1 10 9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Monumental Inscription Description An account of the resource [HOLD FOR INTRO TEXT]<hr /> Narration fragment Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A revealing blueprint Description An account of the resource In the middle of the nineteenth century, the scholarly appetite for such scholarship was considerable. Small wonder. Sifting through dozens of pages of transcriptions and translations yields tantalizing insight into the patronage practices, literary preferences, and the crafting of identity in the early modern world of the Giray clan. It yields equally tantalyzing insights into the interests and competencies of the nineteenth-century Russian amateurs, bureaucrats, and trained professionals who consumed and produced academic knowledge about the region. Most importantly for our purposes, the inscriptions constitute a carefully preserved ceremonial space; a blueprint, in a way, of physical structures that have, in many cases, been lost or lapsed into ruin. <img style="float: right;" src="http://www.hansaray.org.ua/images/schema_bgcs.gif" alt="" />This is particularly true of the inscriptions found in the neighborhoods surrounding Bakhchisaray: in (working west to east on this map) Eski Yurt, [Bahçesaray], Salaçık, and Kırk-Er.  Two came from a mausoleum at Salaçık, a medieval settlement in the Churuk Su valley at the foot of Chufut Kale. <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/items/show/570" target="_blank">They appeared on the pages of the Odessa Society Proceedings.</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Monumental Inscription Description An account of the resource [HOLD FOR INTRO TEXT]<hr /> Narration fragment Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A site of bountiful inscription Description An account of the resource The vast majority of the inscriptions that absorbed the energies of the Odessa Society for over a decade were located within the grounds of the Khan Palace at Bakhchisaray. Neatline Display Neatline Exhibit 11 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Among the Ruins Description An account of the resource Ruins are among the most powerful elements of the built environment in Russia's southern empire. For much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Tavrida itself was seen, from a certain perspective, as one sprawling, glorious ruin. The province was strewn with burial sites, churches, fortifications, and cities that had fallen into various states of disrepair, suffered catastrophic destruction, or otherwise been subsumed within deep layers of soil and rock.  The presence of architectural monuments, ruined and otherwise, played nearly as important a role in the toponymy of the region as geological and hydrographical features. Cliffs and streams, clearings and ancient walls and burial mounds: such features lent their names to the places they shaped. They did more than that. For much of the tsarist period, the surest way to navigate the rocky and tumultuous southern coast was by following rough directions and goat paths, calibrating one's course according to rocky outcroppings, views of the sea, and ruins. Claims to these ubiquitous and treacherous sites were empowering. Knowledge of them was valuable, even vital, to any claim to possession of the peninsula. This narration explores this idea in greater depth and maps the archaeological politics that helped define the significance of Crimea from a global - as well as an intensely local - perspective. Related galleries: <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/collections/show/19" target="_self">Uvarov's Antiquities</a>; <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/collections/show/25" target="_self">Keppen's Antiquities</a> Related article: Kelly O'Neill, "<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/560940/pdf" title="link to pdf (log in to Project Muse via your library for full access)" target="_blank">Constructing Russian Identity in the Imperial Borderland: Architecture, Islam, and the Transformation of the Crimean Landscape</a>," Ab Imperio 2 (2006): 163-192.  <hr /> Narration fragment Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Classical terrain Description An account of the resource The most famous Crimean ruin is that of Chersonesos (Chersonesus, Khersones) near Sevastopol. Peter Simon Pallas was so impressed with this site that he described the area as "truly classic ground": ground that yielded bits and pieces of Greek antiquity at every step. [HOLD FOR NEATLINE OF EXCAVATION WORK] https://s3.amazonaws.com/atg-prod-oaas-files/beautifulspaces/original/373a60208df27f4af2cb107adc4d919a.png 8b1d3d27301cc674911dae6fc9643e83 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Among the Ruins Description An account of the resource Ruins are among the most powerful elements of the built environment in Russia's southern empire. For much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Tavrida itself was seen, from a certain perspective, as one sprawling, glorious ruin. The province was strewn with burial sites, churches, fortifications, and cities that had fallen into various states of disrepair, suffered catastrophic destruction, or otherwise been subsumed within deep layers of soil and rock.  