'The last genius...' or people should know their heroes (Yuri Knorozov's new biography) [Review: Ershova G.G. The Last Genius of the 20th Century. Yuri Knorozov: The Researcher's Fate. Moscow, RGGU, 2019]

D.E. Martynov

Kazan Federal University, Kazan, 420008 Russia

E-mail: dmitrymartynov80@mail.ru

Received September 16, 2019

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DOI: 10.26907/2541-7738.2020.1.236-250

For citation: Martynov D.E. “The last genius...” or people should know their heroes (Yuri Knorozov’s new biography) [Review: Ershova G.G. The Last Genius of the 20th Century. Yuri Knorozov: The Researcher’s Fate. Moscow, RGGU, 2019]. Uchenye Zapiski Kazanskogo Universiteta. Seriya Gumanitarnye Nauki, 2020, vol. 162, no. 1, pp. 236–250. doi: 10.26907/2541-7738.2020.1.236-250. (In Russian)

Abstract

The paper reviews the first voluminous biography of Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov (1922–1999), which was written by his follower G.G. Ershova, the current head of the Mesoamerican Educational and Scientific Center in the Russian State Humanitarian University and a number of commercial educational projects in Guatemala and Mexico. The main and internationally recognized achievement by Yu.V. Knorozov is his decoding of the ancient Mayan script in the 1950s and the subsequent translation of all preserved Mayan manuscripts. For 30 years, Yu.V. Knorozov led the group of researchers, who deciphered ancient scripts in the Kunstkamera, thereby trying to develop the concept of ethnic semiotics. In 1956–1990, Yu.V. Knorozov’s group, with varying degrees of justification, made attempts to decrypt rongo-rongo – ancient Easter Island glyphs and the archaic writing of Indus Valley civilization. The mathematical methods developed by the group for studying the forgotten writing systems were highly appreciated by the international community. The main achievements of Yu.V. Knorozov are associated with Mesoamerican studies.

The most important advantage of Yu.V. Knorozov’s biography written by G.G. Ershova is that she clarified two episodes of his life that have been strongly mythologized, even by Yu.V. Knorozov himself. Firstly, these are the circumstances, under which he decided to decipher the Mayan writing. Secondly, the origin of dictionaries and facsimile editions of the Mayan codes that he used to carry out the decryption. Despite significant omissions and distortions stemming from the author’s personal bias, the first biography covering all the events of Yu.V. Knorozov’s life shows both further problems and potential approaches regarding complex reconstruction of his intellectual legacy. One of the most important problems is the study of the theory of fascination in the context of the philosophical works of B.F. Porshnev and G.P. Shchedrovitskii published in the 1960s and 1980s, respectively.

Keywords: Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov, Galina Gavrilovna Ershova, ethnic semiology, decryption of forgotten scripts, Mayanists, academic biography

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