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Man and kote. Monument to Yuri Knorozov. Yuri Knorozov. Humble genius and his cats Knorozov biography

At the end of 2009, the Hollywood disaster film “2012” was released, telling about the imminent end of the world, predicted in the Mayan prophecies. The plot of the blockbuster, of course, is fantastic, but the Mayan calendar actually exists. Unfortunately, few modern Russians know that these invaluable historical documents have become clear to modern humanity thanks to the work of our compatriot. Until the middle of the last century, the best minds in the world believed that the key to Mayan hieroglyphic writing was lost forever, and it is impossible to decipher the texts. This opinion was generally accepted for all but the young linguist Yuri Knorozov. It was he who owned the words that later became winged: “That which is created by one human mind can be unraveled by another” ...

Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov lived a long, interesting, and very modest life. An outstanding ethnographer and linguist, laureate of the USSR State Prize, a prominent specialist in shamanistic practices, one of the founders of semiotics, the creator of the “Mayan theory of signaling” and decryptor of the Mayan written language, cavalier of the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the Great Gold Medal of the President of Guatemala, he was never widely known among himself in the homeland. However, Yuri Valentinovich did not seek fame. He led a quiet life as a cabinet scientist, although colleagues who are well acquainted with his works still say that the work of Knorozov is not just talented, but brilliant. And, as befits a genius, Yuri Knorozov, sometimes did things that we, ordinary people, seem strange. For example, many of his works on the theory of signaling were written in collaboration with the cat Asya, about which all the rules were recorded in the title. Each time editors crossed out the cat from the co-authors, which offended the scientist very much.

And how did they know that the linguist was not trying to joke at all? Yuri Knorozov was born in 1922 on November 19. However, he claimed that he was born on August 31 and always celebrated both birthdays. In a word, secrets in the life of the one who was destined to become a great decoder began immediately after birth.

About the cat and croquet

The Knorozov family lived in Ukraine, near Kharkov. The house had a lot of domestic animals, which Yuri's mother loved very much. She somehow knew how to "negotiate" even with chickens. Later, her grandchildren recalled: “It used to be, a chicken comes up to her grandmother, and she tells her that you’ve come, better go and lay an egg.” And the chicken obediently walks and carries an egg. ” Of course, there were cats in the farmhouse. And when Yuri decided to write his first story at the age of five, he made him the hero of a domestic cat. The story came out small, but detailed. In the “author’s editorial office” he looked like this: “The cat is fresh and in winter the palm is very funny; he often drank milk or ate a pie or even something, he stole the cat, he pulled the meat from the bucket and the cat often ate birds”. Many letters are written mirrored and in general the story is very reminiscent of the cryptography to which Yuri Knorozov will devote his whole life. But even through this code the “moral appearance” of the cat can be seen very clearly.

A little later in the life of Yuri there was an event to which he subsequently attached very great importance. The scientist himself spoke in detail about him, but in the characteristic “telegraph” style, with short, mean phrases: “When I was no more than five years old, we played croquet and the brothers hit me on the forehead with a ball. I did not lose consciousness or even squeak. For the brothers, everything worked out well, but I was almost left without vision. And we already knew how to read. Vision was restored, albeit with difficulty. Apparently, this was a kind of “witching injury”. I can give a recommendation: beat future decoders on the head, only it’s not clear how. ” It is hard to say how true this assumption is, but it certainly affected Yuri's interests. Already a first-year student of the historical faculty of Kharkov University, he begins to become seriously interested in shamanism, and after the second year, having fled from the territory occupied by the Germans, he is transferred to the historical faculty of Moscow State University, to the department of ethnography, where shamanistic practices could be studied most fully. He was not taken into the army even during the war - for health reasons. The fact that Yuri Knorozov ended up in the occupied territories subsequently blocked the path to graduate school for the talented student, and at the same time made him travel abroad.