The presence of architectural monuments, ruined and otherwise, played nearly as important a role in the toponymy of the region as geological and hydrographical features. Cliffs and streams, clearings and ancient walls and burial mounds: such features lent their names to the places they shaped. They did more than that. For much of the tsarist period, the surest way to navigate the rocky and tumultuous southern coast was by following rough directions and goat paths, calibrating one's course according to rocky outcroppings, views of the sea, and ruins. Claims to these ubiquitous and treacherous sites were empowering. Knowledge of them was valuable, even vital, to any claim to possession of the peninsula. This narration explores this idea in greater depth and maps the archaeological politics that helped define the significance of Crimea from a global - as well as an intensely local - perspective. Related galleries: <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/collections/show/19" target="_self">Uvarov's Antiquities</a>; <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/collections/show/25" target="_self">Keppen's Antiquities</a> Related article: Kelly O'Neill, "<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/560940/pdf" title="link to pdf (log in to Project Muse via your library for full access)" target="_blank">Constructing Russian Identity in the Imperial Borderland: Architecture, Islam, and the Transformation of the Crimean Landscape</a>," Ab Imperio 2 (2006): 163-192.  <hr /> Narration fragment Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Humble remains Description An account of the resource Keppen notes that the Greek churches he found in the mountains were modest in size: no more than 18 arshins (42 feet) long and 9 arshins (21 feet) wide. Some were truly diminuitive, with lengths of only 6 arshins (14 feet). He found them easy to distinguish from the surrounding landscape, despite their state of ruin, because of the distinctive semicircular altar arrayed to face the rising sun [page 15]. Keppen found only one two-story Greek church: that at <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/item/578" target="_blank">Demirdhzi</a>. His observations lead him to speculate that the Armenians were either more wealthy or more generous in the amount of resouces poured into church building. They used limestone, where the local Greeks used clay, and built structures of greater size and embellishment. The humble Greek structures, on the other hand, spoke of "fear and weakness" [page 17]. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Among the Ruins Description An account of the resource Ruins are among the most powerful elements of the built environment in Russia's southern empire. For much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Tavrida itself was seen, from a certain perspective, as one sprawling, glorious ruin. The province was strewn with burial sites, churches, fortifications, and cities that had fallen into various states of disrepair, suffered catastrophic destruction, or otherwise been subsumed within deep layers of soil and rock.  The presence of architectural monuments, ruined and otherwise, played nearly as important a role in the toponymy of the region as geological and hydrographical features. Cliffs and streams, clearings and ancient walls and burial mounds: such features lent their names to the places they shaped. They did more than that. For much of the tsarist period, the surest way to navigate the rocky and tumultuous southern coast was by following rough directions and goat paths, calibrating one's course according to rocky outcroppings, views of the sea, and ruins. Claims to these ubiquitous and treacherous sites were empowering. Knowledge of them was valuable, even vital, to any claim to possession of the peninsula. This narration explores this idea in greater depth and maps the archaeological politics that helped define the significance of Crimea from a global - as well as an intensely local - perspective. Related galleries: <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/collections/show/19" target="_self">Uvarov's Antiquities</a>; <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/collections/show/25" target="_self">Keppen's Antiquities</a> Related article: Kelly O'Neill, "<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/560940/pdf" title="link to pdf (log in to Project Muse via your library for full access)" target="_blank">Constructing Russian Identity in the Imperial Borderland: Architecture, Islam, and the Transformation of the Crimean Landscape</a>," Ab Imperio 2 (2006): 163-192.  <hr /> Narration fragment Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Köhler's startling list Description An account of the resource In 1804 the Academy of Sciences commissioned archaeologist <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/items/show/737" target="_blank">Karl Köhler</a> to examine and evaluate the various monuments of the former khanate.  Köhler fell ill and could not complete his work that year, but he returned to the task in May 1821 and completed it by year's end.  