World academic science has suffered a heavy loss. On July 7, 2000, an outstanding Egyptologist, Oleg Dmitrievich Berlev, died in St. Petersburg after a long illness.

Oleg Dmitrievich Berlev was born on February 18, 1933 in Pyatigorsk in the family of an employee. In 1951 he entered the Pokrovsky State Pedagogical Institute in Leningrad (later merged with the Herzen State Pedagogical Institute), from where in 1953 he was transferred to the 2nd year of the Eastern Faculty of Leningrad University. In 1957, he graduated from the University with a degree in Egyptology. In his final year at the University, he began working at the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of History as a research assistant to Academician V. V. Struve. In 1959, he was transferred in the same capacity to the Institute of Asian Peoples (later the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, then LO IVAN, now the St. Petersburg branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences). In 1965, he defended his PhD thesis on "The Slaves of the King in Egypt during the Middle Kingdom", in 1978 - his doctoral thesis, based on the monograph "The Working population of Egypt in the Middle Kingdom era" published in 1972. Leading Researcher, Doctor of Historical Sciences. Author of about seventy scientific papers.

Outside of this official biography of the scientist, which can be found in the "personnel accounting leaflet" and the academic handbook, there is a lot left. The shooting of my father. The orphanage from which he was taken by the nanny who raised him. Hunger. It is impossible for him, the son of repressed parents, to immediately enter the University. Many years of compiling the Akkadian language file system as a research assistant. The position of a junior researcher and a decade after defending a brilliant PhD thesis! Three exhausting years of waiting for the decision of the Higher Attestation Commission on an equally brilliant doctoral program... Invariably delayed or lost invitations to every conceivable international Egyptology congress and conference, which the international scientific community of Egyptologists has always looked forward to attending. And many other things, as Oleg Dmitrievich himself, by virtue of his

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he never told even his closest colleagues, but what many of them nevertheless knew or guessed...

The official lists of his works, always incomplete and often inaccurate, also keep silent about the main thing: everything that came out of the pen of Oleg Dmitrievich-regardless of the nature and size of the publication - became an event in Egyptology. The most important work of his life, included in two dissertations and published in two famous monographs ("The working population of ancient Egypt during the Middle Kingdom" (Moscow, 1972) and "Social Relations in Egypt during the Middle Kingdom" (Moscow, 1978)), was a study of the social structure of ancient Egyptian society in one of the most controversial periods his stories. The nature of social relations of this era, which were indirectly and specifically reflected in a set of terms that were (or seemed) social, remained unclear for a long time - especially in the part concerning direct producers of material goods, and long, fierce (and very characteristic for its time) discussions on this subject (including on the pages of VDI). turned out to be a dead end. Having examined all the relevant sources currently available (only Egyptologists can fully understand what the word implies here). all of them) and having shown the heterogeneity and multi-level nature of the terminology they recorded, which was used to refer to the bulk of direct producers, Oleg Dmitrievich Berlev brought it into an impeccably coherent system, leading to a kind of "common denominator"that he found. The latter was the term Hemu Nisut, which denoted the main category of the working population, in relation to which all the others were derived or neighboring. Without this discovery of Oleg Dmitrievich, which has now become a textbook, modern world Egyptology is already unthinkable. As, however, the history of the ancient East as a whole, in which the ancient Egyptian model of society development occupies one of the main places. Like all ingenious things, his discovery now seems quite obvious.

Another major activity of his life was the publication of ancient Egyptian monuments kept in the collections of Russian museums, primarily the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. The catalog album of ancient Egyptian reliefs and stelae from this collection ("The Egyptian Reliefs and Stelae in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow"), released in 1982 (co-authored with the curator of the collection S. I. Khodzhash) in English (translated by Oleg Dmitrievich himself), is a reference publication by content. Its exceptional scientific value lies not only in the introduction to scientific use of the most important part (about 200 storage units) of previously unpublished or little-known monuments of the famous collection of B. S. Golenishchev, but also in the amazing depth, originality and innovation of Oleg Dmitrievich's comments. The significance of many of them goes far beyond the catalog itself and even Egyptology as a whole. The Introduction is quite remarkable in its depth, which (due to the necessary brevity) only outlines a whole series of solutions to the most important problems. One example. Applying the popular thesis about the ability of art to grant immortality to ancient Egyptian art, he fills it with a different-literal-content, thereby outlining a qualitatively new approach to understanding the most important features of the ancient Egyptian (i.e., extremely archaic) mentality - at least in terms of the individual's posthumous expectations. The significance of this discovery by Oleg Dmitrievich Berlev, as it seems, is still not fully appreciated. Both in Russia and abroad, the Catalog soon after its publication became a bibliographic rarity.

