Kerch Lapidarium is located 8 kilometers northeast of the city center. Most of the historical attractions are within walking distance from Mount Mithridates. The Kerch Lapidarium is far away, but it is necessary to plan a visit to this museum, since it can be called the most interesting museum in Russia dedicated to antiquity.
The Kerch Lapidarium Museum consists of four large halls, which contain antique tombstones, sarcophagi, bas-reliefs, decorative elements of buildings of various eras, starting from the 6th century BC. This allows the museum`s specialists to engage in research in the field of epigraphy: a science that studies the form and content of inscriptions on stones.
Kerch is the oldest city in Russia. The first Greek colony on this site was founded in the 7th century BC. Since then, life in the city has not been interrupted. It was under the rule of many peoples and countries, so archaeologists were able to collect one of the richest collections of tombstones and other artifacts in the world in the cemeteries and burial mounds of the Kerch Peninsula to study epigraphy.
The basis of the collection of the Kerch Lapidarium were the finds of the French archaeologist Paul Debrux, who studied the ancient Panticapaeum in the first half of the 19th century. His findings formed the basis of the Museum of Antiquities, which was built on the slope of Mount Mithridates in the form of an exact replica of the Athenian temple of Hephaestus. During the Crimean War of 1853-55, the British looted the museum. Now some artifacts of that collection can be seen in the British Museum in London. The British could not take away most of the tombstones because of their weight, so they were later transferred to the Kerch Lapidary.
The Lapidarium collection has more than 3,000 items, but no more than 100 exhibits are on display in the halls. For a long time they were available only to specialists, but in 2011 a separate building was built for the Kerch Lapidarium. Now it has become a museum open to the public. Here you can see tombstones with anthropological signs, as well as inscriptions in various languages: Greek, Turkic, Latin and others.
Ancient Panticapaeum was a Greek polis in the period from the 7th to the 3rd century BC. From the 3rd century it became the capital of the Bosporan Kingdom, which united the lands on the Kerch and Taman peninsulas. Not only Greeks, but also Scythians and Sarmatians lived on these lands. In the 1st century BC, the Bosporan Kingdom became part of the Kingdom of Pontus, which was founded on the territory of modern Turkey by the heir of Seleucus, the commander of Alexander the Great. This kingdom was influenced by Hellenic and Persian culture.
Thus, we see that the ancient Panticapaeum was influenced by the culture, religions and traditions of different peoples. All this makes a visit to the Kerch Lapidarium very interesting.
