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Tanais

Coordinates: 47°16′8″N 39°20′6″E / 47.26889°N 39.33500°E / 47.26889; 39.33500
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the ancient city. For other uses, see Tanais (disambiguation).
Tanais
Τάναϊς
Танаис
The archaeological park of Tanais. May 2017
Tanais is located in Rostov Oblast
Tanais
Shown within Rostov Oblast
Tanais is located in European Russia
Tanais
Tanais (European Russia)
LocationNedvigovka, Rostov Oblast, Russia
RegionMaeotian marshes
Coordinates47°16′8″N 39°20′6″E / 47.26889°N 39.33500°E / 47.26889; 39.33500
TypeSettlement
History
BuilderSettlers from Miletus
FoundedLate 3rd century BC
AbandonedSecond half of the 5th century AD
PeriodsHellenistic to Late Antiquity
CulturesGreek, Sarmatian
Site notes
ConditionRuined
OwnershipPublic
Public accessYes
Websitemuseum-tanais.ru
Relief from Tanais

Tanais (Greek: Τάναϊς Tánaïs; Russian: Танаис) 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.

Location

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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

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See also: Greeks in pre-Roman Crimea
The Tanais (Don) River, the Greek colony of the same name and other Greek colonies along the north coast of the Black Sea.

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 the site had already been occupied since the Bronze Age, and that kurgan burials continued through Greek and into the Roman era.

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 furthest 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.

14th century, medieval Tana town of Venice colony in the Don river delta

The city was refounded around the 14th century by the Venetians. It was later 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.

The conquest of Central Asia by the Mongols had opened the Black Sea as a trading hub for goods from China, Persia, and parts of Russia.[1] The Venetians settled in Soldaïa and Trebizond, but soon focused on Tana, which was better situated on both land and water trade routes.[2] They would later settle in Maurocastro as well.[3] Tana was the connecting point for the Danube, Polish and Persian trade routes, as well as the route beginning in Astrakhan that led to China.[4][5] Giosafat Barbaro mentioned how six or seven trade galleys came from Venice every year for the silks and spices from Astakhan as well as other goods.[6] He also described annual shipments of 40,000 cattle to Central Asia and caravans with 6000 animals that went to India.[7] Among the goods traded in Tana were caviar, salted fish, wine, amber, salt, grain, fur, horses, and slaves,[7] as well as spices and silk.[8]

In the fifteenth century Tana was a modestly-sized town mostly or entirely surrounded by walls with towers.[9] Commercial rivals Genoa and Venice fortified their sections of the town.[9] Byzantine and Russian quarters were near the Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas.[9] There were Jewish and Zichian quarters as well. [9]

In 1438, the Great Horde under Küchük Muhammad advanced on Tana.[10] Arsenio Duodo, the Venetian Consul to Tana sent Giosafat Barbaro as an emissary to the Tatars to persuade them not to attack Tana.[11][12] Later, Barbaro was part of a group of less than fifty that drove off a hundred Circassian raiders.[13][14]

The Tatars attacked Tana in 1442, setting fire to the Venetian quarter, though many of the people survived due to the actions of Consul Marco Duodo, Arsenio's brother.[15] The fire started in the bazaar near the fortress and was fanned by a strong north wind.[16] Four breaches were made in the city walls, one by Giosafat Barbaro himself, for people to escape, but even then women and children needed to be lowered over the walls by rope.[17] The fire burned for three hours until a combination of human efforts and rain extinguished it and over four hundred people died.[17] In 1442, there was also concern over the Turks raiding Venetian shipping.[17] Between that and the siege and fire at Tana, the new Consul Pietro Pesaro was stranded in Caffa for several weeks at his own expense before he was able to relieve Marco Duodo.[15] That July the Venetian Senate considered not sending trade galleys to Tana that year.[17] Instead they ordered Lorenzo Moro to use the war galleys from Negroponte and Naplia to escort the trade galleys commanded by Leonardo Duodo to and from Tana.[17]

Marco Basso, the last Venetian Consul before the fall of Constantinople left Tana before his term ended or his successor arrived.[15] In December 1452, the galleys returning from Tana, three large merchant galleys commanded by Alvise Diedo, and two smaller war galleys commanded by Gabriele Trevisano arrived in Constantinople. Their instructions were to return to Venice within ten days of the arrival of another Venetian galley from Trebizond. That galley, commanded by Giacomo Coco reached Constantinople on December 4, 1452, but Emperor Constantine XI and the Venetian Bailo Girolamo Minotto persuaded them to aid in the city’s defense.[18] The fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 cut off the trade route to Tana.[6][19] Venice and other Italian states tried to re-establish trade in the Black Sea or find alternate routes, but were not successful.[6][20]

Tana was conquered 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

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See also: Russian cultural heritage register

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 a highly controversial 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

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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.[21]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ “Les Vénitiens à La Tana (Azov) au XVe siècle”, Bernard Doumerc, Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique, Issue 28, 1987, pg. 5 [1]
  2. ^ Doumerc 1987, pp. 5.
  3. ^ Doumerc 1987, pp. 9.
  4. ^ “Les Italiens et la découverte de la Moscovie ”, E. Pommier, Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire, Issue 65, 1953, pg. 251 [2]
  5. ^ Lockhart, Morozzo della Rocca & Tiepolo 1973, pp. 17.
  6. ^ a b c Pommier 1953, pp. 251.
  7. ^ a b Doumerc 1987, pp. 10.
  8. ^ [3] The colonies of Genoa in the Black Sea region: evolution and transformationo, Ievgen Alexandrovitch Khvalkov, European University Institute Department of History and Civilization, 2015, pg. 138
  9. ^ a b c d Khvalkov 2015, pp. 139.
  10. ^ [4] History of the Mongols: from the 9th to the 19th century], Sir Henry Hoyle Howorth, 1876, The University of California, pg. 295
  11. ^ Società geografica italiana 1882, pp. 140.
  12. ^ Mehmed the Conqueror & His Time, Franz Babinger, Trans. Ralph Manheim, Princeton University Press; 1992, p.319 ISBN 978-0-691-01078-6
  13. ^ Howorth 1882, pp. 295.
  14. ^ Khvalkov 2015, pp. 262.
  15. ^ a b c Doumerc 1987, pp. 8.
  16. ^ ”Revue de l'Orient latin, Volume 7”, Charles Henri Auguste Schefer, E. Leroux, 1899, pg. 65 [5]
  17. ^ a b c d e Schefer 1899, pp. 65.
  18. ^ “The Papacy and the Levant: 1204 - 1571”, Kenneth M. Setton, American Philosophical Society, 1976, pg. 111 [6], ISBN 0871691140
  19. ^ Marangoni & Stocchi 1996, pp. 119.
  20. ^ Doumerc 1987, pp. 16.
  21. ^ "The Population of Southern Russia Across the Ages (The Don Readings in Physical Anthropology): Collection of papers" (PDF). Russian academy of sciences.

References

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tanais.
  • Crowley, Roger (2011). City of Fortune - How Venice Won and lost a Naval Empire. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-24594-9.
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Bibliography
  • Pius Bonifacius Gams, Series episcoporum Ecclesiae Catholicae, Leipzig 1931, p. 432
  • Konrad Eubel, Hierarchia Catholica Medii Aevi, vol. 1, p. 471; vol. 2, p.
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