A wide range of orientalists: historians, archaeologists, philologists and linguists, junior colleagues and students of Professor I. M. Diakonov (1915 - 1999) continue to develop the scientific directions laid down in his time by world-class scientists, and also pay tribute to his memory.¹

I. M. Dyakonov is a specialist in the history and culture of ancient Near Asia, and is widely known for his works on ancient mythology, translations and commentaries of Ancient Eastern literary and religious monuments. In Russian linguistics, he opened the direction of comparative historical study of the Afrasian macrofamily of languages, which includes ancient Egyptian, Berber, Chadian and Cushitic languages in addition to the Semitic family. His works, theories and hypotheses both in the field of ancient civilizations and in the field of the history of Afrasian languages and their native speakers are recognized and continued in Russia and abroad. He participated in the Great Patriotic War. Since 1972 - Honorary Member of the American Oriental Society, since 1985-of the American Academy of Arts, British Asian Society, Corresponding Member of the British Academy.

¹ See memorial collections: History and Languages of the Ancient East: in Memory of I. M. Dyakonov / Ed. by V. A. Lifshits, I. N. Medvedskaya, V. A. Yakobson. SPb.Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, 2002; Afrasian: Selected Comparative-Historical Linguistic Studies in Memory of Igor M. Diakonoff / Ed. by M. Lionel Bender, David Appleyard & Gabor Takacs. Munchen: Lincom Europa, 2003; Edubba is eternal and permanent. Materials of the conference dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the birth of Igor Mikhailovich Dyakonov I Comp. by M. M. Dandamaev, L. E. Kogan, N. V. Kozlova, I. N. Medvedskaya. Hermitage, 2005.

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Since the main creative and scientific activity of I. M. Diakonov was connected with two major scientific centers of Leningrad/St. Petersburg: The Institute of Oriental Studies and the State Hermitage Museum, these institutions became the organizers of the "Deacon Readings" in 2005-2006 in St. Petersburg.

The 2005 conference was dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the birth of I. M. Diakonov, which was reflected in the opening speech of the Director of SPb.I. F. Popova, Professor of the Institute of Information Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and in the speech of one of the closest colleagues of the scientist, V. A. Yakobson (St. Petersburg).Russian Academy of Sciences), dedicated to the creative path of I. M. Diakonov.

The problems and questions considered by the conference participants were able to reflect to a large extent the many-sided scientific groundwork left by I. M. Diakonov to his colleagues and students.

A solid school of Sumerologists and assyriologists developed in St. Petersburg was represented by reports containing the results of research on the grammar of the Sumerian language (I. T. Kaneva, St. Petersburg), on the possibilities of reconstructing the cultural and pedagogical system of the Sumerian civilization (V. K. Afanasyeva, St. Petersburg), on the establishment of the Sumero-Akkadian mythological tradition (V. V. Yemelyanov, St. Petersburg.), on incantation formulas and changes in their composition in the 3rd-2nd millennium BC in comparison with the initial Sumerian tradition (N. G. Rudik, Moscow).

Based on further study of Sumerian and Sumerian-Babylonian written documents, historians continue to reconstruct the system of socio-economic relations in Ancient Mesopotamia of the 3rd-2nd millennium BC (N. V. Kozyreva, N. V. Kozlova, St. Petersburg).

A number of reports have shown how contextual and semantic analysis of some terms in Old Babylonian written monuments can also contribute to a more adequate interpretation of them from a historical point of view (V. A. Yakobson, St. Petersburg; E. M. Markina, Moscow).

The reports of M. M. Dandamayeva and NO.I were devoted to the reflection of the spiritual life of the ancient society in the visual arts of Mesopotamia. Chekhov (St. Petersburg). Based on a comparative analysis of the sources of the ancient period, new concepts concerning the history of Near Asia are considered (IA. Ladynin, A. A. Nemirovsky, Moscow).

