On 27 May 2016, the State Hermitage held a Day of Syria, the aim of which was to remind the worldwide public of a cultural tragedy – the barbaric destruction of historical monuments in the Middle East.
From the 26 to 29 May 2016, an exhibition of Syrian and Yemeni antiquities from the stocks of the Hermitage is being held in the Foyer of the Hermitage Theatre. It includes a gravestone and a protective tablet with South Arabian inscriptions from the 7th–5th centuries BC, an inlaid bronze tray created in the 14th century by Egyptian craftsmen to a commission from the Yemeni Rasulid dynasty, silver jewellery and a dagger made by Yemeni craftsmen in the 20th century. The exhibition also features artefacts from Christian and Muslim Syria – icons, silverware, bronzes and ceramics with Christian subjects and glass goblets of the Mameluke era.
The Council Hall of the State Hermitage was the venue for a scholarly meeting devoted to various issues in the study of the culture of Syria. Mikhail Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, gave a talk on “The Rapid Advance to Palmyra”; Yury Piatnitsky, senior researcher in the Department of the East, spoke about glazed tiles with Christian subjects from the Hermitage collection; Vladimir Ivanov from the Department of Manuscripts and Documents at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts Russian Academy of Sciences spoke on the Palmyran researches of Academician Pavel Kokovtsev. The meeting was held in conjunction with the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society.
In the evening, a programme “The Day of Syria: In Memory of Lost Monuments” was held in the Hermitage Theatre. Mikhail Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, addressed the audience. Talks were then given by Alexander Nikitin and Yury Piatnitsky, both from the State Hermitage’s Department of the East. The evening ended with performance entitled “On the Road to Damascus” by Sergei Kargin, a winner of the Golden Sofit theatre prize. The theatricalized composition was devoted to the Syrian capital that became a symbol of spiritual enlightenment, the overcoming of pagan and phariseean narrow-mindedness and the Christianization of the Hellenistic world. The opposition of the two principles was presented through New Testament texts and the poetry of Mikhail Kuzmin.