The Mayan Secret

After the war, in his hands were the books “Communication on Yucatan affairs” by Diego de Landa in the publication of Brasser de Bourbur and the Mayan Codes in the Guatemalan publication of the Villacort brothers, which became the starting point in his work on deciphering the Mayan script. The fate of these books is also a kind of mystery, no one knows how they were in the hands of a young scientist, and Knorozov himself never spoke about this.

One day, Knorozov caught the eye of an article published in 1945 by a German researcher Paul Schellhas entitled “Deciphering Mayan writing - an insoluble problem”. Knorozov took this publication as a personal challenge. “How is this an insoluble problem? What is created by one human mind cannot be unraveled by another.

From this point of view, insoluble problems do not exist and cannot exist in any of the fields of science! ”He writes, leaves shamanistic practices and begins by his own example to prove the rule he formulated.

He manages to do the impossible - to solve the problem, recognized as unsolvable by all the luminaries of the world. By the beginning of the fifties, the Mayan texts are decrypted. The first publication on the results of decryption was published in 1952. At that time, Yuri Valentinovich was already working in the Kunstkamera, the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences. There, he prepares to defend his Ph.D. thesis and at the same time fears this event, because the texts he read do not correspond to what F. Engels himself wrote about the culture of the Indians of Central America. At that time, for such liberties one could get a prison term! Therefore, the topic of the dissertation sounded neutral: "Report on the affairs in the Yucatan of Diego de Landa, as an ethno-historical source." The defense took place in Moscow on March 29, 1955 and the very next day turned into a legend. Knorozov’s speech at the scientific council lasted exactly three and a half minutes, and the result was the assignment of the title not of a candidate, but of a doctor of historical sciences! Knorozov’s work became a scientific and cultural sensation in the Soviet Union. They quickly learned about decryption abroad, giving rise to a storm of emotions among foreign experts: delight mixed with envy. They did not understand how a man who had never seen with his own eyes the subject of his research could create such a brilliant work. What is true is true: only half a century later, Yuri Knorozov set foot on the land of the country, the study of which he devoted most of his life to.

Until that moment, he only laughed off in a manner peculiar to him: "I am a cabinet scientist, and in order to work with texts you do not need to crawl along the pyramids." But he dreamed of pyramids. Although success brought him a different reward. The newly minted doctor of sciences was given a separate apartment, and after receiving it, the scientist realized his other unrealizable dream - he got his own cat.

Stay with asya

Since then, cats have always lived in the house of Yuri Knorozov - the most diverse, but perhaps the most famous of them was a blue-eyed cat, similar to a Siamese named Aspid or Asya in a different way. She appeared at the scientist in the seventies, and it is with Asya in his arms that Yuri Valentinovich is depicted in his most famous photograph. This picture was taken by his employee, Galina Dzeniskevich. If a scientist was asked for a photograph for the press, then he always gave this one. True, most often when publishing the cat was left behind the scenes, which Knorozov was very indignant.


With Asya's beloved cat in her arms. 70s

Photography, indeed, is very unusual, from the category of those that are more eloquent than any stories. Animal lovers are well aware of the fact that over time, pets become similar to their owners, but here we see a really incredible similarity! It is as if a person with a cat in his arms is not looking at us, but a single, whole entity, part of which is embodied in a person, and part in a cat. Asya was not a figurative co-author of Yuri Valentinovich: watching how a cat communicates with its kittens, he tested in practice his assumptions on signaling theory. And not only the cat became like its owner, or rather, a friend, but he too. Friends of the scientist often noticed that Yuri Valentinovich, sometimes not realizing himself in that report, began to behave like a cat. He avoided people who were unpleasant to him, tried not to talk or even look at them. And in conversations with friends, he could suddenly express his emotions through meowing in different shades or, for example, a real cat hiss. He believed that this allows a more expressive attitude to the interlocutor. People who are unfamiliar with the scientist were at times baffled by this style of communication, but real friends were not surprised, realizing that geniuses are sometimes allowed something that is not appropriate for mere mortals.

