Tanais
| Author:Laxman Burdak, IFS (R) |
Tanais was an ancient Greek city in the Don river delta, called the Maeotian marshes in classical antiquity. It was a bishopric as Tana and remains a Latin Catholic titular see as Tanais. Pliny mentions about river Tanais [1]. Don River's Greek name Tanais appears in ancient Greek sources as both the name of the river and of a city on it, situated in the Maeotian (present Sea of Azov) marshes.
Variants
- Tanais (Greek: Τάναϊς Tánaïs; Russian: Танаис)
- Tana
Jat Gotras Namesake
- Tani = Tanais (Pliny.vi.7)
Jat Places Namesake
- Tana = Tanais (Pliny.vi.7). Tana is a village in Shamli tehsil and district in Uttar Pradesh.
Location
The delta reaches into the northeasternmost part of the Sea of Azov, which the Ancient Greeks called Lake Maeotis. The site of ancient Tanais is about 30 km west of modern Rostov-on-Don. The central city site lies on a plateau with a difference up to 20 m in elevation in the south. It is bordered by a natural valley to the east, and an artificial ditch to the west.
History
The site of Tanais was occupied long before the Milesians founded an emporium there. A necropolis of over 300 burial kurgans near the ancient city shows that the site had already been occupied since the Bronze Age, and that kurgan burials continued through Greek and into even Roman times.
Greek traders seem to have been meeting nomads in the district as early as the 7th century BC without a formal, permanent settlement. 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 BC, by merchant adventurers from Miletus, Tanais quickly developed into an emporium at the farthest northeastern extension of the Hellenic cultural sphere. It was 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, with furs and slaves brought down the Don.
Strabo mentions Tanais in his Geography (11.2.2).
The site for the city, ruled by an archon, was at the eastern edge of the territory of the kings of Bosporus. A major shift in social emphasis is represented in the archaeological site when the propylaea 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 (AD 175-211) and his son Rescuporides (c. AD 220), who both left public inscriptions.
In AD 330 Tanais was devastated by the Goths, but the site was occupied continuously up to the second half of the 5th century AD. Increasingly, the channel silted up, probably the result of deforestation, and the center of active life shifted, perhaps to the small city of Azov, halfway to Rostov.
The city was refounded around the 14th century by the Venetians. Later it was acquired by the maritime Republic of Genoa, who administered it 1332-1471 as Tana nel Mare Maggiore, being an important place for trade with the Golden Horde, like all their Black Sea colonies controlled by the Genoese Consul at Kaffa. It decayed again after 1368. In 1392 it was conquered by Timur, by the Ottoman Turks in 1471, by the Russians in 1696, again by the Turks in 1711 and by the Russian Empire in 1771.
Archaeology
In 1823, I. A. Stempkovsky first made a connection between the visible archaeological remains, which were mostly Roman in date, and the "Tanais" mentioned in the ancient Greek sources.
Systematic modern excavations began in 1955. A joint Russian-German team has recently been excavating at the site of Tanais, with the aim of revealing the heart of the city, the agora, and defining the extent of Hellenistic influence on the urbanism of the Bosporan Greek city, as well as studying defensive responses to the surrounding nomadic cultures.
In the book Jakten på Odin, author Thor Heyerdahl advanced an idea postulating connections between Tanais and ancient Scandinavia. In preparation of the book, he conducted some archaeological research on the site of Tanais. Heyerdal`s idea was based on the old Norse sagas of Snorri Sturlason. (1178 - 1241)
Tanais Tablets are the most important historical discoveries in region of Tanais.
Genetics
9 Y-chromosome markers were obtained from a skeleton. The result was 389I=13, 389II=30, 458=15, 385=11, 393=13, 391=11, 635=23, 437=14, 448=19. This result is characteristic for haplogroup R1a.[2]
Mention by Pliny
Pliny[3] mentions Lake Mieotis and the adjoining nations....We then come to the river Tanais3, which discharges itself into the sea by two mouths, and the banks of which are inhabited by the Sarmatæ, the descendants of the Medi, it is said, a people divided into numerous tribes. The first of these are the Sauromatæ Gynæcocratumeni4 the husbands of the Amazons.
3 Or Don. It flows into the Sea of Azof by two larger mouths and several smaller ones. Strabo says that the distance between the two larger mouths is sixty stadia. several smaller ones. Strabo says that the distance between the two larger mouths is sixty stadia.
4 From the Greek γυναικοκρατουμενοὶ, "ruled over by women." It is not improbable that this name was given by some geographer to these Sarmatian tribes on finding them, at the period of his visit, in subjection to the rule of a queen. Parisot remarks, that this passage affords an instance of the little care bestowed by Pliny upon procuring the best and most correct information, for that the Roman writers had long repudiated the use of the term "Sauromatæ." He also takes Pliny to task for his allusion to these tribes as coupling with the Amazons, the existence of such a people being in his time generally disbelieved.
Mention by Pliny
Pliny[4] mentions Lake Mieotis and the adjoining nations....The Scythians call the river Tanais by the name of Silis, and the Mæotis the Temarunda, meaning the "mother of the sea." There is11 a city also at the mouth of the Tanais. The neighbouring country was inhabited first by the Carians, then by the Clazomenii and Mæones, and after them by the Panticapenses.12
11 The former editions mostly have "there was," implying that in the time of Pliny it no longer existed. The name of this place was Tanais; its ruins are still to be seen in the vicinity of Kassatchei. It was founded by a colony from Miletus, and became a flourishing seat of trade. The modern town of Azof is supposed to occupy nearly its site.
12 The people of Panticapæum, on the opposite side of the Palus Mæotis, occupying the site of the present Kertch. It was founded by the Milesians B.C. 541, and took its name from the neighbouring river Panticapes.