The philological direction was represented by research on the linguistic analysis of ancient texts: on the syntactic and contextual conditions for translating verb forms in the texts of the Laws of Hammurabi (G. H. Kaplan, St. Petersburg); on the etymology of the term "Jew" based on a comparative analysis of the texts of the Old Testament and their Greek translations (A. V. Nemirovskaya, St. Petersburg); on the genre of text that can determine the meaning of verb forms, based on the material of the prophetic books of the Bible (A. K. Lyavdansky, Moscow); on the system of personal verb forms and their semantics in epistolary texts of the Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian periods (S. V. Lezov, Moscow).

Much attention was paid to the lexical systems of Semitic and other Afrasian languages: the degree of preservation of Aramaic lexical isoglosses based on materials from the oldest written monuments to Neo-Aramaic dialects (L. E. Kogan, Moscow); the establishment of new lexical parallels to ancient Semitic languages in the languages of the Chadian family (O. V. Stolbova, Moscow); ancient and later stone names in the languages of South Arabia (A. G. Belova, Moscow).

The problem of forming the written language of various families was also not ignored: the Phoenician script (Yu. B. Tsirkin, Novgorod) and the Maya writing system (A.M. Davletshin, Moscow).

The Deacon Readings of January 12-13, 2006 were a continuation of the 2005 conference in terms of their program and participants. Traditionally, regular participants were able to share with their colleagues new results of basic research or offer the first results of research on new topics and materials. A significant part of the scientific work of the meetings was contributed by young scientists from St. Petersburg and Moscow.

As in 2005, scientific meetings were held in the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and in the Department of Oriental Studies of the State Hermitage Museum.

Opening the meeting, I. F. Popova emphasized the importance of the scientific school of I. M. Dyakonov, which determined the directions of comprehensive research in the field of reconstructing the history of ancient Near Asia, studying written monuments - historical documents and monuments of literature and language.

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According to the conference reports, the obligatory reliance on written and archaeological sites, further study of ancient and modern languages of the Near East and neighboring regions remain the scientific guidelines that were laid down by I. M. Diakonov in his theoretical works and in the scientific guidance of the younger generation of scientists.

New research on the ancient history of Mesopotamia attracted much attention of the conference participants. The study of written monuments of the Sumerian civilization makes it possible to clarify the system of remuneration of rural workers on state land, who, along with the land plot, received payment in grain. As N. V. Kozlova showed in the report " Land or grain? (on payments to agricultural workers during the third dynasty of Ur)", one of the oldest states of the 3rd millennium BC on the territory of lower Mesopotamia already had a clear scheme for organizing public works and recording their results.

The historical role of the kingdom of Melitene - the nearest neighbor of the Assyrian power as the center and crossroads of military and trade routes from East to West was noted by A. A. Nemirovsky in his report "On the history of Melitene in the late 2nd-mid 1st millennium BC: a political and territorial aspect". He proposed his reconstruction of the passage of the "royal road" through Melitene through the territory of Cilicia.

In the report "Archaleus - the founder of Hades" Yu. B. Tsirkin, analyzing ancient historical writings, suggested that the Phoenician city on the coast of the Iberian Peninsula (now the city of Cadiz in Spain) it was founded in the early period of Phoenician colonization, as evidenced by the possible correspondence of the Greek name of the founder of the city to the name of one of the revered Phoenician deities.

V. A. Yakobson's report "The Bible and Literatures of the Ancient Near East"was devoted to the complex issue of common elements of Middle Eastern cultures. The scientist drew attention to the similarity of specific ideological structures reflected in the literatures of the ancient Near East: the emergence of the class of literate scribes; the similarity of plots and genres of literary monuments. Unlike ancient Egyptian and ancient Mesopotamian literature, the Bible has reflected and preserved many of these ancient themes and genres, especially in the Book of Ecclesiastes.

