1919-1920. Golenischeff visited the site on the invitation of Lefebvre, who carried out the research, and in due course expressed his view on the date of the monuments and on its texts. Having first attributed the tomb of Petosiris to the start of the Roman time, he shared later Lefebvre’s view that the most important text of the tomb (inscription 81) describes the Second Persian Domination (343-332 B. C.), and thus the tomb should be dated to the early Hellenistic time. Golenischeff’s letters show that his paramount interest was, as expected, the hieroglyphic writings and the language of the tomb’s texts; as for their historical interpretation and the respective dating of the monument, he easily gave up his initial view on it and accepted Lefebvre’s hypothesis as more consistent. This case leads to the conclusion that, despite his interest in the texts of the tomb, Golenischeff considered their features rather as an instrument to better motivate a hypothesis on the dating that was primarily based on the tomb’s style and on the suppositions concerning its most probable historical context.
80-102 1
Abstract
The article is dedicated to the history of the Museum of Fine Arts named after Emperor Alexander III at the Imperial Moscow University (now the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and the Lomonosov Moscow State University) during 1917-1920 based on the correspondence of B. A. Turaev and T. N. Borozdina. B. A. Turaev (1868-1920), founder of Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Russia, Egyptologist, Professor at the St. Petersburg Imperial University, was curator of the Museum’s Department of the Classical Orient. T. N. Borozdina (1886-1959) was his student and assistant. She worked at the Museum since its opening in 1912. The letters from T. N. Borozdina to B. A. Turaev preserved in the State Hermitage Archive contain a lot of new and important information about the Museum and its staff after the October Revolution of 1917. The letters touch upon issues of preserving the Museum collections in the unheated building, publishing and scientific activities, guided tours and lectures about Ancient Egypt. In her letters, T. N. Borozdina also paid much attention to the difficult living and working conditions in post-revolutionary Moscow. In addition to the correspondence, the authors of the article use a variety of documents from the Department of Manuscripts of the Pushkin Museum.
103-123
Abstract
The paper deals with the treatment of the Asian conquests of the Egyptian Eighteenth Dynasty (16th-14th centuries BC) in Russian historiography of the Soviet pre-war period. It is revealed that the influence of a homogenously tendentious massive of Egyptian sources (which naturally portrayed these conquests in an exaggeratedly triumphant light), exerted a kind of pressure on researchers and prompted them also to depict these conquests in an exaggerated way in comparison with the reality that could already in those times be well traced on the basis of then available sources. To explain the reasons for the expansion of the Eighteenth Dynasty in Asia, in the spirit of wide-spread trends of world historiography of the epoch, comparative-speculative constructions and analogies with phenomena of other times rather than the data of Egyptian sources were used. It is noteworthy that such an “estrangement” from the sources, even up to serious contradiction with them, in favor of speculations and distant analogies, was much more developed in Marxist-Leninist speculative schemes (which interpreted Egyptian expansion in Asia first of all as a hunt for slaves) than in works of non-Marxist authors of the epoch who were much more moderate in this respect. B. A. Turaev showed a tendency to correct some generally accepted speculative and exaggerated features of widespread Egyptological schemes of the time in favor of concrete data from sources.
124-150 2
Abstract
We research how the Russian authorities, using both fact-checking resources and law enforcement measures, have been fighting COVID-rumors and fake news during 2020-2021. To find out what the Russian government considers to be the most dangerous rumors, we built three databases: COVID-rumors in social media (6.2 million reposts from 1 January through 30 April); cases of court prosecutions against spreaders of fake news (240 cases from February, 2020 to August, 2021); and cases of debunking of “fake news” on coronafake.ru (194 cases). The majority of Russian infodemic texts in social media (65%) consists of anti-vaccination narratives and folk medicine for COVID-19. Those rumors are generally claimed to be the most socially dangerous because they can adversely influence human behavior. Meanwhile, of the fake news and rumors which became the subjects of court cases, the majority (84%) concern the possible negative socio-political scenarios of the coronavirus pandemic and express distrust of the actions of government institutions. At the same time, anti-vaccination fake news and false medical advice draw no attention from state agencies. Thus, the policy of the Russian state in the fight against the infodemic turns out to be focused mainly on preserving the legitimacy of government institutions and public confidence in them, and less on public health.
