Abstract
The paper deals with the insuffi ciently studied series of funeral complexes found in Phanagoria – the burials in stone boxes. Such burials in Phanagoria are rare, which is largely due to the lack of building stone and its probable high cost in antiquity. Stone boxes, usually located near the surface, are often destroyed because of natural and anthropogenic factors. Almost all of them were robbed in antiquity. The author for the fi rst time introduces the materials of three burials, discovered in 1975 in different sites of Phanagoria necropolis. The burials are rather monolithic in a morphological and constructive way. All boxes were built of limestone slabs and oriented in the west-southwest – east-north-east direction. Their walls and the ceiling were made of stone, the fl oor remained earthy. There is a well-marked similarity between them in the funeral rite. Stone tombs in the form of a closed rectangular in terms of construction from the hewn stone blocks, covered with stone slabs, are characteristic for the funeral rites of the Hellenistic period. There are cases of their secondary use in the Roman times. All published burials were robbed in ancient times. Only a small part of the funeral inventory survived. Despite this, burials are of great importance for the reconstruction of the burial rite in the Asian Bosporus in the 2nd century BC. They replenish a small series of stone tombs belonging not to ordinary inhabitants of the Hellenistic Phanagoria.
Keywords
Phanagoria, necropolis, Hellenism, funeral custom, stone boxes
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