KIMMERIKON
Bosporus.
Greek city 50
km S of Kerch, founded in the 6th c. B.C. by Greek
colonists from Miletos (Hekataios 1.164;
Strab. 11.2.5).
The city is situated on the SW slope of Mt. Opuk
along the coast of the Black Sea, where there was a
Cimmerian settlement before the arrival of the Greeks.
Traces of houses, rectangular in plan, have been found
dating from the 6th-5th c. B.C. Ionian ware and amphorae from Chios were found inside them, together
with local hand-thrown wares. In the 4th c. B.C. the
city was ringed with fortifications and became an important fortress in the defense system of the Bosporan
kingdom against the Scythians. The city walls are 2.5 m
thick, those of the acropolis, 3.5 m. The city reached
its height in the 1st-2d c. A.D. when the walls were
enlarged and the houses built of stone. Toward the end
of the 3d c. A.D. the city was destroyed by fire. The
Kerch Museum contains material from the site.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. T. Kruglikova, “Raskopki drevnego
Kimmerika,”
Arkheologiia i istoriia Bospora, I (1952)
55-73; id., “Kimmerik v svete arkheologicheskikh issledovanii 1947-1951 gg.,”
Bosporskie goroda, II [Materialy
i issledovaniia po arkheologii SSSR, No. 85] (1958) 219-53; A. L. Mongait,
Archaeology in the USSR, tr. M. W.
Thompson (1961) 197-98; E. Belin de Ballu,
L'Histoire
des Colonies grecques du Littoral nord de la Mer
Noire (1965) 127-28.
M. L. BERNHARD & Z. SZTETYŁŁO