Everything was allowed to cats in the scientist’s house, but, by the way, they never abused it. In addition, Yuri Valentinovich loved not only his cats, but in general all representatives of the cat tribe. Many of his colleagues also had cats at home, and, according to his recollections, Knorozov always came to visit, having in his pocket a dried root of valerian or a bunch of cat grass. In letters to friends, he described and sketched plants that cats especially like.

Asya had a kitten, which Yuri Valentinovich called Tolstoy Kys. While still very young, Fat Kys managed to catch a pigeon on the windowsill, for which he was awarded special honor: his photograph always stood on the scientist’s extensive desk.


Fat Kys

And in the last years of his life he had a cat, which for some reason he called a cat and called Belobandit. In conversations with friends, Yuri Knorozov has repeatedly said that all cats are good, but he would like to stay forever with his beloved Asya.

***

The great decoder died on March 30, 1999. He did not quite live up to a momentous event: the publication of a three-volume publication in Mexico entitled “Decryption, Catalog and Dictionary“ Shkaret ”by Yuri Knorozov”. The scientist died alone in the corridor of one of the city hospitals. A lot of people gathered to say goodbye to him. He really liked the Neva Lavra, but they buried him in a new cemetery, already outside the city limits. Somehow, his funeral resembled the restless death of Paganini. Well, for geniuses, everything happens differently from ordinary people. But most importantly, students and admirers fulfilled his dream. Five years after his death, thanks to the initiative of Sergei Mironov (also, however, a catman), a monument was erected on the grave of Knorozov.

And on the tombstone the same photograph is depicted, where the whole essence embodied in a person and a cat looks at us carefully and strictly. It seems that for this view and the truth there are no barriers. He can pierce the thickness of centuries and just as closely examine the most secret secrets of the great civilizations of the past. Perhaps it really is?

And we, ordinary people, have yet to find out what a person and his cat can see if they learn to look in one direction and think in unison. So, as learned by Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov and his co-author named Asya.

Elena Patrusheva

Materials provided by relatives of Yu.V. Knorozov, will be included in the biography of Yu.V. Knorozov "Yuri Knorozov: the anatomy of a brilliant discovery", author G. G. Ershov.

Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov (November 19, 1922, Kharkov, Ukrainian SSR - March 30, 1999, St. Petersburg) - Soviet historian and ethnographer, specialist in epigraphy and ethnography; founder of the Soviet school of Mayanism. Doctor of Historical Sciences (1955). Laureate of the USSR State Prize (1977). Cavalier of the Order of the Aztec Eagle (Mexico) and the Great Gold Medal (Guatemala).

Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov was born in the village of Yuzhny (now Pivdenny) near Kharkov, the then capital of the Ukrainian SSR, in the family of the chief engineer of the Southern Building Materials Trust. Brothers: Sergey - engineer-geodesist, Boris - associate of the F.E.Dzerzhinsky Military Academy, Leonid - military doctor of the 3rd rank of the special Far Eastern Red Banner Army, sister Galina - researcher at the All-Ukrainian Endocrinological Institute. The paternal grandmother was the famous theater actress, the first People's Artist of Armenia Mariam Davidovna Sakhavyan / Knorozova (pseudonym Marie Zabel, 1858, Bitlis, Western Armenia - January 12, 1926, Tiflis).

According to Yuri Valentinovich himself, his date of birth was August 31, according to his passport - November 19. At school, he was a capable, but too uncontrollable student. Despite his eccentric behavior, the future scientist excelled in studying both the natural sciences and the humanities, and was also interested in various types of art: he played the violin, wrote poetry and showed the ability to draw with almost photographic accuracy. In 1937 he graduated from the 7th grade of the railway school number 46 in the village of Yuzhny. In 1939 he graduated from the rabfak at 2 KhMI. I managed to study in the first year at the Faculty of History of Kharkiv State University. A. M. Gorky.

