Sarmatian cataphract from Tanais.

Tanais, (Greek Τάναϊς) is the ancient name for the River Don. In antiquity, it was also the name of the city situated in the Don river delta that reaches into the northeasternmost part of the Sea of Azov, which the Greeks called Lake Maeotis. The site of ancient Tanais is situated about 30 km west of modern Rostov on Don. Image File history File links // Описание/Description ru Плита с изображением всадника (II век н. э.) Мрамор 40Ñ…35 см. Танаис. На всаднике, изображённом на плите, одежда сарматского дружинника-воина: длинный чешуйчатый панцирь, широкий пояс, развевающейся плащ, сколотый на плече фибулой, шаровары, заправленные в высокие мягкие сапожки, конусовидной формы шлем. Ð’ руках он держит длинное копьё. Всадник - историческое лицо, наместник боспорского царя в Танаисе Трифон, о чём говорит посвятительная греческая надпись на плите. en Marble block with the image of a horseman (2nd century A.D.) Marble 40Ñ…35 cm, from the ancient city of Tanais on the Don. ... Image File history File links // Описание/Description ru Плита с изображением всадника (II век н. э.) Мрамор 40Ñ…35 см. Танаис. На всаднике, изображённом на плите, одежда сарматского дружинника-воина: длинный чешуйчатый панцирь, широкий пояс, развевающейся плащ, сколотый на плече фибулой, шаровары, заправленные в высокие мягкие сапожки, конусовидной формы шлем. Ð’ руках он держит длинное копьё. Всадник - историческое лицо, наместник боспорского царя в Танаисе Трифон, о чём говорит посвятительная греческая надпись на плите. en Marble block with the image of a horseman (2nd century A.D.) Marble 40Ñ…35 cm, from the ancient city of Tanais on the Don. ... Sarmatian Cataphract Sarmatians, Sarmatae or Sauromatae (the second form is mostly used by the earlier Greek writers, the other by the later Greeks and the Romans) were a people whom Herodotus (4. ... Sarmatian Cataphract The cataphract was a type of heavy cavalryman used primarily in eastern and southeastern Europe, in Anatolia and Iran from late antiquity up through the High Middle Ages. ... This article is about the river in Western Russia. ... The shallow Sea of Azov is clearly distinguished from the deeper Black Sea. ... Central market and Church in Rostov. ...

The central city site lies on a plateau with a difference up to 20m in elevation in the south. It is bordered by a natural valley on the east, and an artificial ditch on the west.

History of Tanais

The site of Tanais was occupied long before the Miletans founded an emporium there. A necropolis of burial mounds, over 300 of them, near the ancient city show that the site had already been occupied since the Bronze Age, and that mound burials were carried on through Greek and into even Roman times.

Greek traders were meeting nomads in the district as early as the 7th century BCE without a formal, permanent settlement, apparently. Greek colonies had two kinds of origins, apoikiai of citizens from the mother city-state, and emporia, which were strictly trading stations. Founded late, in the 3rd century BCE, by merchant adventurers from Miletus, Tanais quickly developed into an emporium at the farthest northeastern extension of the Hellenic cultural sphere, a natural post first for the trade of the steppes reaching away eastwards in an unbroken grass sea to the Altai, the Scythian Holy Land, second for the trade of the Black Sea, ringed with Greek-dominated ports and entrepots, and third for trade from the impenetrable north, furs and slaves brought down the Don. Strabo mentions Tanais in his Geography (11.2.2). Colonies in antiquity were city-states founded from a mother-city, not from a territory-at-large. ... In Greek mythology, Miletus was the founder of the city described below. ... Satellite view of the Black Sea, taken by NASA MODIS Cities of the Black Sea The Black Sea (known as the Euxine Sea in antiquity) is an inland sea between southeastern Europe and Asia Minor. ...

The site for the city, ruled by an archon, was at the eastern edge of the territory of the kings of Cimmerian Bosporus. The Cimmerian Bosporus was the ancient name for the Strait of Kerch that connect the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. ...

Tanais prospered. A major shift in social emphasis is represented in the archaeological site when the propylea gate that linked the port section with the agora was removed, and the open center of public life was occupied by a palatial dwelling in Roman times for the kings of Bosporus. For the first time there were client kings at Tanais: Sauromates (175-211 A.D.) and his son Rescuporides (ca 220 CE) both left public inscriptions. The Cimmerian Bosporus was the ancient name for the Strait of Kerch that connect the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. ...

In 330 CE Tanais was devastated by the Goths, but the site was occupied continuously up to the second half of the 5th century CE. Increasingly the channel was silting, probably the result of deforestation, and the center of active life shifted, perhaps to the small city of Azov, halfway to Rostov. Invasion of the Goths: a late 19th century painting by O. Fritsche portrays the Goths as cavalrymen. ...

Archaeology of Tanais

I. A. Stempkovsky first made the connection between the visible remains— which were mostly Roman in date— with the Greek "Tanais" mentioned in literature; that was in 1823. Systematic modern excavations began in 1955.

A cooperative Russian-German team has been opening Tanais, with the objectives of revealing the heart of the city the agora, to define the degree of Hellenistic influence on the urbanism of a city founded by Bosporan Greeks, and to study the defensive responses to the increasing pressure of the surrounding nomadic cultures. For other uses, see Agora (disambiguation). ...

External link

• Official Tanais website