Hripsime Djanpoladjian

Djanpoladjian was born in 1918 on the way to Tbilisi, as her family fled from the Armenian genocide.[1] Her parents were Michael and Iranianak,[1] who already had a son Gurgen.[2] The family were wealthy and their money came Nakhichevan salt mines.[1]

After the establishment of Soviet power in Armenia, the family moved to Yerevan. After finishing school, Djanpoladjian chose to study archaeology at Yerevan State University.[3] After graduation in 1940,[4] she took part in excavations at the Karmir-Blur hill of the Teishebaini fortress city.[3] During these excavations she met her future husband, Boris Piotrovsky.[3] Djanpoladjian had excavated a figurine of the Urartian god of war, a culture which became Piotrovsky's specialism.[3] They married in Yerevan in 1944, and their son Mikhail Piotrovsky was born there.[3]

After a long illness, Djanpoladjian died in 2004 and was buried in Smolensk Cemetery next to her husband.[5]

Djanpoladjian graduated with a doctorate in archaeology in 1948 entitled “Mkhitar Gosh and the Monastery of Nor Getik", which examined many of the inscriptions there.[4] This interest in epigraphy was to continue; by 1977 she and Suren Avagyan published a new catalogue of Armenian inscriptions.[6] She worked for the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Arts of the USSR and in the East Department of the Hermitage Museum.[3] In addition to her own research into medieval Armenia, she also edited all of her husband's publications, including an encyclopedic history of the Hermitage, his diaries, travel notes and autobiography.[3]