Exhibitions: Exposition timed to the 150th birthday anniversary of Academician N. P. Likhachev in St. Petersburg

April 20, 2012 at the State Hermitage Museum opened, "Only letters are ringing ..." exhibition devoted to the 150th birthday anniversary of Academician Nikolai Petrovich Likhachev.

A unique collection of Likhachev had been developed in the early decades of the twentieth century having received in 1925 the official name of the Paleography Museum. The main idea of the museum's founder was the following: using certain literary monuments to demonstrate the development of writing from ancient times to the early 20th century. The museum funds include over 80,000 items. In 1930, Likhachev was arrested, and a few years later, after the death of the scientist, his museum disbanded. The items of the collection were granted to various institutions, including Hermitage, where they are still stored.

Paying tribute to a remarkable scientist, it was decided to hold an exhibition, to bring together, at least temporarily, in a single exposure, the most interesting and representative monuments of Likhachev’s collection. The key objective of the exhibition is to trace the main stages in the development of writing, to feature different types of letters on the soft and hard materials, as well as to show the different types of documents: formal, church, private. The exhibition includes 460 items. Among them: the cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt inscriptions on a stone; monuments of ancient Greece and Rome; papyri; Byzantine, Old Russian, Syrian, Western medieval manuscripts and letters, Arabic tombstones, flying editions of Russia and Western Europe, documents from Iran and Turkey of the 15th – 19th centuries, stamps, coins, autographs, early printed books, and more.

All material is divided into four major sections: "Origins of Writing. Writings of the Ancient World, " "Writing and the Documents of the Middle Ages and Renaissance," "The Documents of Modern Times of Russia and Europe," "Written Monuments of the Medieval and the New East." Timelines of the exhibition are: the 4th / early 3rd millennium BC – the early twentieth century, which is nearly the period of five thousand years. The exhibition is supplemented with the memorial section, including documents from the vast personal archive of the scientist.