In 1940, at the age of 17, Knorozov entered the Moscow State University at the Faculty of History, where he initially specialized in Egyptology. At the University of Knorozov he was able to realize his passion for the history of the Ancient East, ethnography and linguistics. However, studies were interrupted by the outbreak of war, Knorozov was drafted into the army and in the fall of 1941 was surrounded, his family remained in the occupied territory. It is not known how he got to Moscow. In 1943, Yuri Valentinovich was called up a second time and left for the front.

Knorozov fought in the communications units and (according to the record on the military ID) met the victory near Moscow by the telephone operator of the 158th artillery regiment of the reserve reserve of the commander in chief. It is known that Knorozov did not participate in the capture of Berlin, but, nevertheless, according to a legend that arose later, it was from Berlin that he brought as a war trophy two extremely important books, supposedly saved from the flame of a burning library. At the same time, it is not clear why the communications officer needed publications such as the “Report on Yucatan Affairs” by Diego de Landa in the publication of Brasseur de Bourbur and the Maya Codes in the Guatemalan publication of the Villacort brothers, since he was not involved in the Mayan Indians. In the army, Knorozov stubbornly refused to go to officer courses in order to quickly demobilize and return to scientific work.

In 1945, Knorozov returned to the university to the department of ethnography to continue his research in the field of shamanistic practices. Working in the Moscow branch of the Institute of Ethnography and Anthropology. N. N. Miklukho-Maklaya, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Knorozov spent several months in the Uzbek and Turkmen SSR, participating in the work of the Khorezm expedition. While working in Central Asia, he studied the specifics of the relationship of nomadic ethnic groups and settled civilizations in the region from ancient times to the period of expansion of the Russian Empire. And at that time an article published in 1945 by a German researcher Paul Schellhas entitled “Deciphering the Mayan letter is an insoluble problem” caught sight of Knorozov. This publication dramatically changed his scientific plans. He leaves the shamanistic practices to answer Schellhas's challenge: “How is this an insoluble problem? What is created by one human mind cannot but be solved by another. ” He adhered to this position all his life. After graduation, Knorozov was informed that he could not apply for graduate school, as his relatives were in occupied territory. Thanks to S. A. Tokarev, he moved to Leningrad and became an employee of the Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR, where, in his own words, he was engaged in “rough museum work without complaints”, and he lived in a room in the building of the museum itself. In parallel, work was underway to decipher the Mayan script. After the breakthrough of 1952, S. A. Tokarev and S. P. Tolstov secured his transfer to the N.N. Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Kunstkamera) in Leningrad, where he worked until his death.

Maya Knorozov managed to visit the country only in 1990, when he was invited by the President of Guatemala, Vinicio Sereso Arevalo. The invitation coincided with a period of active efforts to unfreeze diplomatic relations between the USSR and this Central American country. The Government of Guatemala organized Knorozova a visit to all the most striking sights of the country and noted the merits of the great scientist by presenting him with the Great Gold Medal of the President of Guatemala.

In 1995, at the Mexican Embassy in Moscow, Knorozov was awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle, which is awarded by the Mexican government to foreign citizens for exceptional services to Mexico. Until 1998, he once again managed to visit Mexico and the only time to visit the United States, where in the field he tested the last of his hypotheses about the origin of Mesoamericans.

In 1999, Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov died of a stroke and subsequent pulmonary edema in a hospital bed in St. Petersburg, all alone, shortly after receiving an honorary award to them. Tatyana Proskuryakova (USA).

He was buried at the Kovalevsky cemetery near St. Petersburg.

