A Bosporan Temple Inscription Under King Sauromates

This short inscription from Gorgippia belongs in the Scythian library as Bosporan contact-zone evidence. It names King Tiberius Julius Sauromates, the city of Gorgippia, and a temple raised to Aphrodite Nauarchis, "Aphrodite the Sea-Commander."

The text should be handled narrowly. It is not a Scythian ethnic statement. Its value is that it preserves a Bosporan royal and civic cult setting in which a king with the Sauromates name, a Gorgippian official, and a maritime Aphrodite title stand together in one small source.

The translation below was made from the inspected Greek text captured from PHI Greek Inscriptions, CIRB 1115 / PH183851.

Translation

When King Tiberius Julius Sauromates, friend of Caesar and friend of the Romans, pious, was reigning, Pharnakion son of Pothe, the official over Gorgippia, after making a vow to the goddess Aphrodite Nauarchis, raised the temple from his own expenses, in the 407th year and in the month Daisios.

Colophon

This Good Works Translation was prepared for the Scythian shelf by the New Tianmu Anglican Church from the Ancient Greek inscription text printed below. The English is a new rendering from the Greek. PHI Greek Inscriptions was used as the source text, with the local HTML capture retained for verification.

The translation is a new Good Works rendering from the inspected Greek source text.

Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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Source Text: CIRB 1115

Ancient Greek source text from PHI Greek Inscriptions, CIRB 1115 / PH183851. Presented here for reference, study, and verification alongside the English translation above.

βασιλεύοντος βασιλέως

Τιβερίου Ἰουλίου Σαυρομά-

του φιλοκαίσαρος καὶ φιλο-

ρωμαίου, εὐσεβοῦς

θεᾷ Ἀφροδείτῃ Ναυαρχίδι

εὐξάμενος τὸν ναὸν ἀ-

νήγειρεν Φαρνακίων Πό-

θου ὁ ἐπὶ Γοργιππείας ἐκ

τῶν ἰδίων ἀναλωμάτων

ἐν τῷ ζυʹ ἔτει

καὶ μηνὶ Δαεισίου.

Source Colophon

The source text was inspected from PHI Greek Inscriptions, CIRB 1115 / PH183851, North Shore of the Black Sea, Gorgippia (Anapa), dated by PHI to 110 AD. The source capture is preserved in the Scythian source archive.

PHI prints the inscription without bracketed restoration in this record. The line breaks above preserve PHI's display, including split words at line ends. The 407th year is the Bosporan era year that corresponds to the PHI date. Ναυαρχίδι is rendered as "Nauarchis" in the title and "the Sea-Commander" in the introduction; the translation body keeps the Greek cult title because the epithet deserves a second religious-history control pass before final epigraphic treatment.

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