The ancient city in which the hero-demigod was supposedly born is located opposite the Crimean bridge.
While historians are arguing about whether it is possible to localize the homeland of Achilles in a place called Mirmekiy, because full-scale excavations of an ancient settlement are just beginning here, there is already a number of indirect evidence that the ancient Greek hero really came from Kerch.
Greek colonization and what came before
According to the data known to date, Mirmeki is an ancient city founded by the Ionian Greeks in the middle of the 6th century BC on the shore of the Kerch Strait and was part of the Bosporus kingdom. It was located to the east of Panticapaeum (modern Cape Karantinniy within the city of Kerch). Now it is a federal cultural heritage site.
However, the presumable date of its foundation is given by a defensive wall, one of the two earliest among the Greek colonies in the north of the Black Sea (the second such was found in Porfmia, near the village of Zhukovka). The history of events known to scientists begins from the 5th century BC. e., when the city is destroyed, presumably by the Scythians. And after that a large temple and public buildings are built here. Based on the fact that there is simply no data about the earlier life of the city, it can be assumed that it could well have been founded before the 6th century BC. e. Of course, it is difficult to "date" the history of the ancient Greek colony, given that the great Greek colonization of Taurida took place officially from the 8th to 6th centuries BC. e., that is, it is believed that the Greeks came here at this particular time. How then to be with Achilles, who lived in the XIII-XII centuries BC and was born at the same time,as you know, on the coast of Meotida, and Meotida is the former name of the Sea of Azov. It turns out that there was life here, and people (probably Scythians) had to live somewhere. As a rule, the Greeks founded their cities on the already existing earlier settlements. Myrmeki could well have been like that. Perhaps, confirmation of this will still be found in the process of the upcoming archaeological excavations.
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Sarcophagus in honor of Achilles
According to one version, it was in Mirmekia that Achilles was born. True, most historians do not take it seriously.
Eleonora Petrova, Doctor of Historical Sciences, co-author of the book "In the Land of Heroes and Gods":
“It is known that Achilles brought a tribe of Myrmedonians near Troy. And it was believed that this tribe came from ants, and "Mirmeky" in translation means "ant". Here, in fact, this is the only connection. But in Mirmekia itself, we will probably not be able to find for certain confirmation that the cult of Achilles existed there. This is one of the versions."
However, it was in Mirmekia, in a burial mound on a cliff, that a huge marble sarcophagus was found with relief images of scenes from the life of Achilles, which has no analogues in the world. Archaeologists suggest that one of the Bosporan kings was buried there.
In 1834, the sailors of the Kerch port, installing a flagpole on the rock of the Cape of Quarantine, found a cavity in the rock, and descending into it, they saw a huge sarcophagus, which was broken. The sailors pulled out the fragments of the walls, the lower part and the lid - all this was summoned to the site by the archaeologist Ashik and taken to the Imperial Hermitage. It is assumed that in the Middle Ages, the sarcophagus was broken for the construction of a medieval tower, just like the stone facing of the mound, which was previously available and recorded by the director of the Kerch Museum, Dubrux, in the 1920s was torn down by cables and transported to the Kerch port for equipping the pier. Who was buried in the crypt of the mound is not known for certain. But the sarcophagus was made presumably in the 2nd century AD in one of the workshops of Athens.
Alexander Butyagin, Head of the Mirmeki Expedition of the State Hermitage:
"The fact that the sarcophagus with Achilles was found here is not surprising, because Achilles was clearly revered, and this probably played a role in the choice of the sarcophagus."
In addition, Homer's Iliad gives specific indications of the origin of Achilles. In it, the hero is depicted as a representative of a purely Scythian world, who was born on the very edge of the Hellenic Ecumene. But in a later interpretation, the outskirts of the ancient Oycumene - exactly that part of it, which is washed by the waters of the present Black and Azov Seas, began to be called Taurica. His life is also narrated by the retelling of the epic poem "Ethiopis", which the ancient Greek historian Pliny cites in his works, localizing the city in which Achilles was born, as Mirmeky near Meotida - the present Sea of Azov …
Yaroslav PYTLIVY. Photo by D. Smirnov, KT archive. The material was published in the newspaper "Crimean Telegraph" No. 420 dated March 10, 2017