Another remarkable publication work of Oleg Dmitrievich Berlev was the grandiose "Catalog of ancient Egyptian monuments from museums in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Transcaucasia, Central Asia and the Baltic States", published (in the same co-authorship) in Switzerland in 1998 (in English) ("The Catalog of the Monuments of Ancient Egypt from the Museums of Russian Federation, Ukraine, Bielorussia, Caucasus, Middle Asia, and the Baltic States " / / OBO. 17. Fribourg, Gottingen, 1998). This relatively recent work, which makes available for scientific research for the first time three thousand (!) objects of ancient Egyptian antiquity from the collections of 50 museums of the former USSR (with the exception of the State Museum of Fine Arts and the State Museum of Fine Arts). The Hermitage Museum), and also contains exceptional philological and historical commentaries, which Egyptologists have yet to appreciate. Unfortunately, the true scope of Oleg Berlev's scientific publishing activities is currently impossible to comprehend. Due to the lack of funds, the outstanding scientific work "Ancient Egyptian Sculpture in the Collection of the State Museum of Fine Arts", which contains a brilliant commentary on 265 ancient Egyptian statues, as well as the completed "Canopic Catalog from the State Museum of Fine Arts Collection", which takes into account about fifty (!) of these specific monuments, remains unpublished for many years. Until his death, Oleg Dmitrievich continued to work on the "Catalog of Papyri from the collection of the State Museum of Fine Arts", which was supposed to contain about 1000 (!) storage units... There is no doubt that each of these works would also be an event in Egyptology.

Unfortunately, the work on the Leyden Papyrus 344 - the famous Utterance of Ipuver, about which, as Oleg Dmitrievich said, he knew "almost everything" - also remained unwritten. And now we may never know the happy ending of the story of another ancient Egyptian famous character, Unu-Amon, who was also known, it seems, only to him...

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Each of Oleg Dmitrievich's works invariably solved the most complex riddles, over which almost generations of remarkable Egyptologists often struggled unsuccessfully. At the same time, these works invariably left an impression of the exceptional simplicity of the solutions offered in them. We can recall, for example, his famous article on the "golden" royal name, which for the first time gave not a complex, metaphorical, but, so to speak, "physical" interpretation of its essence ("The Golden Name" of the Egyptian king // J. F. Champollion and the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs, Moscow, 1979). Or the most elegant solution of the seemingly unsolvable problem of the "father of God" in the analysis of the famous Shatt-er-Rigali inscriptions ("The Eleventh Dynasty in the History of Egypt" / / Studies Presented to H. J. Polsky. 1981). Or a disconcertingly simple explanation of the meaning of placing the name of the famous Mentuemkhet on a funeral garment from the collection of the State Museum of Fine Arts ("New Documents from the Times of the War with Assyria" / / K. R. Lepsius. Akten der Tagung ansla(31ich seines 100. Todestages, 10- 12.7.1984 in Halle). This report, which ultimately specified the date of the Assyrian conquest of Egypt, was read by the author in Halle and, according to eyewitnesses, caused applause from the high audience who rose from their seats.

The last lifetime publication of Oleg Dmitrievich in Russian ("Two periods of Sothis between the Year 18 of King Senu, or Tosortros, and the Year 2 of Pharaoh Antonin Pius" / / Ancient Egypt. Language-culture-consciousness, Moscow, 2000) offers a solution to another very complex Egyptological problem. Interpretation of two tiny and for many decades interpreted inscriptions on the pedestal of the statue, found near the Step pyramid, allowed the author to assign the starting point of the Sirius cycles. / It is difficult to overestimate the significance of this conclusion for the system of Ancient Eastern chronology, which is largely focused on ancient Egyptian, by the 18th year of the reign of King Senu, best known by the name "Djoser", i.e. by 2767 BC. There is something symbolic in the fact that the last outstanding work of the brilliant Egyptologist is connected with Sirius, the mysterious and brightest star of the ancient Egyptian sky...

The simplicity of his concepts, however, did not mean that they were easy to present. Everyone who has ever read his work knows that following the rapid movement of his thought is usually a difficult task, requiring great preparation and the ability to look at the object of research with an open mind. But it is unlikely that anyone who has passed at least once together with Oleg Dmitrievich a dizzying path to the truth has remained unfamiliar with the feeling of delight before the final result indicated by him... Everyone, of course, was well aware of another thing: the impression of the apparent simplicity of his decisions was achieved by a colossal, exhausting, all-consuming work, which did not stop for a single minute of his life and brought him incomparable creative joy. Oleg Dmitrievich's Egyptological knowledge was not just infinitely great. They were already of the quality that allows a scientist to be not just an objective observer and researcher of a foreign culture, but also to look at it through the eyes of its bearers, to "experience" it subjectively.

Oleg Dmitrievich Berlev was a real scientist not only in terms of the level and quality of his knowledge. He was one of those rare people in academia who can enjoy their colleagues ' discoveries without restraint, be extremely lenient in criticizing their mistakes, and share their own discoveries completely disinterestedly. Pushkin's Salieri's suspicions were correct, but perhaps inaccurate in one thing-evil and true genius are incompatible...

Oleg Dmitrievich could consider himself a happy person. His works will live on as long as the science of Egyptology exists. He will always be remembered by his colleagues, students, and friends here, at home, and abroad, who immensely appreciated and loved him. And who will always miss him now...

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