Berezan (island)

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Beresan (Borysthenes)
Berezan
Berezan
Waters Black Sea
Geographical location 46 ° 36 ′ 0 ″  N , 31 ° 25 ′ 0 ″  E Coordinates: 46 ° 36 ′ 0 ″  N , 31 ° 25 ′ 0 ″  E
Berezan (island) (Mykolaiv Oblast)
Berezan (island)
length 900 m
width 320 m
surface 20 ha
Residents uninhabited
main place Borysthenes (excavation)

Beresan (Ukrainian, Russian Березань , ancient Greek Βορυσθένης , Borysthenēs , Ἅγιος Αἰθέριος Hagios Aitherios , Saint Aitherios , Old Russian Белобережье Belobereschye ) is an island in the Black Sea near the Black Sea Limnepr .

geography

The island is about 900 meters long and a maximum of 320 meters wide. When the city was first founded, the island was apparently still accessible via a narrow land path, today it is separated from the mainland by a five meter deep and about 1.5 kilometer long passage.

The island is located south of the Berezan Liman 4 km off the coast of the village of Rybakivka and 12.8 km southwest of the city of Ochakiv in Ochakiv Rajon in Mykolaiv Oblast .

history

Antiquity

Black Sea around 450 BC Chr.

Borysthenes Island (from the Greek name for the Dnieper) was one of the first Greek settlements in the northern Black Sea region. Eusebius of Caesarea gives the first settlement by inhabitants from Miletus between 647 and 646 BC. Chr. The island was then settled for almost a millennium, the island was only abandoned in the 5th century, partly due to the greater economic importance of the neighboring island of Olbia .

The most important commodity of the inhabitants was grain , which was bought by the Scythians and loaded onto ships for transport to the Mediterranean. In ancient Greece, Olbia and Borysthenes were the main suppliers of grain.

Kievan Rus

Archaeological finds of houses sunk into the ground, ceramics, bracelets and other objects point to an early Slavic settlement of the island from around the 7th century ( Penkowka culture , Anten ).

The island was an important station on the route from the Dnieper to the Black Sea ( route from the Varangians to the Greeks ) on the border with the Byzantine Empire and also had geostrategic importance.

In 944, a treaty between the Kievan Rus and the Byzantine Empire stipulated that the Rus could use the island as a camp in summer, but without threatening the residents of Chersonese or setting up winter camps on the island. In the winter of 971/972 the defeated Russian troops under Svyatoslav I set up a winter camp there after the defeat at Dorostolon , probably with the consent of Emperor Johannes Tzimiskes . Soon afterwards, a famine broke out, probably due to the large number of troops housed there.

In the 11th century the island was still a place of residence for Gotland merchants on their way to the Byzantine Empire. This is indicated by a rune stone, which a probably Gotlandic traveler erected for a companion there ( rune stone from Beresan ).

From the 11th or 12th century is a small Orthodox cross ( encolpion ) that was found on the island.

Cossacks

The Zaporozhian Cossacks built fortifications on the Berezan during their war against the Crimean Tatars in the 16th and 17th centuries. After the fall of neighboring Ochakiv to the Russians , the island was incorporated into New Russia .

Excavations

The remains of the Greek settlement and the associated necropolis have been excavated since the 19th century. Although parts of the island were flooded and erosion and grave robbers had affected the ancient heritage, numerous ceramics and inscriptions could be found.

literature

  • Borysthenes - Berezan. The Hermitage Archaeological Collection , St. Petersburg 2010
  • Sergei D. Krÿzhitskii: On the Types of Houses on the Island of Berezan . In: Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia . Volume 11, No. 3/4, 2005, ISSN  0929-077X , pp. 181-197.
  • Thomas Schaub Noonan: The Grain Trade of the Northern Black Sea in Antiquity . In: American Journal of Philology . Volume 94, No. 3, 1973, ISSN  0002-9475 , pp. 231-242.
  • Sergei L. Solovyov: Ancient Berezan. The Architecture, History and Culture of the First Greek Colony in the Northern Black Sea . Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden 1999, ISBN 90-04-11569-2 , ( Colloquia Pontica . Volume 4).
  • Sergei L. Solovyov: Monetary Circulation and the Political History of Archaic Borysthenes . In: Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia . Volume 12, No. 1/2, 2006, ISSN  0929-077X , pp. 63-75.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ На юге страны впервые нашли древний славянский крест
  2. ^ Tyler Jo Smith: Athenian Black-figure Pottery from Berezan . In: Borysthenes - Berezan. The Hermitage Archaeological Collection . Volume 2, St. Petersburg 2010
  3. ^ Skyphoi class A1 , Skyphoi class A2