Volkov Ivan (1882–1919) – orientalist: specialist in Egyptology, Assyriology, and Semitology.
He graduated from the St. Petersburg Spiritual Academy and the St. Petersburg University (1910). Then he travelled to Berlin for his further studies. His supervisors were B. A. Turaev and A Erman. He made the first translation of the Code of Hammurabi, and Aramaic documents of a Judaic colony on Elephantine into Russian (1914-1915). Since 1916, he became Ass. Docent of the Historical and Philological Faculty of the St. Petersburg University. In 1917, he defended his Master thesis in the World History ‘The Ancient Egyptian God Sebek’. In December 1918, he was arrested together with his father, who was a priest, and sent to the Ostashkovo District Jail. The arrest was a part of campaign against Orthodox clergy. In 1919, V. returned to his work at the University, but soon died because of constant malnutrition and catching cold.
During his studies in Berlin, V. was interested in the cult of the goddess Khator, but non-published materials of the Berlin Lexicon of Egyptian language on the cult of Sebek, provided by A. Erman, influenced at his decision, and V. wrote his thesis on that god of the Nile overflow. In his thesis, V. copied the structure of the Master thesis by B. A. Turaev on the god Tot (the name of god, mythology, cult). He traced the veneration of Sebek through all epochs of the Ancient Egypt, from the Old Kingdom till the Greek and Roman period and the colony on Elephantine. He showed that in the early time Sebek in the crocodile image was associated with such gods as Ra and Osiris, and later he became an analogy of Seth and was excluded from the tsar cult. He also argued that Egyptians venerated Sebek as a river god, and a god of might and fertility, described the mummification of crocodiles as a part of that cult. He put a special attention at the crocodile feasts and the ceremonial rites for Sebek.