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| | The Empress's Cabinet contains extremely rare jewellery from the Kul-Oba burial mound near Kerch. This famous tomb, belonging perhaps to one of the Bosporan rulers from the 4th century B.C., was discovered in 1831 by soldiers who were collecting stone on Kul-Oba ("the hill of ashes") to build barracks. The excavations were directed by the notable archaeologist and scholar of the Bosporan Kingdom Paul Debrux. In a stone tomb he found three burials - a noble Scythian, his wife or concubine and a charioteer-armour-bearer, as well as the bones of a horse and a variety of grave goods (weapons, gold and silver utensils and jewellery). The woman had temple pendants decorated with miniature reproductions of the head of the statue of Athene created by Phidias for the Parthenon in Athens and also a spherical goblet made of electrum that was embellished with scenes from a Scythian epic. |
