Noted archeologist Sarigiannis passes

He had been hailed as a “poet” of archeology, and as the man that tread in the “footsteps” of Alexander the Great in Central Asia. He was considered a hero by Pontic Hellenism.

Sariyannidis enjoyed global esteem through his many years of excavating in central Asia through which the Hellenic presence in the area of the Black Sea was highlighted and the Hellenic roots of culture in central Asia were first discovered, in what is present day Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Through his finds Victor Sariyannis proved that Hellenism spread to eastern and central Asia, 1,500 years before the campaigns of Alexander the Great.

He was born on 23 September 1929, in Tashkent (Uzbekistan) to Greek parents. In 1952 he graduated from the State University of Central Asia in Tashkent and in 1952 he received his Master's degree in Near and Middle Eastern Archeology from the Moscow Archeology Institute. In 1975 he received his PhD in History Sciences from the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In 1959 he joined the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. From 1969 to 1979 he participated in archaeological excavations in Northern Afghanistan. There he found monuments of the Bronze age for the first time. Starting in 1978 he headed an expedition, excavating the royal necropolis Tillya Tepe of the early Kushan period, finding more than 20,000 gold objects.

Beginning in 1972, he excavated at Margiana (Turkmenistan) where he found a previously unknown civilisation of the late Bronze Age. During the last years his work concentrated on the  urban necropolis of Gonur.

Victor Sarianidis was a honorary member of the Greek Anthropological Society. He is the author of more than 20 books and 200 articles published both in Russia and abroad.