Pantikapaion

Pantikapaion was an ancient Greek city on the eastern shore of Crimea, which the Greeks called Taurica [1]. The city lay on the western side of the Cimmerian Bosporus, and was founded by Milesians in the late 7th or early 6th century BC, on a hill later named Mount Mithridat [1]. Its ruins now lie in the modern city of Kerch [1]. The city minted silver coins from the 5th century BC and gold and bronze coins from the 4th century BC [1]. At its greatest extent it occupied 100 hectares [1]. In the 5th–4th centuries BC, the city became the residence first of the Archaeanactids and then of the Spartocids, dynasties of Thracian kings of Bosporus, and was hence itself sometimes called Bosporus [1]. Its economic decline in the 4th–3rd centuries BC was the result of the Sarmatian conquest of the steppes and the growing competition of Egyptian grain [1]. Mithridates took his life in Pantikapaion, when, after his defeat in a war against Rome, his son and heir Pharnaces and citizens of Pantikapaion turned against him [1].