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

INTHEROMANPERIOD 167
I said above that the citizens of the Greek towns on the Black Sea
were very anxious not to be confused with the barbarians. They
counted themselves Greeks, and did their best to appear Greek and
to be Greek. Greek was the only language used at Panticapaeum for
public and private inscriptions and on coins. The citizens received
a Greek education and were proud of it. Dio Chrysostom speaks of
the reverence paid to Homer and Plato at Olbia. At Panticapaeum
we have many funerary inscriptions in verse, which were assuredly
composed in Panticapaeum itself. One of the finest commemorates
the services rendered to the city of Nymphaeum by Glycaria, wife of
Asandros, perhaps his first wife while he was still a private citizen
it was found in the sea near Nymphaeum and has been published
recently by myself and by Skorpil. Another inscription praises the
scientific and educational attainments of a young Bosphoran.
In spite of all this, the Hellenism of the citizen population in the
Bosphorus seems to have been no more than a veneer, which wore
thinner and thinner. It is true that the inscriptions are all Greek.
But from the second century onwards we notice traces, even on official
monuments, of a new system of writing which was probably used for
texts in the native language. We observed, in the last chapter, that
a number of objects from Sarmatian tombs are decorated with
alphabetical signs of heraldic appearance, monograms which made one
think of badges or coats of arms. From the second century b. c, we
find the same signs, accompanying the names of kings, on stones with
official inscriptions, on public documents, on inscrijjed tombstones, on
certain coins, on horse trappings, on belt clasps, on strap mounts, and so
forth. The strap mounts are in the openwork technique normal in
Sarmatian objects of the kind. It is certain that these signs are private
monograms, personal, family, or tribal devices. But elsewhere we have
complete texts written in signs which are partly identical with and
partly similar to the signs described above : so on two funerary lions
found at Olbia ; so on the entrance of a tomb at Kerch, where the
inscription is placed on a lower layer of plaster, which was covered
with an upper, painted layer. I have no doubt that these are the first
stages in the development of a Sarmatian system of writing. Let us
remember that the Hittite hieroglyphic writing developed in the same
this has been shown by Sayce and
manner out of badge-like signs :
by Cowley, and de Linas has already compared the Bosphoran signs
with Persian. A significant testimony to the importance of the
Iranian element in the citizen population : for it was the Bosphoran
nobles who built these sumptuous carved and painted tombs.
The testimony is confirmed by an analysis of the proper names at
: