Plate Decorated with Biblical Scenes from Grigorova

Provenance

In 1897 a farmer found this plate with biblical scenes while plowing a field along the Kama River near the village of Grigorovskoe (Григоровское). Grigorovskoe was in the Solikamskii County (Соликамский Уезд) of the Perm Governorate (Пермская Губерния) of the Russian Empire. In 1898 the Perm Scientific Archival Commission informed the Imperial Archaeological Commission about the plate and later sent it to Saint Petersburg. In 1899 the Archaeological Commission transferred the plate to the Imperial Hermitage Museum. The plate remains in the collection of the renamed State Hermitage Museum today. The number is ω-154.

In the early twentieth century the village of Grigorovskoe sat just south of the village of Grigorova (Григорова) on the right bank of the Kama River. Only Grigorova remains. The village is in the Solikamskii District (Соликамский Район), Perm Province/Krai (Пермский Край), Russian Federation.

*Grigorovskoe should not to be confused with Grigor’evskoe (Григорьевское) in the neighboring Nytvenskii District but also in Perm Krai.

Technical Notes

silver with gilding / 23 cm diameter x 2.7 cm height / 977 g weight

Inscription & Other Marking Notes

Syriac inscriptions caption and label the figures in each of the images. See translations in Zalesskaia 2013, 331; Khvol’son, Pokrovskii, Smirnov 1899, 2-3.

Major Eurasian Silver Publications

Darkevich, V. P. Khudozhestvennyi metall Vostoka VIII-XIII vv.: proizvedeniia vostochnoi torevtiki na territorii evropeiskoi chasti SSSR i Zaural’ia. Moscow: Nauka, 1976. [T. 23 № 40]

Marshak, B. I. Istoriia vostochnoi torevtiki III-XIII vv. i problemy kul’turnoi preemstvennosti. Saint Petersburg: Akademiia Issledovaniia Kul’tury, 2017. [ris. 207]

Marshak (Marschak), B. I. Silberschätze des Orients: Metallkunst des 3.-13. Jahrhunderts und Ihre Kontinuität. Leipzig: E.A. Seemann, 1986. [№ 207]

Smirnov, Ia. I. Vostochnoe serebro: atlasʺ drevnei serebrianoi i zolotoi posudy vostochnago proiskhozhdeniia naidennoi preimushchestvenno vʺ prědelakhʺ Rossiiskoi imperii. Saint Petersburg: Publishing House of the Imperial Archaeological Commission, 1909. [T. XV № 38]

Additional Bibliography

Darkevich, V. P., and B. I. Marshak. “O tak nazyvaemom Siriiskom bliude iz Permskoi Oblasti.” Sovetskaia Arkheologiia, no. 2 (1974): 213–22.

Khvol’son, D. A., N. V. Pokrovskii, and Ia. I. Smirnov. Serebrianoe Siriiskoe Bliudo, Naidennoe v Permskom Krae. ‘Materialy po Arkheologii Rossii’ Series 22. Saint Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk, 1899.

Zalesskaia, V. N. “K interpretatsii siuzheta na nestorianskom diskose iz sela Grigorovskoe.” In Sogdiitsy, ikh predshestvenniki, sovremenniki u nasledniki, 331-338. Trudy Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha LXII. Saint Petersburg: Publishing House of the State Hermitage, 2013.

Image Credits

Featured Image

State Hermitage Museum Website

Page Images

State Hermitage Museum Website