On August 5, 2015, the leading expert on the history and culture of the Hellenistic East and Parthia, archaeologist and antiquarian, Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation, Chief Researcher of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Gennady Koshelenko left us.

G. A. Koshelenko was born on January 21, 1935 in Omsk ¹. He graduated from the 2nd Railway Secondary School with a silver medal in 1952 and entered the History Department of the Lomonosov Moscow State University. After completing his first year, G. A. Koshelenko completed an archaeological internship in the ancient city of Pantikapey (Kerch) under the guidance of the outstanding archaeologist V. D. Blavatsky. It was there that G. A. Koshelenko's main research interests were defined - archeology and history of the ancient world. V. D. Blavatsky advised G. A. Koshelenko to study the Hellenistic East and Parthia. These directions became the main ones in the work of Gennady Andreevich.

After graduating from Moscow State University in 1957, N. Koshelenko worked for a year as a head of the academic department, a teacher of history and geography at a school in the village of Nizhniye Pronge in the Khabarovsk Territory, and then for another year served as a librarian in the State Library of the USSR named after V. I. Lenin.

¹ For a detailed biography and bibliography of G. A. Koshelenko, see: Gennady A. Koshelenko / Comp. by V. A. Gaibov, N. B. Polyakova. V. A. Gaibov, Moscow: Nauka Publ., 2015 (Materials for the biobibliography of scientists; Istoriya, issue 38), 126 p.

In 1960-1963, G. A. Koshelenko studied at the postgraduate course of the Institute of Archeology of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Since 1960, at the request of V. D. Blavatsky, he took part in the work of the South Turkmenistan Archaeological Complex Expedition (UTAKE), which was headed by one of the patriarchs of Central Asian archeology M. E. Masson. He spent his entire life studying the history and archeology of Merv and ancient Margiana.

G. A. Koshelenko also actively dug in the Northern Black Sea region, under V. D. Blavatsky. Even before entering graduate school, G. A. Koshelenko became one of the pioneers of underwater archaeology in our country. Together with his teacher V. D. Blavatsky, he wrote the book " Discovery of the Sunken World "(Moscow, 1963), an archaeological bestseller of the 1960s.

In the spring of 1963, G. A. Koshelenko defended his thesis for the degree of Candidate of Historical Sciences " Culture of the cities of Parthia (urban planning, fortification, monumental art)". On the basis of his dissertation, he published the book " Culture of Parthia "(Moscow, 1966) - until now the only monographic study of Parthian culture in Russian.

In 1963-1966, G. A. Koshelenko worked as a junior researcher at the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He conducted independent excavations in Central Asia (already outside YUTAKE), and in 1965, at the request of the Government of Afghanistan, he was sent to this country together with R. M. Munchaev to participate in the excavation of the reference monument of Hellenistic urban planning in Central Asia-the Ai-Khanum hillfort, which was studied by the French archaeological delegation in Afghanistan under the leadership of Paul Bernard ².

In 1966-1968, G. A. Koshelenko worked at the Research Institute of Theory, History and Perspective Problems of Soviet Architecture of the State Committee for Civil Construction and Architecture under the State Construction Committee of the USSR, in 1968-1972 at the All-Union Central Research Laboratory for Conservation and Restoration of Museum Art Values (VTSNILKR) of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR, in 1972-1974 - at the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

In 1974, G. A. Koshelenko returned to the Institute of Archeology, where he worked until the end of his life. At first he was a senior researcher, and in 1979 he became head of the Department of Ancient Archaeology (since 1994 - the Department of Classical Archaeology). In 2008, G. A. Koshelenko left the post of head of the department and worked as a chief researcher. His successor was one of his best students, Doctor of Historical Sciences V. D. Kuznetsov, who defended his thesis at the Moscow State University Faculty of History, as well as his PhD and doctoral dissertations under the supervision of Gennady Andreevich.

In 1974-1980, G. A. Koshelenko worked as an associate professor of the Department of Ancient World History at the Moscow State University Faculty of History.

In 1977, G. A. Koshelenko's popular science monograph "The Homeland of the Parthians" was published, which introduced the legendary rivals of the ancient Romans to a wide range of readers.

