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

INTRODUCTORY 9
and did not dream of leaving it. Hence the conquerors were never
mere passengers in the Russian steppes : they founded more or less
stable kingdoms. So the Cimmerians, who settled round the straits
of Kerch (the Cimmerian Bosphorus) : so also the Scythians, whose
political centre, as we shall presently see, was originally the valley of
the Kuban and later the steppes between Don and Dnieper.
These protracted sojourns of conquering peoples in South Russia,
and the establishment of settled states, resulted in the formation of
material cultures combining elements of an indigenous culture which
was already, as we shall see, considerably developed, with the elements
of Oriental civilization brought by the conquerors . These mixed civili-
zations also absorbed cultural elements coming from the south by way
of the Caucasus and the Black Sea.
This significant fact lends additional interest to the history of the
Cimmerian power, of the Scythian state, and of the Sarmatian and
Gothic states. Little is known of the Cimmerian civilization submerged
by the Scythians. Yet there is an important consideration
which leads one to hope that future discoveries will dispel the mystery.
A glance at the map will show that the corridor of the steppes forms
two securely protected pockets. One is the Kuban delta, the peninsula
of Taman : the other is the Crimea, especially the region of
Kerch and the mountainous part of the peninsula. It was here that
the Cimmerians, hard pressed by the Scythians, finally resorted, and
united with the Greeks to form the kingdom of Bosphorus : here
that the Scythians, vanquished by the Sarmatians on the east, and by
the Thracians on the west, took refuge in the second century B.C. :
here, lastly, that the Goths, beaten back by Turkish and Mongolian
invaders, founded the kingdoms of the Tetraxite Goths and the
kingdom of Mangup. We are therefore fully justified in hoping that
in this part of the world we shall find sure traces of the Cimmerians,
not only from the period of Cimmerian supremacy on the northern
shores of the Black Sea, but from other periods as well.
The permanence of certain political formations in the steppes of
Russia is a fact of extreme importance. It enables us, above all, to
realize the nature of the Scythian kingdom—a formation almost
completely Iranian, a northern counterpart of the kingdom of
Darius and Xerxes. We are but ill acquainted with the Iranian
world, although its influence on classical civilization was enormous.
We are fortunate in being able to study another portion of it, different
from that which created the Persian kingdom. The Iranians of the
Black Sea were not confined to the northern shore. It has been
demonstrated by recent discoveries, that a considerable section of the
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