151-172 3
Abstract
The article examines the mistrust of official information about coronavirus experienced by both doctors and patients who find themselves in the “special situation” of childbirth in a pandemic, and the practices of mistrust they create in response to the pandemic's challenges and restrictive epidemic measures. I refer to the theoretical approach proposed in recently published works on the anthropology of mistrust, which proposes to move away from the perception of this phenomenon only in negative terms: as a social failure and an obstacle to the development of social institutions. Proponents of this approach consider mistrust to be a special form of critical knowledge that is implemented in a variety of effective strategies. The pandemic, as a situation of high risk and uncertainty, has revealed numerous conflicts in which mistrust plays an important role. The pandemic emergency does not unite patients, in particular pregnant women and women in labor, with doctors but divides them even more than before. Women refuse medical care during pregnancy and choose to have out-of-hospital births more often than before the pandemic. The strategy of searching for medical or alternative health specialists with whom women can create trusting relationships is becoming increasingly urgent. In turn, doctors, as well as patients, often do not trust official information and the system in which they work but needed to adapt to the requirements of the governing and controlling authorities. The article is based on the author's field materials (interviews with obstetricians-gynecologists, midwives and women who gave birth during the pandemic). I also use various Internet resources, including the official pages of maternity hospitals in social networks and personal blogs of doctors.
173-197
Abstract
Epidemics of COVID-19 led to major lockdowns all over the world in 2020. This situation severely limited the possibility of a number of social activities, including religious gatherings. In Russia, the peak of the epidemic coincided with the central period in the Orthodox calendar - the last week of Lent and Easter. As the Patriarch blessed “stay-at-home” policies, churches were officially closed for everybody but the clergy and livestreams of services in social media were organized, while believers had to adapt swiftly to a new mode of co-presence in church by participating in services online. To do this, they had to make a choice between the places from which a livestream was organized, transform the space of their homes to accommodate the sacrality of the event, rethink the locality of their own body in being simultaneously at home and “in church”, manage communication with the priest, fellow parishioners and family members during Easter night. This involved not only formal decoration of homes but also subtle mechanisms of balancing authority within the network of sacred objects, gadgets and people. Based on digital ethnography (including participant observation online) and 40 in-depth interviews, the paper investigates how believers constructed and reflected the space of the Easter service in their homes, and presents three key strategies: synchronization, spacing and appellation to experience.
198-220
Abstract
The article is devoted to the activity of Afro-Cuban cults, mostly Santeria and Palo, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and tackles issues of sacred visualization as well as the symbolic representation of the epidemic experience. While combining information from digital communities with data collected from informants the author considers the religious and magic rites which are practiced to protect health from the infection. The author analyzes them in the context of traditional spiritual visions. Analysis shows that the main sacred addressee of believers in this process is orisha Babalu Aye, syncretized with the Catholic Saint Lazarus and mpungu Kubayende. At the same time believers turn to other forces for protection, especially to the ancestral spirits, the so-called egguns. Field materials indicate the emergence of network rituals designed to unite believers during the ban on group religious practices. In this regard, the reflection on the ritual space by Santeria and Palo followers is interesting. The author pays special attention to the activities of the Yoruba Cultural Association of Cuba which are intended to form the religious and mythological perception of the pandemic as well as to support governmental measures of sanitary control and social distancing.
