Vladimir Semenovich Golenishchev

Born Jan. 17 (29), 1856, in St. Petersburg; died 1947 in Nice. Russian Egyptologist, Assyriologist, and Semitist.

Golenishchev discovered and was the first to translate, comment on, and publish (1906–13) the papyruses of the State Hermitage Museum (the so-called Tale of a Shipwrecked Sailor, the Prophecy of Neferty, the Sermons of a Heracleopolis King), which are of importance in the study of ancient Egyptian literature and history. On his initiative and with his personal funds he carried out archaeological investigations in Egypt: at Wadi Hammamat in 1884–85, and at Tell el Maskhuta in 1888–89. Golenishchev assembled a huge collection of Egyptian and Near Eastern antiquities (over 6,000 articles), including such unique remains as the Moscow mathematical papyrus, the description of the travels of Wenumen to Phoenicia, and the Fayyum portraits. The collection has been housed in the A. S. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts since 1909. Golenishchev pursued original research on the ancient Egyptian language, literature, and art. He also studied Assyrian, Hittite. Urartic, and Sabaean antiquities. In 1915 he moved to Egypt, where he organized and headed the department of Egyptology at the University of Cairo.