Merpert, Nikolai Yakovlevich

Childhood and Youth

Nikolai Yakovlevich Merpert was born on November 26, 1922 in Moscow in a family of employees. Father, Yakov Ivanovich Merpert, was an engineer-economist and worked in various government organizations, his mother, Melitina Mikhailovna Merpert, was a medical worker. He became interested in archeology and ancient history in his school years, at the State Historical Museum he attended a circle on archeology, which at that time was led by V.D. Blavatsky , A.P. Smirnov and B.A. Rybakov .

In 1936, he first took part in an archaeological expedition. In 1940, after graduating from secondary school No. 59 in Starokonyushenny Lane on the Arbat , he was drafted into the army, where he served in the 1st Motorized Corps of the Leningrad Military District in Pskov .

From June to November 1941, N. Ya. Merpert took an active part in the Great Patriotic War , fought on the North-Western Front as a soldier, assistant commander of a platoon of the 5th Motorcycle, 125th Tank and Separate Tank Regiment. He was wounded four times at the front, after being treated in a hospital. In March 1942 he was commissioned on disability and then returned to Moscow and entered the history department of Moscow State University . He was awarded with medals and the Order of the Patriotic War of the 2nd degree.

Student years

In 1942, N. Ya. Merpert entered the History Department of Moscow State University, where A. V. Artsikhovsky , V. D. Blavatsky , V. A. Gorodtsov , B. N. Grakov , S. V. were taught at the Department of Archeology . Kiselev and others. In his student years, in the field of his scientific interests was ancient archeology. Then he published his first scientific work “On the issue of the origin of gladius ”, which is published as a separate brochure. In 1945, from June to October, he worked as an intern at the Kerch Museum . His diploma work “Ancient Greek Roofing Tiles in the Cities of the Northern Black Sea Region” also dealt with issues of ancient subjects and was later published in their entirety by him ^[1] .

In 1942-1943 N. Ya. Merpert participates in the excavation of Slavic barrows in the Moscow region , and in 1944 - Scythian monuments in Nikopol , Dnepropetrovsk region . In December 1945, N. Ya. Merpert graduated with honors from Moscow State University.

Scientific and educational activities

After graduation, N. Ya. Merpert enters graduate school at the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR , where he writes a dissertation on the Saltovo cemetery , which gave the name to the Saltovo-Mayatsky archaeological culture of the early Middle Ages of Eastern Europe. In 1949, after graduating from graduate school, he was hired by the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (now the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences), where he went through all the stages of his scientific career, from junior to chief scientific employee, was a scientific secretary and for a long time headed the Department of Neolithic and Bronze century.

In 1950, N. Ya. Merpert brilliantly defended his thesis on the topic “Upper Saltovo (Saltovskaya culture)” ^[2] . In the years 1948-1949. He took an active part in the archaeological research of Karakormum in Mongolia ^[3] . According to the results of excavations in 1965, the collective monograph “Ancient Mongolian Cities” was published, one of the authors of which was N. Ya. Merpert ^[4] , and a number of articles on archeology of Central Asia in the Middle Ages were also published.

In 1950, the Kuibyshev expedition of the Institute of the History of Material Culture was organized, headed by A.P. Smirnov. N. Ya. Merpert was appointed deputy chief and leader of the second detachment of this expedition. In the area of ​​the future Kuibyshev reservoir , on the territory of the Samara , Volgograd and Ulyanovsk regions and Tatarstan , hundreds of buried burials, as well as a number of settlements from the Bronze Age, which belonged mainly to the monuments of the log-house cultural and historical community, were investigated during security excavations under his supervision.

The study of Eneolithic cultures and the Bronze Age of the Eurasian steppes is gradually becoming one of the main directions in the research activity of a young scientist. The scope of his scientific interests is expanding in chronological and territorial terms, he publishes a number of articles and summarizes monographic research ^[5] , takes an active part in scientific discussions. In 1956, 1959 and in 1960. N. Ya. Merpert excavates in the territory of Chechen-Ingushetia , where under his leadership the mounds of the III — II millennium BC were investigated. e. at Art. Meken North Caucasian culture and settlements of the Early Bronze Age and Koban culture in the village. Serzhen-Yurt . A layer of Early Bronze Age was discovered at the Serzhenyurt I settlement, with materials correlated with both the Maikop culture and the Kuro-Arak culture , which was first recorded on the territory of Chechnya . The materials were published in the publications of the Institute of the History of Material Culture.

In 1961-1963 N. Ya. Merpert takes part in the first Soviet archaeological expedition in Egypt ^[6] . In Nubia , in the construction zone of the Aswan hydroelectric complex , the expedition explores a number of monuments of the III — II millennium BC. e. In 1963, the expedition also undertook archaeological exploration in northwestern Sudan . Research materials were published in 1964 in a separate monographic study “Ancient Nubia” ^[7] . Later, N. Ya. Merpert explores archaeological sites in Bulgaria , where, under his co-leadership, a joint Soviet-Bulgarian expedition operated for 30 years, which over the years explored a wide range of monuments from the Eneolithic and early Bronze Age.

Since 1969, he has been combining his fieldwork in the North Caucasus and the Balkans with the research of the Soviet expedition in Mesopotamia , during which a group of Tell Yarimtepe calves was recorded, located 80 km west of Mosul , near the city of Telafar . In parallel, he continues his research on the problems of the Eneolithic and Bronze Age of the steppe strip of Eastern Europe. In 1968, N. Ya. Merpert successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on the theme “The Ancient History of the Population of the Steppe Strip of Eastern Europe (III – early II millennium BC. E.),” in which he paid special attention to the funerary monument of the pit cultural and historical early Bronze Age communities . Later, based on the materials of his Ph.D. thesis, he wrote a monograph ^[8] , which has still not lost its relevance.