"His thesis at Moscow State University was called" Mazar Shamun Nabi. A Central Asian version of the legend of Samson. "In graduate school, he the path was closed, because the “His relatives were in the occupied territory during the war”. The tombstone of the scientist is located on the edge of the Kovalevsky cemetery in St. Petersburg among a crowd of typical graves, he died on March 30, 1999, aged 76 years old, alone in the corridor of one of the city hospitals. Five years his grave was overgrown with grass, only in 2004 a monument was erected "

Original taken from kosarex   in Yuri Knorozov - the fate of a genius
https://philologist.livejournal.com/10122849.html
After his death in 1999, Yuri Knorozov on March 11, 2018 will give another slap in the face to Soviet science - a monument will be unveiled to him in Mexico. He decoded the Mayan script in 1951-52. It was a big offense for US scientists. He then decrypted several dozen letters, but it was enough so that the process of deciphering the Mayan script could begin and continue. He was then 30 years old. Officially, he became the pride of Soviet science. In reality, they did not take him to graduate school. World fame helped out. In 1955, he was awarded the title of Doctor of Sciences. They did not let out abroad. He went abroad only in 1956, and even then only to Copenhagen at the insistence of Okladnikov. Okladnik was a force, but an old man. Therefore, in Latin America, Knorozov first visited only 1989 - the president of Guatemala invited. There were other times already, invitations from Latin American states could no longer be rejected at the RAS level. Knorozov traveled to Latin America several more times.

Whereas about Gregory Perelman they liked to gossip, as if he didn’t cut his nails and wore dirty shirts, which he didn’t change for several months, but about Yuri Knorozov they liked to gossip that he was always drunk and in a state of insanity. It is clear that from such an attitude to yourself you involuntarily drink. But Knorozov lived for 77 years and left behind a number of scientific works.

Probably, many representatives of the KGB revolved around Knorozov, preoccupied with the idea of \u200b\u200bpersonal control. Knorozov worked without stopping. He set himself many tasks: reading numerous Mayan texts, deciphering other writing systems, developing the signaling and fascination theory associated with the brain, and the main goal of his research was the collective theory of the collective. The collective system theory is a conscious distraction of a brilliant scientist from pressing tasks. But then we were fond of sociology and theories of control over collectives at the place of work. If in the West they wanted and still want to control society through parties that separated children from their parents, then we had a clear task - to make members of production crews to be friends not only at work, but also families, so that there was less communication with members of other teams and collectives. Entered the crew of carpenters - communicate only with the carpenters of your team. He became a traffic policeman - communicate only with traffic cops of your unit and no more.

As for Knorozov’s theory of the settlement of America through the Kuril ridge, I agree for an elementary reason. The seaside area has always been special - a lot of food in the form of fish and shellfish. The need for swimming on the sea for fishing always required straining the brain when creating swimming facilities. Another thing is that having swimming facilities, in principle, it was not important whether to sail through the Chukchi Strait, to pass on ice or to sail through the Aleutian ridge. The population in the abundance zone of fish successfully multiplied, pressed against each other and was interested in developing more northern zones, since there is fish. Those who lived in hunting and fishing in more scarce places for a very long time could not defeat the coastal population and also participate in profitable fishing.

Back to Knorozov. His fate is one of many proofs that we genuinely dislike geniuses. International recognition infuriates. A genius in our conditions must have vitality, the ability to make connections and literally dust the mediocre careerists. But this contradicts the nature of genius - openness to the world, sensitivity to various phenomena in the world and to other people's thoughts, the ability to doubt where others do not doubt. The current collapse is a natural continuation of the dominance of cheeky and incapable of doubting, incapable of appreciating other people's ideas, but stealing them in time and so on.

________________________________________ _________________________________

Original taken from v_murza   in Man and kote. Monument to Yuri Knorozov



His pupils fire green
He mastered my consciousness.
I wanted to turn away,
But I notice in surprise
That he looked inside himself
What's in the staring eyes of mirrored
Opal and vertical,
I read my own destiny   (Charles Baudelaire)

The Kovalevsky cemetery of St. Petersburg is internationally, democratic and not prestigious. Being outside the city limits, it occupies 110 hectares of the territory of the neighboring subject of the Federation (Leningrad region). There is a Muslim and Jewish plots here, so-called “rootless” burials are also being made - those who were not claimed by relatives of the deceased at the state expense (about 150 a month).

