Early Life
Knorozov was born in a village near Kharkiv in Ukraine, at that time the capital of the newly formed Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. His parents were Russian intellectuals, and his paternal grandmother had been a stage actress of national repute in Armenia.
At school, the young Yuri was a difficult and somewhat eccentric student, who made indifferent progress in a number of subjects and was almost expelled for poor and willful behaviour. However, it became clear that he was academically bright with an inquisitive temperament; he was an accomplished violinist, wrote romantic poetry and could draw with accuracy and attention to detail.
In 1940 at the age of 17, Knorozov left Kharkov for Moscow where he commenced undergraduate studies in the newly created Department of Ethnology at Moscow State University's faculty of History. He initially specialised in Egyptology.
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