Наталия Давидовна Флиттнер – ученый и педагог
Natalia Flittner – the Scholar and the Lecturer

Summary/Abstract: The author’s aim was to trace the main landmarks in the life of a famous orientalist, egyptologist and assyriologist Natalia Flittner and to characterize different sides of her versatile scholarly and educational activities. Nataliya Flittner was one of the first Russian women to graduate a university, thus she could lecture at the higher education institutes. She happened to become a lecturer of the Leningrad State University and of the I. Repin Institute of painting, sculpture and architecture (The Academy of Fine Arts) and also a research officer of the State Hermitage museum. Her rare endowments conduced to the great achievements both in the oriental studies with the lecturing at the university and in the establishment of the new museum structures. She worked out and held a course on the Ancient Eastern Art’s History. In 1927 an egyptological study group appeared in the University and established its own magazine “The egyptological study group’s Collection”. N. Flittner published several articles in Russian and German languages in this periodical. Her scholarly endeavor led to the appearing of profound studies of the monuments of Ancient Eastern Art kept in the State Hermitage Museum and in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, what was reflected in her research papers. In 1918 N. Flittner was attached to the Hermitage with the task to found a new “Museum Department”, that was a prototype of the modern Educational Department of the Hermitage. The year 1927 saw her managing the organization of a new exposition – that of the Ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian Art. In 1929 she wrote “The Ancient Egypt’s exposition’s Guide” that was the first guide-book on the Ancient Egyptian art’s exposition in the Hermitage. In 1934 N. Flittner was one of the creators of the first major permanent exhibition of the Ancient Egyptian Art and Culture in the Hermitage. N. Flittner’s fundamental monograph “The Art and Culture of the Mesopotamia and the neighboring countries” was for the first time issued in 1958 and republished twice in the 21st century, as it hasn’t lost its significance. The article is based upon the memoirs and diaries by N. Flittner; the author had a good fortune to be the first explorer of her archive that came into the possession of the State Hermitage in 2001.

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