The cemetery was opened by order of the Leningrad City Executive Committee at the end of 1984. The number of interesting monuments on Kovalevsky can be counted on the fingers, by some miracle, sometimes you see the inscription   “This Cross was delivered by Luke Ivanov of the village of Egli in 1903.”  However, fate would have liked the great scientist and one of the most mysterious figures of the scientific world of the 20th century to find the last refuge here.

The name of Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov (1922 - 1999) is on a par with Jean-Francois Champollion, who deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs, and his main merit is the decryption of the Mayan written language, the last great decryption, which revealed to humanity a whole civilization.

The tombstone of the scientist is located on the edge of the cemetery in the midst of a crowd of typical graves, somewhat reminiscent of a communal apartment. I found out about him quite by accident, visiting the graves of my relatives.

Knorozov - linguist, historian, ethnographer, doctor of historical sciences (1955), winner of the USSR State Prize (1977), holder of the Order of the Aztec Eagle of Mexico and the Great Gold Medal of Guatemala. The scope of his scientific interests was very wide - from deciphering ancient writing systems to the settlement of America, archeoastronomy, shamanism, brain evolution, and collective theory. He died on March 30, 1999, at the age of 76. alone in the hallway of one of the city hospitals. For five years his grave was overgrown with grass, only in 2004 at the initiative of S.M. Mironov, then Chairman of the Federation Council, a monument was erected here.
The author of the project is Moscow sculptor Nikolai Vybornov. The composition is made in the style of Mayan architecture - a platform with a stele and an altar of pinkish limestone.

On the sides of the stele is inscribed Maya with the dates of birth and death of the scientist. On the reverse of the stele is a copy of the relief from the Mayan city, Palenque, the most beloved by Yuri Knorozov.




On the obverse of the stele (photo in the post title) is a bas-relief of Knorozov with his beloved Siamese cat Asya, repeating the photo that is known all over the world.

MI CORAZÓN SIEMPRE ES MEXICANO


  Yu.V. Knorozov, 1995. Before the III International Mayan Conference in Chetumal, Mexico ()

The biography of Yuri Knorozov is full of mystical events, difficult trials and paradoxes, as, apparently, is supposed to be for every genius.
Among his children's drawings, an image of an incomprehensible beast with the name Tankas (which in the Mayan language means the Milky Way), a snake with the strange name Polenka, has been preserved. Palenque is the name of the ruins of a large Mayan city in Mexico, where the most important Mayan artifacts are located, including the Temple of the inscriptions (Templo de las Inscripciones).
During the war, it’s not clear to Knorozov how the books “Message on Cases in Yucatan” by a Franciscan monk of the 16th century fell into the hands of Germans Diego de Landa and the Mayan Codes in a Guatemalan publication by the Villacorta brothers.

According to the official version, he "saved them from the flame of a burning library in Berlin." But he was not there and met a victory near Moscow as a telephone operator of the regiment of the reserve reserve of the commander in chief. He was not interested in Mayanism at that time, he was fond of the history of civilizations of the East, linguistics and shamanistic practices. His thesis at Moscow State University was called “Mazar Shamun Nabi. The Central Asian version of the legend of Samson. " He was closed to graduate school because "his relatives were in the occupied territory during the war."

In 1945, Knorozov caught the eye of an article by German scientist Paul Schellhas, "Deciphering the Mayan letter - an insoluble problem." He leaves the shamanistic practices to answer Schellhas's challenge:   “How is this an insoluble problem? What is created by one human mind cannot be unraveled by another.<...>  Insoluble problems do not exist and cannot exist in any of the fields of science! ”  He invariably adhered to this position all his life.
After the war, with the help of prof. S.A. He managed to get Tokarev’s job as a mls in the Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR, which is next to the Russian Museum. Thus began the Leningrad, the main period of the life of Knorozov. He settled in the museum itself. The floor-to-ceiling room, as long as a pencil case, was crammed with books, and Mayan hieroglyphics were hung on the walls. Of furniture there was a table and a soldier's bed.

In the early 50s, Knorozov found the keys to the ancient Mayan script. The first publication on the results of decryption was published in 1952. The success of the young scientist allowed him to go to work at the Kunstkamera, the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The defense of the candidate dissertation was coming.

