For those who are interested in it: the description
of the picture ("The River of Time, ot the Emblematic Representation of the
World History", a kind of allegoric map) that hung in Derzhavin's room and
was the source of his inspiration can be found in "Last Verses",
a wonderful article by Natan Eidelman: http://vivovoco.rsl.ru/VV/PAPERS/NYE/LASTLINE.HTM (text
in Russian). Alas, I failed to find in the Internet the image of the map
itself.
Funny, in his article (written in
1985) Eidelman calls Oxyrynchus (the Greek name of Pemdje, aka el-Bahnasa, a town in Upper Egypt, about 160 km south-west of
Cairo, an archaeological site where so many papirus texts dating from the
time of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods of Egyptian history were discovered)
"the greatest rubbish dump in the world". The Internet (where one can find so
many gems, precious stones and spurious stones) seems to be an even
greater one these days. I occasionally enjoy rummaging in
it.
Alexey Sklyarenko