D.G. Messerschmidt’s Collection of Siberian Antiquities in Drawings at the St. Petersburg Archive of the Academy of Sciences

D.G. Messerschmidt’s Collection of Siberian Antiquities
in Drawings at the St. Petersburg Archive
of the Academy of Sciences

doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2023.51.1.100-107

I.V. Tunkina
St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Kievskaya 5, bldg. 9, St. Petersburg, 196084, Russia

This study focuses on the drawings of items collected during D.G. Messerschmidt’s first multidisciplinary expedition to Siberia in 1719-1727. Pictures of the artifacts have been preserved among the documents held by the Academy of Sciences Archive in the personal papers of the traveler, which includes his field journals, the appendices of his reports to the Pharmaceutical (Medical) Registry, and a large handwritten treatise “Sibiria Perlustrata” (1727), outlining the expedition’s findings. In 1728, Messerschmidt’s archaeological collection was included as part of Peter the Great’s Siberian Collection, exhibited at the Kunstkamera. Watercolor and pencil drawings and engravings depicting the exhibits are identified. Handwritten descriptions and drawings of the items have made it possible to a certain extent to reconstruct the first encyclopedist’s Siberian archaeological collection, which perished during the 1747 fire at the Kunstkamera. As Messerschmidt’s graphic works demonstrate, he documented items spanning the time from the Bronze Age to the Late Middle Ages and covering the territory from the Urals to the Trans-Baikal region, including things imported from Western Europe, China, and Central Asia. Also, he collected archaeological items representing virtually all cultures of the Minusinsk Basin. It is concluded that in the first third of the 18th century, Messerschmidt’s collection was the world’s largest and most representative assemblage of artifacts from northeastern Eurasia.

Keywords: Academy of Sciences Archive, D.G. Messerschmidt, personal papers, Kunstkamera, Peter the Great’s Siberian Collection, drawings of archaeological artifacts