But here other problems appeared. On the Maya issue, Marxist scholarship had at its disposal the opinion of Engels on the absence of states in pre-Columbian America. According to the same dogma, phonetic writing could exist only when class state education arose. The statement that Maya had a phonetic letter implied a refutation of Engels' provisions. These things could entail accusations of revisionism and arrest.

Yuri Valentinovich went to the defense and did not know how it would end. The defense took place in Moscow on March 29, 1955 and the very next day turned into a legend. Knorozov’s speech at the Academic Council, according to the figurative expression of eyewitnesses, lasted exactly three and a half minutes, and the result was the assignment of the title not of a candidate, but of a doctor of historical sciences.

In Soviet times, after the Congress of Americanists in Copenhagen in 1956, Knorozov was not allowed to travel abroad for many years. He joked bitterly:   "Endless commissions were created to take him to Mexico and all the members of the commissions had already been there."

Only in 1990, thanks to the invitation of the President of Guatemala, he managed to spend about two months in this country. By no means a young scientist was able to climb to the top of the Great Jaguar pyramid in Tikal (which no one believed in) and stood there for a long time alone. As always, he smoked - and was immersed in his images.
Since 1995, trips to Mexico followed at the invitation of the National Institute of History and Anthropology. Knorozov visited all the treasured places - Palenque, Bonampak, Yashchilan, Chichen Itza, La Venta, Monte Alban, Teotihuacan, Shochikalko. He was happy in the land of Maya.

In 1995, at the Mexican Embassy in Moscow, he was awarded the Silver Order of the Aztec Eagle. These orders are awarded by the Mexican government to foreign nationals with exceptional services to Mexico. Upon receiving the award, Knorozov said in Spanish:   "Mi corazón siempre es mexicano"  (“My heart always remains Mexican”).

The last years of his life, Yuri Knorozov spent alone surrounded by a kote in a small apartment of a block Khrushchev on ul. Granite. After his death, the Kunstkamera refused to provide the museum premises for parting, and many people gathered in a close hospital morgue. Knorozov really liked the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, but they buried him in a new cemetery, actually in a vacant lot outside the city limits. Somehow, his funeral resembled the restless death of Paganini.

Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov (November 19th , Kharkov , USSR - March 31 , St. Petersburg) - soviet historian  and ethnographer  , specialist in epigraphy  and ethnography  ; founder of a soviet school mayanists  . Doctor of Historical Sciences (). Laureate USSR State Prize  (). Cavalier order of the Aztec Eagle (Mexico) and the Big Gold Medal ( Guatemala).

Known for its decryption mayan scripts  in advance mathematical  research methods of undecided writing. At different times, the group of researchers led by Knorozov included such famous historians, ethnographers, and linguists as Alexander Kondratov , Margarita Albedil , Nikolay Butinov  and others. In the mid-1950s, they laid the foundation for the study of the writing of Easter Island ( rongorongo) IN 1960s  years, Knorozov’s group proposed decryption indus Valley Writing , which, however, is not yet universally recognized.

Yura Knorozov lived with me in the hostel. He gave everything to science, everything. He received a scholarship and immediately bought books, and then he borrowed money from everyone. He ate water and bread. He was engaged in decoding the Mayan script. He succeeded, and he became a world famous scientist.

A complete translation of the Mayan hieroglyphic manuscripts was published in 1975. For this work, Yu. V. Knorozov in 1977 was awarded the USSR State Prize. During this period, he wrote theoretical works on the Mayan religion, votive formulas on Mayan ceramics, later on the Mayan ethnogenesis, deciphered the Proto-Indian script, examined the possibilities of decryption easter Island letters  . Knorozov’s scientific interests were wide - from deciphering ancient writing systems, linguistics and semiotics, to settling America, archeoastronomy, shamanism, brain evolution, and collective theory.

