A Bosporan Civic Inscription

This short inscription from Gorgippia belongs in the Scythian library as Bosporan and Sauromatian royal-context evidence. It names King Tiberius Julius Sauromates and records the rebuilding of the city's fallen walls from the foundations.

The text should be handled narrowly. It is not a Scythian ethnic statement, and it should not be used as proof that the Bosporan king was ethnically Sarmatian. Its value is source access: a small civic witness from the north Black Sea in which a king bearing the Sauromates name appears as restorer, benefactor, high priest of the Augusti, and guardian of urban boundaries.

The translation below was made from the inspected Greek text captured from PHI Greek Inscriptions, CIRB 1122 / PH183858.

Translation

King from ancestral kings, great king Tiberius Julius Sauromates, friend of Caesar and friend of the Romans, pious, lifelong high priest of the Augusti and benefactor of the fatherland, when the walls of the city had fallen, raised them from the foundations, after adding to the city beyond the ancestral boundaries, through the supervision of Pothe [...], in the [...] year and in the month Hyperberetaios [...].

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 1122

Ancient Greek source text from PHI Greek Inscriptions, CIRB 1122 / PH183858. Presented here for reference, study, and verification alongside the English translation above.

ὁ̣ ἐ̣κ προγ̣όνων βασιλέων βα[σιλεὺς μέγας]

Τιβέριος [Ἰ]ούλιος Σαυρομάτης φ[ιλόκαισαρ]

καὶ φιλορώμαιος ∙ εὐσεβής ∙ ἀρχιερεὺς τ̣[ῶν Σεβασ]-

τῶν διὰ β[ί]ου καὶ εὐεργέτης τῆς πατρίδο[ς]

κατενεχθέντα τὰ τείχη τῆς πόλεως ἐκ θεμ[ελίων]

[ἀ]νήγειρ[ε]ν τῶν προγονικῶν ὅρων πλειω[θέ]-

[ντα ἐ]πι[δ]οὺς τῇ πόλει δι’ ἐπιμελείας Πόθ[ου]

〚— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —〛ς ἐν [τῷ ․․․ʹ]

[ἔτει κ]αὶ μηνὶ Ὑπερβερεταίῳ [․․ʹ].

Source Colophon

The source text was inspected from PHI Greek Inscriptions, CIRB 1122 / PH183858, North Shore of the Black Sea, Gorgippia (Anapa), dated by PHI to 93-124 AD. The source capture is preserved in the Scythian source archive.

PHI prints this inscription with bracketed restorations and a cancelled line. The translation keeps the damaged ending visible and does not resolve the lost date. The phrase τῶν προγονικῶν ὅρων πλειω[θέ]ντα ἐπιδούς τῇ πόλει is provisional in English and should receive epigraphic review before the translation is treated as a final epigraphic edition.

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