221-237 1
Abstract
The article is devoted to the study of media images of small celestial bodies - comets, asteroids and meteorites. Special attention is paid to the “impact” representation of these space objects, which depicts their probable or occurred collision with the Earth. The article answers a number of questions: since when, in what contexts and images does the appearance of these celestial bodies occur in the culture? How is impact discourse formed in astronomy and what is the role of science fiction in its origin and popularization? What are the features of media representations of space threats, and what kind of difficulties arise in the communication of astronomers and journalists? By what actors and in what ways is an impact event constructed in the era of the Internet, mobile technologies, and social media? The study reveals a number of trends in the production and reception of the comet-asteroid hazard discourse. The analysis involves various media and texts: popular science books, fiction, news media content and social media. The author comes to the conclusion that following the joint efforts of scientists, science fiction writers and journalists, impact discourse, which emphasizes the risks of cosmic hazards, has firmly established itself in the public consciousness. In addition, a significant role in the creation of an impact media event is presently played by its witnesses using available digital technologies, as demonstrated by the case of the Chelyabinsk meteorite. Depending on the degree of risk and severity of the consequences of the fall of a celestial body, the genres and rhetoric of its media coverage vary. Studying media images of comets and asteroids in general allows us to better understand how people imagine the cosmos and their place in the universe.
238-260
Abstract
Outer space remains an important cultural symbol in contemporary Russia. The complicated historical heritage of this theme evokes an interest in understanding the artistic strategies of its interpretation and their role in the cultural process. Memorial and cultural traditions, tendencies and their influence on the demonstration and interpretation of outer space in temporary exhibitions of the largest art museums in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the 2000s-2020s are analyzed in the article. An overview of their themes and reception lets us outline key features of representation of the cosmic in curatorial practices. Exhibitions pursue one of the following goals -- nostalgic, prospective, analytical, and realistic. Special attention is paid to the project “Cosmodreams” by Marina Fedorova, an artist from Saint Petersburg. The author analyses narrative construction, project formats, visual aesthetics, communication strategies and the artist’s role in working with the topic of outer space as well as the context and discourse in which the project exists. It is concluded that in “Cosmodreams” Soviet symbolism is eclectically combined with contemporary exposition technologies and communication strategies, which determines the described phenomenon of “aestheticization of memory”. Bringing visual aesthetics to the fore and the lack of Science Art elements in interpreting the theme of outer space in the project reduce perspectives for critical reflection and for development of the theme in the cultural field.
261-280 4
Abstract
The subject of this paper are printed clothing and accessories produced by Russian fashion brands known as streetwear brands in the 2010s - early 2020s and dedicated to space heroes such as Yuri Gagarin and to the history of space exploration. This paper conceptualizes streetwear fashion as a field where popular knowledge about space and the history of its exploration can be manifested and at the same time where such knowledge is popularized or even produced. The paper analyzes the iconography of space developed by Russian streetwear fashion: which heroes and events are the most popular in this field of cultural production, how they are depicted and in which contexts they are embedded. It also compares the iconography of space introduced in this field with the Soviet canon of memory about space exploration and with Soviet iconography of cosmonautics. As my analysis shows, Russian streetwear brands regularly refer to the history of space exploration as a source of ideas and images for their collections, and not only on anniversaries. At the same time, the circle of the most popular heroes and events is quite narrow: these are Yuri Gagarin, the launch of the first Sputnik, and the flight of the two Soviet space dogs, Belka and Strelka. Other people or projects are notably less popular. The transformation of the Soviet canon of commemorated space exploration history is also clearly seen. New types of space iconography appear, and the typology of sources of inspiration is becoming more diverse and includes different kinds of Soviet material culture dedicated to the conquest of space, such as architecture, sculpture and philately.
281-299 1
Abstract
This article considers Renaissance cosmology as a research topic. The article poses the question whether contemporary works on this topic are influenced by the theoretical problematics of Aby Warburg’s and Erwin Panofsky’s iconological tradition. One of the most important factors for this influence is Susan Sontag’s essay “Under the Sign of Saturn” (1978), where Sontag used the metaphor of Saturn and Melancholy to characterise Walter Benjamin`s methodological innovations in 20th century humanities. This metaphor leads to an unwilling juxtaposition of Benjamin in Sontag’s essay with the book Saturn and melancholy by R. Klibansky, E. Panofsky, and F. Saxl (1964). The aim of this article is to show that this parallelism endows the topic of Renaissance cosmology with the traits of an image and to describe the ways these traits manifest themselves in the relevant historiography. The article proves that this image is determined by scholars’ interest in the phenomenon of proportion as the crucial logic and idea in Renaissance cosmologies. The authors of this article conclude that although dealing with this phenomenon connects contemporary scholars with Warburg and Panofsky, this phenomenon cannot restore the iconological tradition, but only outlines its inner intellectual contradictions.
