The Stone of Tmutarakan () is a marble slab engraved with the words "In the year 6576 A.M., 1068 A.D">Etos_Kosmou.html" ;"title="Etos Kosmou">A.M., 1068 A.Dthe sixth of the Indiction, Prince Gleb measured across the sea on the ice from

Tmutarakan Tmutarakan (, ; ) was a medieval principality of Kievan Rus' and trading town that controlled the Cimmerian Bosporus, the passage from the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov, between the late 10th and 11th centuries. Its site was the ancient Greek col ...

to Kerch 14,000 sazhen" («В лето 6576 индикта 6 Глеб князь мерил море по леду от Тмутороканя до Корчева 14000 сажен»). A

sazhen Historical Russian units of measurement were standardized and used in the Russian Empire and after the Russian Revolution, but were abandoned after 21 July 1925, when the Soviet Union adopted the metric system. The Tatar system is very similar t ...

, an old

Rus Rus or RUS may refer to: People * East Slavic historical peoples (). See Names of Rus', Russia and Ruthenia ** Rus' people, the people of Rus' ** Rus, a legendary eponymous ancestor, see Lech, Czech and Rus * Rus (surname), a surname found in Ro ...

unit of length, was equal to seven feet (or corresponded roughly to a

fathom A fathom is a unit of length in the imperial and the U.S. customary systems equal to , used especially for measuring the depth of water. The fathom is neither an international standard (SI) unit, nor an internationally accepted non-SI unit. H ...

); thus the Kerch Straits, according to the stone, were 88,000 feet or 18.5 miles across (that is, from Kerch to

— the straits themselves are only 4.5 miles wide at their narrowest point, but the distance from the site of Tmutarakan to modern-day Kerch is about 15 miles.) The tenth-century

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

Emperor

Constantine Porphyrogenitus Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (; 17 May 905 – 9 November 959) was the fourth Byzantine emperor of the Macedonian dynasty, reigning from 6 June 913 to 9 November 959. He was the son of Emperor Leo VI and his fourth wife, Zoe Karbonopsina, an ...

wrote that the straits were the equivalent of 18 miles across, and this might explain why that measurement appears on the stone, although it is unclear if an eleventh-century prince in Rus would have had access to that information; this uncertainty calls the stone's authenticity into question. The Prince Gleb referred to in the inscription was

Gleb Svyatoslavich Gleb Svyatoslavich ( 1052 – 30 May 1078) was Prince of Tmutarakan and Novgorod of Kievan Rus'. He ruled Tmutarakan under the overall authority of his father Sviatoslav Iaroslavich, Prince of Chernigov. He was twice expelled from his princ ...

, then prince of

. Gleb was later Prince of

Novgorod the Great Veliky Novgorod ( ; , ; ), also known simply as Novgorod (), is the largest city and administrative centre of Novgorod Oblast, Russia. It is one of the oldest cities in Russia, being first mentioned in the 9th century. The city lies along the V ...

, where he saved Bishop Fedor's life by chopping a sorcerer in half who led a pagan uprising against the bishop. Gleb was eventually killed fighting pagan Finnic tribes in the northern Novgorodian Lands ("the Zavoloch'e" or "Za Volokom", "the Land beyond the Portages") on May 30, 1079. The stone was discovered on the Taman Peninsula just east of

Crimea Crimea ( ) is a peninsula in Eastern Europe, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, almost entirely surrounded by the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. The Isthmus of Perekop connects the peninsula to Kherson Oblast in mainland Ukrain ...

in 1792 and the inscription was first published in 1794 by Aleksei Musin-Pushkin. The study of the inscription is said to be the first

epigraphic Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...

study in Russian history. In spite of its importance in the history of Russian epigraphy, a number of scholars have called the stone's provenance into question and consider the stone an eighteenth-century forgery, perhaps done by Romanticists enamored of ancient culture or even as an effort to find precedent for Russian involvement in the

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region spanning Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, comprising parts of Southern Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The Caucasus Mountains, i ...

.See Boeck, "Stone of Contention," 33, 38-9; Idem, Minnesota and. Kievan Rus," ''Russian History'' 32, 3-4: V. A. Zakharov, "Zametki o Tmutarakanskom Kamene," in ''SRIO'', 2002, 4 (152), pp. 154-178. The stone is currently housed in the

State Hermitage Museum The State Hermitage Museum ( rus, Государственный Эрмитаж, r=Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž, p=ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ, links=no) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and holds the large ...

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

References

{{coord, 59.9409, N, 30.3126, E, source:wikidata, display=title 11th-century inscriptions 1792 archaeological discoveries Archaeological discoveries in Russia Kievan Rus' Archaeological collections of the Hermitage Museum Stones

Tmutarakan

See also

References