CrimeaPRESS reports:
March 1 — Day of cats.
On the first day of spring, our country celebrates the holiday of unusually graceful domestic animals that can create comfort and give warmth by their mere presence. Since ancient times, cats have accompanied humans, being not only his assistants in the fight against rodents, but also companions and pets.
Nowadays, they often become not only pets, but also real professionals. Four-legged employees can be found in various government agencies, at work in granaries, libraries, archives and cultural institutions, including the Hermitage and the Tauric Chersonese Museum-Reserve. The secrets of the “cat kingdom” of Chersonesos were revealed in .
Pussies have been guarding the antiquities of Chersonese for a long time: they liked the large territory, pleasant climate and caring employees. Thanks to the high professional qualities of the mustachioed-striped museum-reserve, its funds, exhibition halls, archive and library are reliably protected from the appearance of rodents that can cause serious damage to monuments and artifacts.
However, Chersonese Tauride is not only a cultural institution, but also a city that has existed for about two millennia, which absorbed the culture of Ancient Greece, Rome and Byzantium. It is known that in ancient times, cats were exotic creatures for the Hellenes. Their image was overgrown with legends, they symbolized love and fertility, these animals were respected and revered. The ancient Greeks and Romans often associated the cat with the Moon, identified with Artemis (Diana), the goddess of the hunt. The intersection of two images is reflected in the works of ancient authors: in the «Metamorphoses» of Ovid and Antoninus Liberal, «The Delian sister» (Artemis), escaping from the monstrous giant Typheus (Typhon), changes her appearance and appears in the form of a cat— reminded the press service of the museum.
You can learn about the love of the Chersonesites for fluffy pets from the results of archaeological research. So, in the 70s. 20th century during the excavation of one of the rooms, destroyed and burned down in the 14th century, among the remains of pithoi, millstones, fragments of dishes, a skeleton of a cat and a mouse was found. The first one had already caught prey when the fire that started forced her to hide in a far corner, from where she could no longer get out, dying along with her victim.
In 1892, the «Warehouse of Local Antiquities» was created on the territory of the settlement — the first museum in Chersonese. And since the opening, cats have lived in it. The scientific archive of the Museum-Reserve contains a photograph of the late 19th century, which depicts Staff Captain V. N. Roth with a cat in his arms. These beautiful animals have long been favorites of employees, their colleagues and guards of antiquities at the same time.
The life of the four-legged inhabitants of the museum-reserve is covered under the heading #Fluffy__Khersonesos and in the VKontakte group . Mustachioed-striped regularly fall into the lenses of the cameras of visitors to the cultural institution.
Come take a walk along the streets of the ancient city to get acquainted with the tailed guardians of Chersonesos, and stay with us in the online space of the museum-reserve to stay up to date with cat news.
On a holiday dedicated to these wonderful animals, we want to remind you of a careful and responsible attitude towards those who have been tamed, because pets for people are just one of the pages of life, while we are their whole life for them.— emphasized in the press service of the State Historical and Archaeological Museum-Reserve Tauric Chersonese.
Photo by the press service of the Tauric Chersonesus Museum-Reserve, the site kotello.ru and from the VKontakte group Cats of Chersonesos, authors: Katya Parfenova, Natalya Rubanenko, Vladimir Demidenko.
Comments are closed.