Qualla: Myrmekion

Myrmekion: Introduction

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dmytro Petishkin, CC BY 4.0. In 1834, sailors on quarantine duty near Kerch set about raising a flagpole and struck stone that would not move. Digging around it, they found tombs cut into the rock of an ancient acropolis - and inside, two marble sarcophagi. One was like nothing else on earth: a great coffin carved with scenes from the life of Achilles, a masterpiece from an Athenian workshop of the second century AD, now among the treasures of the Hermitage. The sailors had stumbled into Myrmekion, a small Greek colony whose modest ruins have been yielding extraordinary things for nearly two hundred years.

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Image: Dmytro Petishkin | CC BY 4.0

Myrmekion: The Town of Ants

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Solundir, CC BY-SA 3.0. Milesian colonists founded Myrmekion in the first half of the sixth century BC, a few kilometers northeast of Pantikapaion on the bank of the Kerch bay. Even its name is a small mystery. Some derive it from the Greek word for ant - myrmex - imagining a town as busy and crowded as...

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Image: Solundir | CC BY-SA 3.0

Myrmekion: A Coast That Ran on Wine

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Denis Vitchenko, CC BY-SA 4.0. From the Hellenistic age onward, Myrmekion was known for one thing above all: wine. Its wineries were serious industrial operations, with platforms where workers trod the grapes underfoot and stone presses to squeeze the last juice from the pulp. The liquid drained into cisterns ...

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Image: Denis Vitchenko | CC BY-SA 4.0

Myrmekion: Layer Upon Layer

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Investigatio, CC BY-SA 3.0. Few places pack so many centuries into so little ground. After the Greek town faded, the Huns swept through in the 380s and its people withdrew to Pantikapaion for safety. Later a settlement of the Saltovo-Mayaki culture rose and fell here; later still, after the Mongols folded C...

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Image: Investigatio | CC BY-SA 3.0