In St. Petersburg, sculptors mixed up the writing of Mayan and Aztecs on the memorial plaque

In St. Petersburg, on Granite Street, a memorial plaque was opened by the historian-ethnographer Yuri Knorozov, a scientist who deciphered the writing of Maya. However, on the board depicted patterns of the culture of the Aztecs. The Fontanka drew attention to this.

What is the error. The glass portrait of Knorozov was depicted against the background of the stone of the sun - a monument that belongs to the culture of the Aztecs. At the same time, the Mayan civilization, which the ethnographer studied, existed several thousand years before the Aztecs.

In addition, during the speech in honor of the opening of the memorial plaque, the author of the monument Vyacheslav Bukhaev spoke of Mayan and Aztecs as representatives of one civilization: "The composition is a glass portrait, as if a symbol from the 21st century to the past, against the background of the calendar of Aztecs, Maya, this antiquity."

The error on the board may be related to images on the Internet. According to the associate professor of the History Faculty of the Russian State Humanitarian University Dmitry Belyaev, since 2012, on the network under the guise of the Mayan calendar, the image of the Aztec monument has been distributed. Belyaev said that Knorozov never mentioned the culture of the Aztecs and the stone of the sun in his publications.

How scientists reacted. Dmitry Belyaev noticed historical inaccuracy a week before the opening of the monument, the scientist of Fontanka said. The historian tried to tell officials and sculptors about this, but they still opened a memorial plaque with a stone of the sun. In addition, Belyaev noticed that the author of the monument made a mistake in the signature under the portrait of Knorozov.

The sculptor Vyacheslav Bukhaev told Fontanka that he did not consider the image of the sun stone on the memorial board by a mistake. According to him, the Mayan culture was transformed into the writing of the Aztecs, and the "experts" from the Kunstkamers did not mind such a solution.

Bukhaev himself blames in criticism the ex-teacher of the ethnographer and the head of the educational and scientific meso-American center named after Knorozova Galina Ershova. The sculptor added that the relatives of the historian accuse her of the disappearance of the scientist's archive.

Dmitry Belyaev denied Bukhaev’s accusations and added that the sculptor simply made an actual mistake. The associate professor also noted that such inaccuracies are a “monoton for scientists”, and cited as an example a monument to Mikhail Kalashnikov in Moscow.

What else is known. The inscription was also knocked out on the memorial plaque, according to which the monument was erected with the assistance of United Russia. As Fontanka noted, deputy Sergei Boyarsky dealt with this issue.

In a conversation with the publication, Boyarsky said that “no one wanted to achieve accuracy in the artistic image” of Knorozov. According to Fontanka, the sculptor Bukhaev connected the deputy to work on the memorial board to resolve legal problems.

The authors of the monument did not put commas in the participle "who revealed the secret of the Mayan to the world."

The sculptors depicted a German machine gun on Kalashnikov’s monument, and not the weapon of the Soviet designer.