In 1978, G. A. Koshelenko defended his doctoral dissertation "The Greek Polis in the Hellenistic East". A year later, a monograph of the same name was published - a fundamental study of the urban planning policy of Alexander the Great and his Diadoch successors in the East. G. A. Koshelenko revealed significant differences in the urban planning practice of the great conqueror and his heirs. While Macedon created cities-military settlements, colonies of soldiers, the Seleucids created along with them urban self-governing communities of polis. G. A. Koshelenko traced the fate of the poleis in Parthia, which emerged in the territories that were part of the Seleucid state. He found that the usual idea of the polis as a city-state is incorrect: the polis was primarily a collective of citizens, a civil community.

In 1980, on the initiative of G. A. Koshelenko, the Institute of Archeology established the Central Asian Archaeological Expedition ³. G. A. Koshelenko and his colleagues conducted excavations at many monuments of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

In 1980-1987, G. A. Koshelenko was the head of the Department of the History of the Ancient World and the Middle Ages of the V. I. Lenin Moscow State Pedagogical Institute.

In the early 1980s, G. A. Koshelenko became the executive editor of two volumes of the fundamental series "Archeology of the USSR":" Ancient States of the Northern Black Sea region "(together with I. T. Kruglikova and V. S. Dolgorukov) and"The Oldest States of the Caucasus and Central Asia". By the volume of data collected, thoroughness of their analysis, and objectivity and unbiased presentation

² Two other Soviet archaeologists, I. T. Krutikova and B. A. Litvinsky (in 1967), took part in the excavations of Ai-Khanum.

³ Today, the Parthian and Bactrian detachments of this expedition are working.

these volumes can be considered reference volumes. The authors and the executive editor of the volumes managed to create a set of archaeological data on the regions considered completely free from nationalist disputes and arguments. For the book "The most ancient States of the Caucasus and Central Asia" G. A. Koshelenko was awarded the gold medal of VDNH of the USSR.

One can only admire the indefatigability and breadth of scientific interests of Gennady Andreevich. Engaged in excavations in Central Asia and preparing volumes for the "Archeology of the USSR", he participated in the work of the Soviet-Yemeni expedition (excavations at the ancient settlement of Raibun in 1983), gave lectures on the archeology of Central Asia and the Northern Black Sea region in France (Higher Normal School and Practical School of Higher Studies).

In 1983, G. A. Koshelenko received the academic title of professor. In 1987, he was elected a corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute.

In 1989, at the initiative of G. A. Koshelenko, a joint Soviet-Italian archaeological expedition was established. He was its co-director until 1997 (since 1992 it has been called Russian-Turkmen-Italian). The most important achievement of the expedition was the fundamental "Archaeological map of the Merv Oasis"⁴. Among the excavated monuments, the ancient settlement of Gebekly-depe stands out - a fortress of the Parthian period, which gave colossal material from ceramics, ostracons, coins, terracotta figurines and bulls. Gobekla bulls are a special type of source. More than 3 thousand bullae and their fragments were found. These are impressions of the seals of officials who signed various goods that were sent to the garrison of the fortress or from it for trade. Along with the archive of the Old Nisa, the Gobekly-depe bulls allow us to reconstruct the state apparatus of the Parthian Kingdom, which is almost not covered by classical narrative sources.

Together with A. Gubaev and his students A. N. Bader and V. A. Gaibov, G. A. Koshelenko collected all written information about Margiana in ancient sources - not only ancient, but also Chinese, Indian, and Armenian-and published their translations into Russian in a separate book "Ancient Merv in the evidence of Written Sources" (Ashgabat, 1994).

A separate side, or rather several sides of the GA's activities. Koshelenko studied the history of ancient civilization, including general theoretical problems of ancient economics and democracy, the legacy of classical authors (Lysia, Pausanias, and Epictetus), The Fate of the Parthenon (Moscow, 2000, co-authored with L. P. Marinovich), and the History of Science (biographical sketches by V. D. Blavatsky and B. V. Farmakovsky). He took an active part in publishing and studying the legacy of the outstanding Russian antiquarian and Hellenist M. I. Rostovtsev, initiated by G. M. Bongard-Levin and published in two volumes, The Scythian Novel (Moscow, 1997) and The Parthian Shot (Moscow, 2003).