Since the mid-1980s, N. Ya. Merpert has been focusing on the study of the monuments of Bulgaria and Mesopotamia. In 1969-1980, he took part in the study of a group of ancient calves Yarimtepe I, Yarimtepe II and Yarimtepe III, which represent the Hassun , Khalaf and Ubeid cultures . In parallel, the expedition carried out archaeological explorations in northern Iraq in the valley and foothills of Sinjar , where the monuments of the pre-ceramic Neolithic - Tel-Magzaliya , settlements of Tell-Sotto and Kullitepe , which date back to the 7th millennium BC, were first discovered and explored. e. and relate to the pre-Hassun period. In the early 1980s, due to the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, the Mesopotamian expedition of the Institute of Archeology of the USSR Academy of Sciences interrupted its research in northern Iraq and transferred them to the Khabur steppe, which is part of the North Mesopotamian Dzhezir plain ^[9] . Since 1988, the expedition was conducted on the territory of Tell Hazna I, 25 km from the city of Hasake in northeastern Syria ^[10] .

He was buried in Moscow at the Troekurovsky cemetery ^[11] .

N. Ya. Merpert is the author of more than 350 scientific works, 10 of which are monographic studies. His first works dealt with certain problems of ancient archeology. Later, he fruitfully studied archeology of the early and high Middle Ages, which was reflected in a series of works devoted to the problems of the Saltovo-Mayak culture, as well as issues of early medieval archeology of the steppe belt of Eurasia. The range of scientific interests and developments of N. Ya. Merpert includes questions of the archeology of the steppe strip of Eurasia in the Bronze and Early Middle Ages, the primitive archeology of the Balkans and the Middle East, the origin and forms of producing archeology, the formation of statehood in the Middle East, biblical archeology and much more ^{[ 12]} .

For outstanding achievements in the study of the archeology of Bulgaria and the training of scientific personnel N. Ya. Merpert was awarded the Order of Cyril and Methodius I degree and the Great Medal of St. Clement of Ohrid, and for his contribution to the study of monuments of ancient Mesopotamia together with N.O. Bader and R In 1999, M. Munchaev was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation in the field of science and technology.

N. Ya. Merpert began his teaching activities in 1966 at the Department of Archeology of the History Department of Moscow State University , where he taught courses on archeology of the Bronze Age for five years. N. Ya. Merpert created a whole school in Russian archeology for the training of qualified personnel. Under his leadership, about 40 candidates and doctors of science defended themselves, for which in 1996 he was awarded the honorary title “Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation” ^[12] .

Major works

Books

• Ancient Nubia. - M .; L .: Nauka , 1964 .-- 261 p. (co-author B. B. Piotrovsky , O. G. Bolshakov )
• Ancient Mongolian cities. - M .: Nauka, 1965 .-- 371 p. (co-author S.V. Kiselev, L.A. Evtyukhova , L.R. Kyzlasov , V.P. Levashova)
• The oldest herders of the Volga-Ural interfluve. M .: Nauka, 1974.- 152 p.
• Jezero. Rannobronzovoto village at with. Jezero. - Sofia .: Bulgaria Academy on Naukite , 1979. - 547 p. (co-author G.I. Georgiev, D.G. Dimitrov, R. B. Katincharov, E.N. Chernykh )
• Early agricultural settlements of Northern Mesopotamia: studies of the Soviet expedition in Iraq. - M .: Nauka, 1981. - 320 p. (co-author R. M. Munchaev )
• The Archaic Phase of the Hassuna culture et al., Sat: Early Stages in the Evolution of Mesopotamian Civilization: Soviet Excavations in Northern Iraq . University of Arizona Press, 1993.
• Essays on the archeology of biblical countries. - M .: BBI , 2000 .-- 341 p.
• Tell Khazna l : cult-administrative center of the IV — III millennium BC. e. in northeastern Syria. M., 2004 (jointly with R. M. Munchaev, Sh. N. Amirov );
• Tell Yunatsite . The era of bronze. M., 2007. T. 2. Part 1 (et al.);
• Belyaev L.A. , Merpert N. Ya. From Biblical Antiquities to Christian. Essays on archeology of the era of the formation of Judaism and Christianity. M .: Institute of St. up Thomas, 2007.392 s.
• From the past: far and near. Memoirs of an archaeologist. M., 2011 .-- 384 p.

Articles

• Pit culture / Merpert N. Ya. // Bookplate - Yaya. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1978. - (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia : [in 30 vol.] / Ch. Ed. A. M. Prokhorov ; 1969-1978, vol. 30).

• Vasiliev I. B. N. Ya. Merpert and his role in the Volga archeology // Issues of the Volga archeology. Samara, 2003. Issue. 3.
• Merpert Nikolay Yakovlevich // Institute of Archeology today. M., 2000;
• Mishina T. N. Merpert, Nikolai Yakovlevich // Big Russian Encyclopedia : electronic version. - 2018. - Date of treatment: 03/28/2018.
• Munchaev R. M. On the 80th anniversary of N. Ya. Merpert // Russian Archeology . 2002. No. 4;
• Munchaev R.M. In memory of the unforgettable friend of Nikolai Yakovlevich Merpert (1922-2012) // Russian Archeology. 2012.