Pamiatniki Greko-Baktriiskogo Iskusstva

The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, has an important collection of Greco-Bactrian and Bactrian gold and silver vessels, many of which were likely in the Siberian collection of Tsar Peter the Great (1672-1725). In 1940, Kamilla Trever (1892-1974), a curator at the Hermitage and a Russian historian specializing in the history and culture of Transcaucasia, Central Asia, and Iran, published this important but obscure Russian-language work on the collection. In the 1970s, a later generation of scholars unearthed more examples of art from this lost civilizationon while excavating in the Soviet Union and Afghanistan. In 1978, just before Afghanistan descended into war, Russian archaeologist Viktor Sariandidi uncovered a hoard of 21,000 gold pieces in Bactrian graves from the first century A.D. Trever’s catalog of the Hermitage’s collection of gold and silver objects from this long-lost civilization is an important early work of scholarship. Repairing this copy of her work will keep it available for future scholars as they continue to reconstruct the history behind the amazing hoard of gold discovered by Sariandidi at Tillya Tepe.