Köhler submitted his findings to the minister of education and spiritual affairs, Prince A. N. Golitsyn, in December. His report divided the Greek, Genoese, Tatar and Turkish monuments of Crimea into two classes: those beyond repair but worthy of preservation, such as kurgans, graves, and the foundations of ancient buildings, and those that could be restored through “relatively small expenditures” of time and money. “These monuments are particularly important for [the study of] ancient history and geography,” Köhler explained, “and must be preserved from the damage that might be rendered them out of ignorance.” The dividends, he promised, would have a political, as well as an academic aspect, for while the French and English, “have shown great enthusiasm for the homogeneity of the antiquities of their respective fatherlands,” these were nowhere near as numerous or as ancient as the “priceless monuments in Crimea.” Köhler's List <ol> <li>Evpatoriia mosque</li> <li>Mausoleum at Eski Yurt</li> <li>Balaklava fortress</li> <li>Mangup fortress</li> <li>Genoese fortress at Sudak</li> <li>Turkish bath at Feodosiia</li> <li>Feodosiia Friday mosque</li> <li>Fortress and mosque at Eski Sarai</li> </ol> Remarkably, 5 of the 8 monuments (and 74% of the budget of 44,100 rubles) were allocated to Turkish and Tatar monuments. Köhler thus became the first Russian official to acknowledge, and in fact insist on, the value of preserving the cultural landscape of the khanate. His opinion was not common currency in the imperial capital. Having reviewed the report, Golitsyn issued his opinion on the matter of Crimean antiquities: “Protecting the remains of Turkish and Tatar constructions is not as useful as protecting those of the Greeks and Genoese,” explained the minister, for the former could hardly be considered part of true “antiquity.” The fortresses at <st1:place w:st="on">Balaklava</st1:place>, Mangup and Sudak therefore deserved the lion’s share of expenditures. In fact, instead of allocating funds for restoration, Golitsyn confirmed the official plan to convert the main mosque in Feodosiia into a church and tear down the Turkish baths in order to make way for an expanded city square. The mosques and burial sites at Eski Yurt, Eski Sarai and Evpatoriia were simply not the concern of the imperial government. The mufti was welcome to solicit contributions for their restoration from the local population and, if need be, from the entire Muslim population of the empire. The Senate and State Council accepted Golitsyn’s proposals, leaving the fate of several major monuments squarely in the hands of whatever private individuals – presumably beys or mirzas – might have the requisite wealth and devotion necessary to spare them further ruin. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Among the Ruins Description An account of the resource Ruins are among the most powerful elements of the built environment in Russia's southern empire. For much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Tavrida itself was seen, from a certain perspective, as one sprawling, glorious ruin. The province was strewn with burial sites, churches, fortifications, and cities that had fallen into various states of disrepair, suffered catastrophic destruction, or otherwise been subsumed within deep layers of soil and rock.  The presence of architectural monuments, ruined and otherwise, played nearly as important a role in the toponymy of the region as geological and hydrographical features. Cliffs and streams, clearings and ancient walls and burial mounds: such features lent their names to the places they shaped. They did more than that. For much of the tsarist period, the surest way to navigate the rocky and tumultuous southern coast was by following rough directions and goat paths, calibrating one's course according to rocky outcroppings, views of the sea, and ruins. Claims to these ubiquitous and treacherous sites were empowering. Knowledge of them was valuable, even vital, to any claim to possession of the peninsula. This narration explores this idea in greater depth and maps the archaeological politics that helped define the significance of Crimea from a global - as well as an intensely local - perspective. Related galleries: <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/collections/show/19" target="_self">Uvarov's Antiquities</a>; <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/collections/show/25" target="_self">Keppen's Antiquities</a> Related article: Kelly O'Neill, "<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/560940/pdf" title="link to pdf (log in to Project Muse via your library for full access)" target="_blank">Constructing Russian Identity in the Imperial Borderland: Architecture, Islam, and the Transformation of the Crimean Landscape</a>," Ab Imperio 2 (2006): 163-192.  <hr /> Narration fragment Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Neglect Description An account of the resource In December 1786, Prince Grigorii Potemkin ordered Governor Vasilii Kakhovskii to search out and collect as many ancient coins and medals as possible. Kakhovskii dutifully passed the order along to the district land captains (all of whom were Tatars), as well as the mayors and commandants of the towns of Bahçesaray, Evpatoriia, <st1:place w:st="on">Balaklava</st1:place>, Arabat and Karasubazar. Curiously, nothing turned up, save for sixty-five coins dating from the reigns of Timur (Tamerlane) and the first three Giray khans (14th-15th centuries). Potemkin promptly returned these to their owners, explaining that he was interested only in “true antiquities”; that is, items at least 1,000 years in age, “from the period of the Greeks and