British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
A HUNDRED YEARS OF DUNHUANG, 1907-2007
Abstracts
The Dunhuang collections in St. Petersburg
Professor Irina Popova, Institute of Oriental Studies, St. Petersburg
The Dunhuang materials, kept in Russia, were acquired by S.F. Oldenburg (1863-1934) during his Second Russian Turkestan expedition in 1914-15. The manuscript collection from the Dunhuang library cave in number of more than 18000 items is held in St. Petersburg Institute of Oriental Studies. Paintings and artifacts of the expedition including statues, murals and banners are kept in the State Hermitage Museum, with the most part on the open display. The expedition brought a small ethnographical collection of utensils, jewelry, dolls in local national garments, which is now in the holdings of Russian Ethnographic Museum in St. Petersburg. The expedition has a vast archives with photographs, site plans, diaries, sketches, financial and official documents. A remarkable part of the papers is held in the Archives of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. The Hermitage also preserves thousands of glass plates from Dudin’s photographs and type-written notebooks of Oldenburg with the descriptions of Dunhuang caves. Caves photographs and some documents are also held in Institute of Oriental Studies, St. Petersburg.