A Bosporan Royal Honor Inscription from Pantikapaion

This Pantikapaion inscription belongs with the Sauromates and Rhescuporis royal cluster on the Scythian shelf. It honors King Tiberius Julius Rhescuporis as son of the great King Sauromates, names the Bosporan dynasty's descent from Heracles, Eumolpus, and ancestral kings, and preserves the dedicator Ulpius Antisthenes son of Antimachos, a chiliarch.

The inscription is Bosporan royal-context evidence, not a simple ethnic proof. The names Sauromates and Rhescuporis belong to the Bosporan dynastic field and should be handled as historically entangled north-Pontic evidence rather than as a blunt claim that the Bosporan king was ethnically Sarmatian or Scythian.

The translation below was made from the inspected Greek text captured from PHI Greek Inscriptions, CIRB 53 / PH182768.

Translation

With good fortune.

Ulpius Antisthenes, son of Antimachos, chiliarch, honored King Tiberius Julius Rhescuporis, descended from Heracles and from Eumolpus son of Poseidon, and from ancestral kings, son of the great King Sauromates, friend of Caesar and friend of the Romans, pious, lifelong high priest of the Augusti, his own savior and master, for the sake of honor, in the 512th year and on the twentieth day of the month Loios.

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 53

Ancient Greek source text from PHI Greek Inscriptions, CIRB 53 / PH182768. Presented here for reference, study, and verification alongside the English translation above.

[ἀγαθῆι τύχηι].

[τὸν] ἀφ’ Ἡρακλέου[ς] καὶ Εὐμόλπου τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος καὶ ἀπὸ προγόνων βασιλέων βασιλέα Τιβέριον Ἰούλιον Ῥησκούποριν, υἱὸν μεγάλου βασιλέως Σαυρομάτου, φ[ι]λοκαίσαρα καὶ φιλορώμα[ι]ον, εὐσεβῆ, ἀρχιερέα τῶν Σεβαστῶν διὰ βίου, Οὔλπιος Ἀντισθένης Ἀντιμάχου χειλιάρχης τὸν ἑαυτοῦ σωτῆρα καὶ δεσπότην τειμῆς χάριν ἐν τῶι β̅ι̅φ̅ ἔτει καὶ μηνὶ Λῴωι κ̅.

Source Colophon

The source text was inspected from PHI Greek Inscriptions, CIRB 53 / PH182768, Pantikapaion (Kerch), 216 AD, with PHI noting IosPE II 41. The source capture is preserved in the Scythian source archive.

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