Romans. Turkish and Tatar items [were] not needed.” In other words, from the earliest days of Russian rule, politics and ideology shaped the way antiquity would be defined and the way the built landscape would be managed. Potemkin was not the only man with opinions on this topic. Some shared the prince's taste for the classical era. <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/items/show/910" target="_blank">Peter Simon Pallas</a>, the famous naturalist, for example, described his scramble over the narrow fortified cliffs at Dziva Rock and Kuchuk Issar and his subsequent exuberance at the discovery of an ancient ruin in a level clearing. He marveled at the white marble column standing in a glen and at the ignorance of the "superstitious natives" who chipped off small pieces and ground them into a fine dust to be consumed for unknown purposes. Others lamented the seeming disregard for the cultural landscape - both Greek and Tatar - by Russian settlers. Anthony Grant, an English visitor to Crimea, complained that in the years since annexation “Beautiful mosques and minarets; public fountains and aqueducts, the pride and the great glory of the Moslem; public edifices, however imposing and sacred, were overthrown; trees were cut down, tombs rifled, the relics of the dead cast abroad, swine fed out of coffins, and the monuments of antiquity annihilated.” Though many likely harbored no ill will toward the monuments and ruins they found, most farmers and soldiers were preoccupied with the task of producing the large quantities of building materials needed for building houses, government offices, and churches. The large cut stones and marble slabs of existing walls and foundations presented a far more attractive alternative than purchasing materials from local quarries or foreign sources. For nearly three decades, a proliferation of ruins was an unintended consequence of the construction of estates and towns across the peninsula, from Evpatoriia to Kerch. Sources: А. Стевен, "Дела архива Таврическаго губернскаго правления, относящияся по разыскания, описании и сохранения памятников старины в пределах Таврической губерний," ИТУАК (t. 13: 33-34). Peter Simon Pallas, Travels through the Southern Provinces of the Russian Empire, vol. 2 (London, 1803): 148. Anthony Grant, An Historical Sketch of The <st1:place w:st="on">Crimea (</st1:place><st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">London, </st1:place></st1:city>1855): 109-110. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Monumental Inscription Description An account of the resource [HOLD FOR INTRO TEXT]<hr /> Narration fragment Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource No ordinary tomb Description An account of the resource The tomb described in this inscription was no ordinary tomb. In fact, the burial place of Haci Giray Khan, who died in 1466 having founded the Giray dynasty, is one of precious few surviving examples of sixteenth century Crimean architecture. Its significance was clear to members of the Odessa Society, and it was likewise clear to Count Aleksei Sergeevich Uvarov (1828-1884), a famous archaeologist and member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. At precisely the same time that the Odessa Society was preparing its inscription translations, Uvarov was conducting an archaeological expedition of the antiquities of the Black Sea region commissioned by the newly-established Imperial Archaeological Society in St. Petersburg. He published his work in 1848 (the French translation came in 1855), following it three years later with <a title="see select illustrations from Uvarov's work" href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/collections/show/19" target="_self">a companion collection of maps and drawings</a>. The sixty-nine plates in the latter volume testify to the strikingly inclusive scholarly gaze of Uvarov and the community of archaeologists (and imperial officials) he represented. The maps, views, and illustrations of artifacts bring Tatar mosques, Karaim cave dwellings, stashes of Greek amphorae, and Genoese fortifications, all in various stages of preservation or ruin, together in one elegant articulation of the particularly Russian understanding of what constituted "the Orient". They celebrate both the sedimentation of civilizations along the Black Sea's northern littoral, and Russia's territorial and cultural possession of those legacies, all with a tastefully subdued palate of beige, blue, and gray. Uvarov included <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/item/565" target="_blank">a color lithograph of the mausoleum at Salaçık</a>. Executed by François Joseph Dupressoir, it allows us some sense of the changes wrought over time to the tomb, its surrounding landscape, and to the imperial approach to defining and preserving antiquities.  Use the link below to navigate the annotated image in fullscreen mode (recommended). Neatline Display Neatline Exhibit 9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Monumental Inscription Description An account of the resource [HOLD FOR INTRO TEXT]<hr /> Narration fragment Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Odessa Society gets its hands dirty Description An account of the resource In 1836, Governor General Mikhail Semenovich Vorontsov commissioned the translation (into Russian) of the Arabic and Ottoman inscriptions at Bahcesaray as one of the first scholarly projects of the Odessa Society of History and Antiquities. The lion's share of work fell to <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/items/show/568" target="_blank">A. A. Borzenko</a> and F. M. Dombrovskij who, between them, translated 130 inscriptions.  