V. K. Afanasyeva in her report "Why the god Ninurta was afraid of the turtle" showed the special role of amphibians in the mythological ideas of the inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia and in the practice of priests, soothsayers and conjurers. These creatures could bring down many calamities and deadly dangers not only to humans, but also to the deity. The importance of turtles, frogs and snakes in the spiritual life of Sumerian-Akkadian society and in everyday life is also evidenced by their frequent images on seals and amulets. The tradition of witchcraft and incantations using these animals has continued in the Middle East for thousands of years.

The report of N. B. Yankovskaya (State Hermitage Museum) "Mask-persona" examines the clay seal found during the excavations of Nuz (near Kirkuk). The seal belongs to the period of transition from the "dominance of the Old Akkadian cultural area to the Hurrian" (XV-XIV centuries BC). The plot of the image and the unique mask placed in the composition of the attack of two lions on a zebra bull allow the speaker to interpret the entire scene as evidence of the preservation and continuation of cultural traditions in the temple centers of the region.

The importance of fine art that reveals the spiritual life of ancient society is also emphasized in the report of M. M. Dandamayeva "Relief of Nabu-apla-iddin and Babylonian art of the 1st millennium BC". This is the image on the mortgage tablet of the IX century BC from the Shamash temple in Sippar (modern settlement-Abu Habba, it is located south of Baghdad, at the bifurcation of the Euphrates into the main channel and arm of the Irninu). The analysis carried out by the speaker shows that the Babylonian relief preserves the artistic traditions of the Sumerian-Akkadian period, and in its content represents a unique image of the model of the world that has developed in the culture of the Babylonians.

I. A. Ladynin's report "From the receptacles of the gods to magical helpers: adaptation of the Near-Asian concept of cult images in Late and Greco-Roman Egypt", using examples from written monuments of the first centuries BC and the first centuries AD, showed how during this period the Egyptians gradually began to adopt the Near - Asian view of images of the gods-as a result of the on magical assistants in the fight against foreign enemies. Statues and images of local gods in Egypt become the object of concealment from the encroachment of enemies,

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on the one hand, and images of possible enemies become the object of their preliminary magical defeat - on the other.

Along with studies of the socio-political and spiritual history of Middle Eastern civilizations, the conference program paid great attention to further study of the structure of languages of ancient written monuments, etymological studies and deep reconstructions of Semitic and Afrasian vocabulary.

In the field of sumerology, the study of morphological and syntactic features of the Sumerian language continues. In the report of I. T. Kaneva (SPb.Sumer comparative turns and their position in the sentence " comparative constructions are distinguished, expressed in a morphological way - a special case form; in addition, the case indicator of the comparative case can be attached to the conjugated personal form of the verb of the subordinate clause or to the non - personal verb form, forming a dependent comparative construction. A special comparative-subordinate conjunction performs a special semantic function of introducing into the utterance not a real, but only a possible or imaginary comparison. Further study of the syntactic structures of the Sumerian language can be an important contribution to the general typology of languages, since the Sumerian language is a pronounced agglutinative type of language, complicated by the ergative structure.

Another aspect of studying the language of Sumerian texts was presented in the report of E. Y. Vizirova (RSUH) "Peculiarities of spelling of Shulgi hymns (writing plene)". Shulga's reign dates back to the last century of the 3rd millennium BC.Drawing on a lot of illustrative material, the speaker analyzes cases of writing an additional vowel sign or the absence of it in the initial position of a word that already has a vowel ending. In a number of positions, the complete spelling of an additional vowel sign may be due to the syntactic position and case ending. Given the limited data on the phonetic system of the Sumerian language, we can expect that the use of new materials related to the spelling features of Sumerian texts in the analysis will further refine our knowledge of the vocalism and syllabic structure of this ancient language.

V. V. Yemelyanov (St. Petersburg.GU) in the report "The extreme history of Melammu" proposed a comparative contextual analysis of the use of the melammu lexeme (Akkad. "halo of terror", etc.) in chronological aspect: its frequency of use prevails in early texts and is not yet applied to the person of a royal person.

The report of E. V. Markina (RSUH) "Old Babylonian phraseological units" on specific language examples shows the process of forming idiomatic turns and phraseological units based on stable combinations of terms denoting the concepts of "hand", "hand", with some verbs denoting action.

