1869 – 1932
Vasily Vyatkin
Archaeologist, orientalist
An archaeologist and orientalist who spent nearly forty years in Samarkand. In 1908 he discovered the remains of Ulugh Beg's observatory, excavated Afrasiyab, and lies buried beside the observatory.
© Bobyrr, CC BY-SA 4.0
From endowment deeds to archaeology
Vasily Lavrentyevich Vyatkin was born in 1869 into a Cossack family in Semirechye. After training at the Tashkent teachers' seminary and teaching for a while in Osh, he moved to Samarkand and became librarian of the regional statistical committee. He was a driving force behind the local history museum opened in Samarkand in 1896, which he led for many years, and in 1903 he was appointed keeper of the city's monuments.
Fluent in Uzbek, Tajik and Persian and at home with Arabic script, he began by studying Samarkand's waqf (endowment) deeds. The great orientalist Vasily Bartold, notoriously sparing with praise, said that Vyatkin's work, starting with his Materials on the Historical Geography of the Samarkand Province (1902), held an altogether exceptional place among studies of Turkestan's history. Vyatkin also translated parts of the Baburnama and Abu Tahir Khoja's Samariya, and wrote an Uzbek textbook for Russian schools.
Finding the observatory
Following references to a rasad, an observatory, in old documents, in 1908 he located and excavated the remains of Ulugh Beg's observatory at the foot of Kohak (Chupan-Ata) hill. The underground arc of the giant sextant saw daylight for the first time in nearly 460 years. He also dug for many years at the ancient city mound of Afrasiyab, publishing his results in 1926 as Afrasiyab: the Site of Old Samarkand, and wrote widely on the study and protection of Samarkand's monuments.
Vyatkin died in Samarkand on 26 June 1932. He was first buried on the Registan; in 1934 his grave was moved to the grounds of the observatory he had found. He bequeathed his collection of antiquities to the Samarkand museum.
