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Cimmerian Bosporos. Panticapaeum. (Circa 325-310 BC)
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AE17 (4.07 gm)
Obverse: Head of bearded satyr left
Reverse: Π-A-N, head of bull left.
MacDonald 67. Anokhin 132.
Panticapaeum (Ancient Greek: Παντικάπαιον, translit. Pantikápaion, Russian: Пантикапей, translit. Pantikapei) was an ancient Greek city on the eastern shore of Crimea, which the Greeks called Taurica. The city was built on Mount Mithridat, a hill on the western side of the Cimmerian Bosporus. It was founded by Milesians in the late 7th or early 6th century BC.
This area eventually came to be ruled by the Spartocids, a Hellenized Thracian dynasty that ruled the Hellenistic Kingdom of Bosporus between the years 438–108 BC. They had usurped the former dynasty, the Archaeanactids, a Greek dynasty of the Bosporan Kingdom who were tyrants of Panticapaeum from 480 - 438 BC that were usurped from the Bosporan throne by Spartokos I in 438 BC, whom the dynasty is named after.
Spartokos I is often thought to have been a Thracian mercenary who was hired by the Archaeanactids, and that he usurped the Archaeanactids becoming "king" of the Bosporan Kingdom, then only a few cities, such as Panticapaeum. Spartokos was succeeded by his son, Satyros I, who would go on to conquer many cities around Panticapaeum such as Nymphaeum and Kimmerikon. Satyros's son, Leukon I, would go to conquer and expand the kingdom beyond boundaries his father ever thought of.
Ultimately, the Bosporan Kingdom entered into a decline due to numerous attacks from nomadic Scythian tribes in the subsequent centuries leading up to its fall.
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