S. V. Lezov presented the report "How to understand finite forms in the Laws of Hammurabi revisited", in which he examined the temporal meanings of personal verb forms of the perfect Old Babylonian language in the text of a famous monument. To establish these meanings, the author of the report draws on the syntactic context, when special conditional constructions can determine the time of the entire utterance, regardless of the morphological verb tense.

Based on the material of the biblical Hebrew language, A. K. Lyavdansky in his report "Perfective poetry of prophetic lamentations" showed the inverse relationship between morphological and syntactic constructions and the genre of the text: the temporal function of the perfect verb form with the meaning of the future tense can serve as a criterion for identifying a special genre of prophetic speech-prophetic lamentation.

A. V. Nemirovskaya's report "The use of the adjective gitmalum ("excellent") " was devoted to the development of the grammatical system of the Akkadian language as an example of grammaticalization in the Akkadian language", in which the material of texts from different periods showed how gradually this adjective acquires the grammatical function of an indicator of the degree of quality.

One of the non-Semitic, but also an ancient language of the region, was considered in the morphonological aspect in the report of A.V. Shatskov (Institute of Linguistics. research. Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg) "Alternation in Hittite infixal verbs". Taking into account the new dating of Hittite texts, the speaker found that the nasal consonant naturally falls before two consonants, but as the root it is noted in verbs of the Middle Hittite period. The speaker proposed his reconstruction of the infix with a nasal consonant.

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L. E. Kogan (RSUH) in his report "Comparative notes on the text of the Old Testament" drew on the comparative material of Semitic languages for etymological analysis of the obscure term ' opa in the Book of the Testament. This allowed the author to clarify the meaning of the term "anointing oil". To the image of the stars participating in the battle with the enemy in the Song of Deborah, the author found similar images in the Old Babylonian epic text about Sargon of Akkad.

Further etymological research on the vocabulary of ancient Semitic monuments is presented in the report of A. Y. Militarev (RSUH) "On the etymology of [the term] 'holiday'". Based on the comparative lexical material of ancient and modern Semitic languages, the speaker reconstructed the oldest lexeme, which also contains correspondences in the languages of other families of the Afrasian macrofamily. In the seminal *Wgg-l * hVng form, this basis could have the meanings of a syncretic festive event, pilgrimage, sacrifice, etc.

A. G. Belova (IV RAS) in the report " Vocabulary of the Arabic pre-Islamic poet. The experience of etymological analysis " on a number of concrete examples showed that the traditional method of isolating the consonant root from significant words leads to an expansion of the etymological search for external and internal correspondences to separate homonymous roots. At the same time, secondary roots can be identified and identified in the Arabic root word.

O. B. Stolbova's report "Chadian and Semitic vocabulary related to hunting and fishing" on a broad comparative material of Chadian, Cushitic and Semitic languages presents a group of reconstructions of the oldest common African terms denoting hunting methods and types of hunting equipment. The establishment of a system of terms dating back to the pre-written period of the Afrasian community can contribute to the reconstruction of the history of the oldest prehistoric human societies in the territories of Africa and Near Asia.

A thematic review of the scientific reports read and discussed at the Deacon Readings of 2005-2006 shows not only that the scientist developed and left us with the most promising and relevant areas of scientific research, but also that these areas and topics continue to be developed by new generations of researchers.

The meetings provided an opportunity for colleagues from various research centers to share the results of their work and their problems, exchange opinions on issues of interest to them, take into account new data in related fields of science for the future, and largely continue one of the main goals of I. M. Diakonov - to use an integrated approach to studying both historical and philological problems. The new questions that emerged from the discussions showed, in turn, that many problems of the history and philology of the Central Asian region can be solved only with close interdisciplinary cooperation.

Concluding the review, I would like to note the excellent preparation and organization of scientific meetings by St. Petersburg staff.Federal Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the State Hermitage Museum.

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