A Bosporan Verse Epitaph from Pantikapaion

This small metrical epitaph from Pantikapaion belongs in the Scythian library because it gives a Greek funerary voice to the experience of dying in Scythian land. The stone does not describe Scythian religion, politics, or ethnicity; it preserves the name Scythia as the earth that received a man far from home.

The poem is brief, but the formula is strong: Scythian land hides Hekataios, Acheron receives his soul, and the tomb receives his body. It is useful as a compact inscriptional witness to the way Greek verse could name the northern Black Sea as Scythian ground.

The translation below was made from the inspected Greek text captured from PHI Greek Inscriptions, CIRB 117 / PH182834.

Translation

Scythian land, wrapping around him, hides this Hekataios, son of Lenaios, who breathed far from the soil of his dear fatherland.

Acheron received his soul; the tomb received his body.

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 117

Ancient Greek source text from PHI Greek Inscriptions, CIRB 117 / PH182834. Presented here for reference, study, and verification alongside the English translation above.

[γῆ] Σκυθία περιβᾶσα Ἑκαταῖον τόνδε κέκε[υθε],

[Λ]ηναίου [π]νείοντα, φίλης ἀπὸ πατρίδος αἴη[ς],

[οὗ ψ]υχὴν [Ἀχ]έρων ὑπεδέξατο, σῶμα δὲ τύμβο[ς].

Source Colophon

The source text was inspected from PHI Greek Inscriptions, CIRB 117 / PH182834, North Shore of the Black Sea, Pantikapaion (Kerch), dated by PHI to the late fourth or third century BCE and cross-referenced as GVI 529. The source capture is preserved in the Scythian source archive.

PHI prints restored letters in brackets: [γῆ], [Λ]ηναίου, [π]νείοντα, [οὗ ψ]υχήν, [Ἀχ]έρων, and the final letters of κέκε[υθε], αἴη[ς], and τύμβο[ς]. The English renders Ληναίου as the patronymic "son of Lenaios" and keeps the epitaph's division between Scythian land, Acheron, and the tomb.

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