For the first time in Tauric Chersonese – Stone grave

By Stefania Novak On Май 23, 2023

CrimeaPRESS reports:

The new exhibition “The Spiritual World of Ancestors in the Petroglyphs of Kamennaya Mohyla”, which opened on May 20 on the “Night of Museums”, for the first time acquaints visitors with the heritage of the Kamennaya Mohyla Museum-Reserve, a branch of Tauric Chersonesus.

Kamennaya Mogila is an archaeological museum-reserve, whose funds contain objects from excavations of objects located in the area of this unique natural formation. The exhibition in Tauric Chersonese presents more than 120 authentic archaeological artifacts from this territory. Visitors can see petroglyphs depicting hunting scenes for goats and mammoths and reproductions of petroglyphs painted on small stones on the vaults of caves, household items of the peoples inhabiting the area, ceramics and tools of the Stone Age. This exposition was created in close cooperation between the museum reserves of Tauric Chersonese and Kamennaya Mohyla. The main purpose of the exhibition is to introduce visitors to the centuries-old history of this unique place in the format of a small exposition.— noted in the press service of the museum-reserve «Tauric Chersonesos».

You can get acquainted with the new exposition in the small hall of the Byzantine exposition of the museum-reserve until July 16, 2023.

FOR REFERENCE:

The origin of this amazing place near Melitopol is associated with the existence of the Sarmatian Sea about 14–10 million years ago, at the bottom of which a shallow shoal formed over time, turning into stone sandstone. During the melting of the Quaternary glacier, water washed the island out of it. Under the influence of natural elements, the primary shield split, its fragments slid along the sand, a kind of hill arose with grottoes and caves, which turned out to be convenient for the implementation of the cult goals of ancient people.

For many thousands of years, the sandstone hill served as a sanctuary for hunters and cattle breeders, farmers and nomads — residents of the Azov and Black Sea steppes. Its grottoes and caves were used as altars for rituals, and the walls were covered with numerous drawings — petroglyphs (translated from ancient Greek — «stone carving»). The stone grave is the only place in Eastern Europe where drawings are concentrated, the chronological range of which covers a truly huge historical period: the first images were made about twenty thousand years ago, and the last ones in the 11th century AD.

source: Development Department of the State Museum-Reserve Tauric Chersonesus

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