Later years

In the country, Maya Knorozov managed to visit only 1990 year  when he was invited by the President of Guatemala Vinicio Cereso Arevalo ( english) The invitation coincided with a period of active efforts to unfreeze diplomatic relations between the USSR and this Central American country. The Government of Guatemala organized Knorozova a visit to all the most striking sights of the country and noted the merits of the great scientist by presenting him with the Great Gold Medal of the President of Guatemala.

Formulating the foundations of his systematic approach to the “theory of the collective,” Yu. V. Knorozov noted that all systems of inanimate and living nature obey the general laws that apply in Of the universe  (“Universal system”), one of which is inherent in all systems, is the tendency to develop from lower to higher forms. Development can be interpreted as the acquisition by a given system to a certain extent of certain properties of a “universal system”. The emergence of a higher order system as a result of a qualitative leap leads to the appearance of new properties, which, of course, cannot be reduced to the properties of the units making up the system. So, the properties elementary particles  not similar to the properties of the main differentiated system of living nature - atom  , and the properties of integrated systems - the molecules , crystal - are not the sum of the properties of their constituent atoms. Each level has its own characteristics and patterns of development. In the conditions of our planet, the highest integrated organization is a living organism. The association of people is not a further development or the highest form of association of animals, but represents the following type of differentiated system, i.e. association of associations.

Main works

  • The Ancient Writing of Central America // Soviet Ethnography, No. 3. P. 100-118.
  • The writing of the ancient Mayans: (decoding experience) // Soviet Ethnography, No. 1. P. 94-115.
  • Ancient Maya writing system. - M., 1955 .-- 96 s.
  • "Report on affairs in the Yucatan" Diego de Landa as a historical and ethnographic source // Landa, D. de. Report on affairs in Yucatan. - M .; L., 1955. S. 3-96. Part 1 Part 2
  •   Preliminary report on the study of the writing of Easter Island // Soviet Ethnography,, No. 4. P. 77-91.
  • Knorozov Yu. V., Butinov N.A.  New materials about Easter Island: About the list of "kings" of Easter Island // Soviet Ethnography, No. 6. P. 38-42.
  • The population of Mexico and Central America before the Spanish conquest // Peoples of the world: Ethnographic essays: Peoples of America. T. 2. - M.,. S. 55-100.
  • The writing of the Mayans. - M.-L.,. - 664 p. (available on site http://sovietthings.narod.ru/knigi/knigi.html)
  • Characterization of the language of proto-Indian inscriptions // Preliminary report on the study of proto-Indian texts. - M.,. S. 46-51.
  • Formal Description of Proto-Indian Images // Proto-indica. 1972: Report on a study of proto-Indian texts. Part 2. M.,. S. 178-245.
  • On the classification of signaling // The main problems of African studies. - M.,.
  • Mayan hieroglyphic manuscripts. - L.,. - 272 p. (available at http://sovietthings.narod.ru/knigi/knigi.html)
  • To the question of the genesis of paleolithic images // Soviet Ethnography,, No. 2.
  • Ethnogenetic processes in ancient America // Problems of the history and ethnography of America. M.,.
  • Proto-Indian inscriptions: On the problem of decryption // Soviet Ethnography, No. 5. P. 47-71.
  • Albedil M.F., Volchok B.Ya., Knorozov Yu.V.  A Study of Proto-Indian Inscriptions // Forgotten Writing Systems: Easter Island, Great Liao, India: Decryption Materials. - M.,. S. 240-295.
  • Unknown texts // Forgotten writing systems. - M., 1982.
  • To the question of the connections of pre-colonial America with the Old World // Latin America,, No. 1. P. 84-98.
  • Knorozov Yu. V., Ershova G. G. Diego de Landa as the founder of the study of the Mayan culture (from the history of the missionary culture of the XVI century) // Iberica Americans: Culture of the New and Old World of the XVI-XVIII centuries. in their interaction. - SPb.,. S. 80-86.
  • Ethnogenetic legends. General review // Issues of ethnic semiotics. Forgotten writing systems. SPb