#chersonesus

Crimea: the Tauri came to dominate Crimea as a Scythian division so that, by the end of the second century BC (if not quite a bit earlier), the peninsula was known as the Tauric Chersonesus (the land of the Tauri).

~ Male Head.

Date: 2nd century B.C.

Place of origin: Crimea, the Environs of Sevastopol; Archaeological site: Chersonesus

Ruins of the Greek colony of Chersonesus in Sevastopol, Crimea, modern-day Ukraine

I’m a bit excited about this image— not just that tracking it down was an adventure, but it’s a really cool fusion of both the Master of Animals and the Scythian snake-legged goddess imagery. Let’s take a look.

It’s a cornice fragment from Chersonesus, an ancient Greek colony on the Crimean peninsula, uncovered in excavations that took place in 1905. I don’t have a precise date on it, but the website the image is from, kostsyushko.chersonesos.org, describes it as a “Ancient Greek limestone capital.”

The Chersonesus figure is holding winged animals, possible griffins, off to the side, a motif similar to Master/ Mistress of Animals. However, the Chersonesos figure has two sets of curling tendrils for legs. Given the damage, it’s hard to tell what gender the figure is supposed to be.

However, it reminds me of both this plaque from Olynthus, as well as the Vergina mosaics from northern Greece:

K.K. Kostsyushko-Valyuzhinich wrote about "a griffin with a lion's head and a woman with curls instead of legs caressing him."

Kostsyushko-Valyuzhinich was the archeologist who wrote reports documenting the findings from those excavations, and the website dedicated to those findings is where I got the image from. The quote is from the article by Petrov and Makarevich.

Here's the drawing from Petrov and Makarevich's article, next to the actual photo of the cornice, for reference:

I'll be adding this one to the longer post about images of the snake-legged goddess from Scythian territories.

Sources

Drawing is from: V. P. Petrov and M. L. Makarevich, 'Skifskaya Geneologycheskaya Legenda,' Sovjetskaya Arkheologia. (1963), 20-31. G. Pinza (Ed.), Materiali per la etnologia … (Скифская Генеалогическая Легенда,' Советская Археология) 

Article available here, in Russian: https://arheologija.ru/petrov-makarevich-skifskaya-genealogicheskaya-legenda/ 

View of the ancient Greek colony of Chersonesus and the St. Vladimir's Cathedral in Sebastopol, Crimea, modern-day Ukraine