Iranians and Greeks in South Russia - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian ...

THESARMATIANS 135
Kuban culture appears in the valley of the Don. I would mention,
in especial, the celebrated treasure of Novocherkassk, which resembles,
feature for feature, the furniture of the Kuban tombs ; and the less
sumptuous find from Golubinskaya Stanitsa. The gold diadem from
Novocherkassk (pi. XXVI, i) is a characteristic specimen of the strange
jewellery described above. The shape is Greek ; Greek the cameo
which adorns the front of the diadem ;
and the pendants attached to
the lower part of the diadem are imitations of the pendants which
are common in Greek jewellery and widespread in South Russia
during the fourth and third centuries B.C. But the upper part of the
diadem is in a pure animal style, and reminds one of motives which
we shall find in Siberian jewellery. Lastly, the polychromy of the
diadem as a whole, the pearls, the amethysts and garnets, large and
small, with which the entire surface is studded, takes us back to the
valley of the Kuban. It is there also that we find perfect parallels for
the gold perfume vase (pi. XXVI, 3), decorated in the animal style
and set with stones ; for its lid, which recalls, with extraordinary
vividness, the belt clasps from the tombs on the Kuban ; for the
golden vase covered with figures of animals and set with stones
and above all, for the hundreds of little gold garment
(pi. XXVI, 4) ;
plaques, some of them encrusted with tiny pieces of blue or pink
enamel, pink coral, or turquoise (fig. 17). The same spirit prevails in
the curious perfume-tube, in the form of a lion whose body is replaced
by an onyx tube (pi. XXVI, 2). I cannot speak of all the objects
which make up this splendid treasure : but I must insist on their
close resemblance to the finds from the tombs on the Kuban. The
Novocherkassk find forms a kind of bridge between the Kuban and
Siberia. The date has been hotly disputed : but if we consider
that the cameo set in the diadem is probably a late Hellenistic work,
that pendants like those of the diadem never appear in the jewellery
of the Roman period, that the small gold statuette of Eros (pi. XXVI,
5) is late Hellenistic, that the Kuban analogies point to the period
of the first group of tombs ; we must date the treasure in the first
century b. c, or at latest the first A. d. A little later is the gold
vase found at Migulinskaya Stanitsa, which bears the names of the
owner, B-q^avoKov, and of the artist, Ta^ouXas eVotet, with an indication
of .the weight, X{iTpa?) xp{'"'^°^) ^^ (forty-eight ounces) : a closely
sirnilar vase, uninscribed, forms part of the treasure of Novocherkassk.
The inscription is valuable, for it shows us where the vase was made :
I have pointed out, in a special article, that both names are Thracian,
common at Tanais and even at Panticapaeum in the Roman period.
Let us bear this important fact in mind.