TRANSACTIONS OP THE SECTIONS, 115 



tages of developing new markets and commercial relations, not only in the Persian 

 Gulf, but also with the eleven millions of the Arabian peninsula, hitherto almost 

 isolated from the conditions of modern civilization. 



Researches in the Crimean Bosphorus, and on the site of the Ancient Greek 

 City of PanticapcKum (Kertch). By Dr. D. Macpherson, F.R.G.S. 



The present town of Kertch is built close to the site where 500 years B.C. the 

 Milesians founded a colony. About fifty years before Christ, this colony became 

 subject to Rome, or rather a Satrap of the Roman Empire, from the circumstance of ' 

 the Bosphorean kings, who were also rulers of Pontus, having been subdued by 

 this people in Asia. In the year 375 of our era, the colony was utterly annihilated 

 by the Huns. Barbarous hordes succeeded one upon another thereafter until a.d. 

 1280, when the Genoese became possessors of the soil, and held it until expelled 

 by the Turks in 1473 ; they being in their turn expelled in 1771 by the Russians. 

 The characteristic features around Kertch are the immense tumuli, or artificial mounds, 

 that abound in this locality, more especially within the second vallum. These 

 sepulchres of the ancient world are found in many places. We have them in the 

 form of barrows in England, and cairns in Scotland. Calculated as they are for 

 almost endless duration, they present the simplest and sublimest monument that 

 could have been raised over the dead. The size and grandeur of the tumuli found 

 ia this locality excite astonishing ideas of the wealth and power of the people by 

 whom they were erected, for the labour must have been prodigious and the expendi- 

 ture enormous. The highest specimens of Hellenic art have been discovered in these 

 tumuli — such as sculpture, metal, alabaster and Etruscan vases, glass vessels, 

 remarkable for their lightness, carved ivory, coins, peculiarly pleasing on account of 

 their sharpness and finish, and trinkets, executed with a skill that would vie with 

 that of our best workmen. All originals were forwarded to the Hermitage, at 

 St. Petersburg, duplicates being preserved in the Museum at Kertch, and these 

 might have been with ease secured to England on the investment of the place by the 

 Allies ; but with the exception of some bas-reliefs, which, in connexion with other 

 two officers, I transmitted to the British Museum, the whole of these rare treasures 

 were barbarously made away with. The local tradition is, that these tumuli were 

 raised over the remains, and to perpetuate the memory, of the kings or rulers who 

 held sway over the colonists, and that the earth was heaped upon them annually on 

 the anniversary of the decease of the prince, and for a period of years corresponding 

 to the rank or respect in which its tenant was held or had reigned ; and to this day 

 successive layers of earth, which were laid on in each succeeding year, can be traced, 

 a thin coating of sea-shell or charcoal having been first put down. I have counted 

 as many as thirty layers in a scarp made in one of those mounds, about two-thirds 

 from its base. They are to be seen of all sizes, varying from 10 to 300 feet in 

 circumference, and in height from 5 to 150 feet, and are usually composed of surface 

 soil and rubble masonry. Herodotus's reference to these sepulchres is the earliest 

 account which history has recorded of this mode of burial ; and I would particularly 

 draw attention to his description of the mode adopted by the Scythians to perpetuate 

 the mejnory of their deceased princes, for it will be hereafter seen that one of my 

 excavations corresponds exactly with the description given by him. " The tombs of 

 the Scythian kings," he states, " are seen in the land Gberri, at the extreme point 

 to which the Borysthenes is navigable. Here, in the event of a king's decease, 

 after embalming the body, they convey it to some neighbouring Scythian nation. 

 The people receive the royal corpse, and convey it to another province of his domi- 

 nions ; and when they have paraded it through all the provinces, they dig a deep square 

 fosse, and place the body in the grave on a bed of grass. In the vacant space around 

 the body in the fosse they now lay one of the king's concubines, whom they strangle 

 for the purpose, his cup-bearer, his cook, his groom, his page, his messenger, fifty of 

 his slaves, some horses, and samples of all his things. Having so done, all fall to 

 work, throwing up an immense mound, striving and vieing with one another who 

 shall do the most." The Greeks, who always respected the religion of the countries 

 they had subjugated, and who, in process of time, imbibed, to a certain extent, their 

 customs and observances, appear to have adopted this Scythian mode of burial, 



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