The fruit of their labor was vetted in 1842 by Khristian Danilovich Fren (Christian Martin Joachim Frähn), the leading Orientalist at the Russian Academy of Sciences and first director of the "<a title="architect of the "Eastern" cabinet" href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/items/show/583" target="_self">Eastern Cabinet</a>" (later known as the Asiatic Museum), and by V. P. Kuz'min, Professor of Eastern Languages at the Richelieu Institute in Odessa. Fren extolled the work of Borzenko and Dombrovskij as a rare service to the scholarly community; the Odessa Society proclaimed the set of translations as nothing less than "a monument of the dominion of the khans at the Alhambra-Bakhchesaray; one that attests to the genealogy and chronology of the Crimean Khans and to the sources of their enlightenment". It appeared, at long last, under the title "<a title="off to the bibliography" href="https://www.zotero.org/groups/beautiful_spaces/items/itemKey/JU339MJZ" target="_blank">Arabic and Turkish Inscriptions of Bakhchesaraj</a>" in the second volume of the <a title="read about the Proceedings" href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/items/show/569" target="_self">Proceedings of the Odessa Society</a> (1848-1849). Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Among the Ruins Description An account of the resource Ruins are among the most powerful elements of the built environment in Russia's southern empire. For much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Tavrida itself was seen, from a certain perspective, as one sprawling, glorious ruin. The province was strewn with burial sites, churches, fortifications, and cities that had fallen into various states of disrepair, suffered catastrophic destruction, or otherwise been subsumed within deep layers of soil and rock.  The presence of architectural monuments, ruined and otherwise, played nearly as important a role in the toponymy of the region as geological and hydrographical features. Cliffs and streams, clearings and ancient walls and burial mounds: such features lent their names to the places they shaped. They did more than that. For much of the tsarist period, the surest way to navigate the rocky and tumultuous southern coast was by following rough directions and goat paths, calibrating one's course according to rocky outcroppings, views of the sea, and ruins. Claims to these ubiquitous and treacherous sites were empowering. Knowledge of them was valuable, even vital, to any claim to possession of the peninsula. This narration explores this idea in greater depth and maps the archaeological politics that helped define the significance of Crimea from a global - as well as an intensely local - perspective. Related galleries: <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/collections/show/19" target="_self">Uvarov's Antiquities</a>; <a href="http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/beautifulspaces/collections/show/25" target="_self">Keppen's Antiquities</a> Related article: Kelly O'Neill, "<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/560940/pdf" title="link to pdf (log in to Project Muse via your library for full access)" target="_blank">Constructing Russian Identity in the Imperial Borderland: Architecture, Islam, and the Transformation of the Crimean Landscape</a>," Ab Imperio 2 (2006): 163-192.  <hr /> Narration fragment Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Vantage points Description An account of the resource In 1837 the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, at the behest Count Mikhail Semenovich Vorontsov (the governor-general of Novorossia and Bessarabia), published a volume called "On the Antiquities of the Southern Coast of Crimea and the Tauride Mountains." The author, a man named Peter Keppen, dedicated his work - the "weak fruit of decades of research" - to the Romanov heir, Alexander Nikolaevich, who was about to make his first journey to Crimea.   Keppen had traveled through Crimea in 1819 but settled there permanently in 1827. In 1833 Vorontsov provided him with "the means to compose an archaeographical and topographical study" of southern Crimea and the 1837 publication was to be the first installment of such a work. In it he documents the ruins of churches, Greek and Armenian inscriptions, and Greek, Karaim, and Tatar tombs. But the lion's share of pages are devoted to the ruins of fortifications; (Greek and Genoese) fortifications that prove that "the inhabitants of Tauride mountains took every measure to protect themselves from the peoples of the steppe." “From the northern side," he wrote, "at every gorge/canyon that pierced the mountains there was some kind of fortification or observation post, a tower, etc., and on the coastal cliffs defenses were arranged in systematic order, so that from a given fortress it was often possible to maintain watch over several fortified positions.”(<a title="bibliographic citation" href="https://www.zotero.org/groups/beautiful_spaces/items/itemKey/AEB7WZTM" target="_blank">Keppen</a>, 2)