A Bosporan Royal Fragment

This damaged inscription from Pantikapaion belongs in the Scythian library as Bosporan royal-context evidence. It names the great king Tiberius Julius Sauromates, son of Rhescuporis, and preserves Axia Paula as the king's wife in the broken dedicatory close.

The text should be handled narrowly. The name Sauromates is important for the Scythian/Sarmatian frontier archive, but this fragment does not prove a simple ethnic identity for the king or his household. Its value is source access to a small north Black Sea Greek witness from the Bosporan royal world.

The translation below was made from inspected Greek text captured from PHI Greek Inscriptions, CIRB p936,1 / PH182761.

Translation

The [great king Tiberius Julius Sauromates], king from ancestral kings, son of King Rhescuporis, [friend of Caesar and friend of the Romans, pious], lifelong high priest of the Augusti [and benefactor of the fatherland ...]

[...] and the wife of this king, Axia Paul[a ...], set up [the image or monument of him as ...] and benefactor.

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 p936,1

Ancient Greek source text from PHI Greek Inscriptions, CIRB p936,1 / PH182761. Presented here for reference, study, and verification alongside the English translation above.

τὸν ἐκ προγόνων βασιλέων [βασιλέα μέγαν Τιβέριον Ἰούλιον Σαυρομάτην]

υἱὸν βασιλέως Ῥησκουπόριδος [φιλοκαίσαρα καὶ φιλορώμαιον, εὐσεβῆ],

ἀρχιερέα τῶν Σεβαστῶν διὰ βίο[υ καὶ εὐεργέτην τῆς πατρίδος — — — —]

[— —]Λ̣[—]ν̣[—]σ̣π̣αντω̣ν̣[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]

λεως καὶ τούτου γυνὴ Ἀξία Παυλ[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]

καὶ εὐεργέτην καθε̣ί[δρ]υσαν [— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]

Source Colophon

The source text was inspected from PHI Greek Inscriptions, CIRB p936,1 / PH182761, North Shore of the Black Sea, Pantikapaion (Kerch), dated by PHI to 93-124 AD. The source capture is preserved in the Scythian source archive.

PHI prints this inscription with heavy bracketed restorations. The English keeps the restored royal titulature in brackets, leaves the broken fourth line untranslated, and treats the final dedicatory action as provisional because the subject and object are damaged around Axia Paula and καθείδρυσαν.

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