G. A. Koshelenko wrote sections on the history, historiography and source studies of Ancient Greece and Hellenism in the university textbooks "History of Ancient Greece" (1986, 1996, 2005), "Source Studies of Ancient Greece (the Hellenistic Era)" (1982) and " Historiography of Ancient History "(1980) and encyclopedias: Bolshoy Sovetskaya, Sovetskaya Istoricheskaya, A large Russian Orthodox church. He has written more than 500 articles and reviews, prefaces and afterwords to collective monographs and translated works. He was an unsurpassed master of reviews and reviews. There is hardly another researcher who has so generously spent his time bringing to the attention of colleagues the results obtained by foreign and domestic scientists and their critical reflection. Until recently, Gennady Andreevich retained a purely youthful interest in all new publications on the Hellenistic East, which he loved.

A special place in the work of G. A. Koshelenko was occupied by the fate of two world religions in the East - Buddhism and Christianity. Back in 1966, his pamphlet "The Beginnings of Buddhism in Margiana"was published. Shortly before his departure, the journal "Problems of History, Philology, Culture" published his article "The Fate of Buddhism in Merv (on some arguments in the discussion)" (2013, issue 4 (42)). So the problem of the spread of Buddhism in Central Asia passed through the whole life of the scientist. Archaeological sites of Christianity in the East, primarily in Dura Europos (Syria) and Margiana (Turkmenistan), were studied by G. A. Koshelenko mainly in the 1990s and 2000s.

All his life, Gennady Andreevich selflessly served science. He actively opposed the pseudoscientific constructions of the" new chronology " of Fomenko and his relatives. He was a strong opponent of" black " archeology and the destruction of the historical memory of the people. His last monograph was " Archeology of Afghanistan in days of Peace and days of War "(Moscow, 2014, co-authored with R. M. Munchaev and V. A. Gaibov), which, along with a detailed description of the history of archaeological research

^{The Archaeological Map of the Murghab Delta: Preliminary Reports 1990-95 /} 4 Ed. by A. Gubacv, G. Koshelenko, and M. Tosi: Text and Figures. Roma: IsIAO-IsMEO, 1998 (IsIAO Reports and Memoirs, Series Minor, III). 299 pp.

The story of the destruction and looting of the collections of the Kabul Museum was revealed, and the unsightly role of the gray cardinals of the black market of antiques from England and Japan was highlighted.

G. A. Koshelenko not only debunked pseudoscientific concepts. He actively promoted scientific knowledge both in university textbooks, as well as textbooks and reading books for secondary schools. A brilliant storyteller, he perfectly mastered the Russian language and deeply knew the immortal Russian literature. The textbook "History of the Ancient World" written by him in collaboration with V. A. Golovina, A. A. Nemirovsky and V. I. Ukolova for the 5th grade of secondary school has already passed through 6 editions.

G. A. Koshelenko's work has been recognized both in Russia and abroad. He has been a corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute (since 1987), the Italian Institute of the Middle and Far East (since 1990), the Russian Academy of Sciences (since 2006), and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres (since 2009). In 1999, he was awarded the title of "Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation".

G. A. Koshelenko was a member of the editorial boards and editorial boards of a number of scientific journals: "Soviet Archeology "(now - "Russian Archeology"), "Bulletin of Ancient History", "Problems of History, Philology, Culture", "Numismatics and Epigraphy", "Dialogues d'histoire ancienne", " Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia", " Parthica. Incontri di culture nel mondo antico", "Revue archeologique".

G. A. Koshelenko created a whole scientific school, continuing the traditions of V. D. Blavatsky and B. V. Farmakovsky. He has trained over 40 candidates of sciences and served as a scientific adviser to five doctors of sciences.

Gennady Andreevich was a surprisingly kind, wise and bright person. He was distinguished by an innate sense of self-esteem, freedom from all formalities, and tremendous inner strength. He eschewed the formal style of dress, but the elegance and precision of his phrasing was always remembered. We had the rare good fortune to know Gennady Andreevich, and some of us-to be his friends. The memory of our teacher and friend will always remain in our hearts.

FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES

⁵ Since 1995 Italian Institute of Africa and the East.

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