300-309 1
Abstract
From new materials to computing, the conditions of the Cold War accelerated the development of products and technologies that would shape modern life. The technological utopianism of the post-war period and the idea that science could shape the future for the better went hand in hand with a persistent anxiety about nuclear confrontation. The frailty of human life was juxtaposed with the enormous potential for enhancing and extending human capacity with technology. The space race not only provided an enduring stream of innovations which made their way into everyday life, but also a host of imaginative possibilities for how products, clothing, environments - even the human body - might be redesigned for the future. This paper explores fashion, technology, film, design and architecture in order to consider how the Cold War and the space race shaped and changed ideas about the human body, both materially and conceptually.
310-321
Abstract
The publication is a transcript of an interview with Barbara Brownie, author of the book Spacewear: Weightlessness and the Final Frontier of Fashion (2019), published in Russian in 2020 by the “New Literary Observer” publishing house in the ‘Fashion Theory Library’ book series (conducted by Liudmila Aliabieva).
322-331
Abstract
A review of: ● Val’ter, Kh. [= Walter, H.], Gromenko, E. S., Kozhevnikov, A. Iu., Kozlovskaia, N. V., Kozulina, N. A., Levina, S. D., Mokienko, V. M., Pavlova, A. S., Priemysheva, M. N., & Ridetskaia, Iu. S. (Eds.), Gromenko, E. S., Pavlova, A. S., Priemysheva, M. N. (Executive Ed.), & Ridetskaia, Iu. S. (Ed. Board) (2021). Slovar’ russkogo iazyka koronavirusnoi epokhi [Dictionary of the Russian language of the coronavirus era]. Institut lingvisticheskikh issledovanii RAN. 550 p. (In Russian). ● Butseva, T. N., Val’ter, Kh. [= Walter, H.], Vepreva, I. T., Vorontsov, R. I., Gekkina, E. N., Gromenko, E. S., Diagileva, I. B., Efremov, V. A., Zelenin, A. V., Kozlovskaia, N. V., Kozyrev, V. A., Krongauz, M. A., Kupina, N. A., Kuprina, T. V., Levina, S. D., Marinova, E. V., Mineeva, Z. I., Miturska-Boianovska, I. [= Miturska-Bojanowska, J.], Mokienko, V. M., Nechaeva, I. V., Pavlova, A. S., Poliakov, D. K., Priemysheva, M. N., Prokof’eva, N. A., Ratsiburskaia, L. V., Ridetskaia, Iu. S., Romanik, A., Cherniak, V. D., Shcheglova, E. A., & Ianurik [= Janurik], S. (2021). Russkii iazyk koronavirusnoi epokhi [The Russian language of the coronavirus era]. Institut lingvisticheskikh issledovanii RAN. 610 p. (In Russian).
332-347 3
Abstract
The paper presents a brief review of the work of the Department of Australia, Oceania and Indonesia of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of the RAS, St. Petersburg, during recent years in the context of the history and current state of Russian studies of the Southern Seas countries and the cultures and languages of Austronesian and Austro-Asiatic peoples of Southeast Asia and Oceania. The authors describe the major directions of this work, including fundamental and field studies in anthropology, ethnography and folklore, as well as publishing and exhibiting activities related to the jubilee year of Nikolai N. Miklouho-Maclay (2021). The article contains a review of the conference “Maclay Readings” that was held at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) on November 11 and 13, 2020, and was dedicated to the memory of Alexander K. Ogloblin (1939-2020), an outstanding scholar and teacher of many modern Russian specialists in Indonesian and Malaysian Studies.
ISSN 2412-9410 (Print)
ISSN 2782-1765 (Online)
ISSN 2782-1765 (Online)