Crime against history

When the site for the construction of a high-rise hotel was being prepared at Karantynna Bay in the Crimean city of Sevastopil, a bulldozer’s blade dislodged a slab of an ancient burial vault. A team of archaeologists from the Tauric Chersonesos National Preserve discovered another vault 10 meters away. The archaeologists believe that both vaults date to the pre-Christian period of ancient Chersonesos. However, one of the vaults is unique in that it has two chambers and wall paintings.

PRIVATE CONSTRUCTION

According to Andrii Filippenko, a research fellow of the Chersonesos Preserve, this is the 14th vault with wall decorations out of several thousand that have been discovered in the ancient city. “This is a special vault. It has two chambers and the furthest one was separated by stonework, then plastered and decorated with frescoes. Judging from the subjects, these are hunting scenes, bushes, and trees. There are traces of inscriptions listing the names of those who were buried here.” In other words, vaults similar to the world-famous Demeter Vault that was discovered in Kerch are still being discovered in ancient Chersonesos.

Archaeologists believe that the vault in Chersonesos belonged to a wealthy family, most likely of Roman descent. It dates to approximately 2-3 A.D. “It looks like a Roman family vault. People would enter the first chamber and perform the funeral rites. The design of the entrance is very interesting. There is a special groove in the bottom of the pit, with which the vertical entrance slab was lifted with a lever. Obviously the place was visited often,” Filippenko explained. Apart from human remains, the archaeologists have found Roman coins, ceramic fragments, and a piece of jewelry. All the finds will be studied and placed in museums.

While continuing to investigate the construction site, scholars are decrying the construction project, calling it a crime against history. The contractor must finance conservation on the spot or pay for the transfer of the vaults to a museum. However, the archaeologists have said they will not allow any construction on these unique sites. “The necropolis of Chersonesos cannot be allowed to be built up any further. It’s enough that there are private resorts built on top of people’s graves on Divocha Hill, and that earlier no excavations were even permitted there. Ten years ago an official request was submitted to remove the territory of the necropolis from the list of public use lands,” Filippenko told journalists. Despite protests from the scholarly community, Sevastopol’s holding company Budivelnyk is building a 14-story hotel complex on the site of the Chersonesos necropolis on Karantynna Bay.

Journalists have learned that this part of the former base of the 41st Brigade of Missile-Carrying Boats was privatized in the late 1990s. Later it changed hands several times until Budivelnyk Ltd. started building the hotel. Leonid Marchenko, the director of the Tauric Chersonesos Preserve, says that in those days the Sevastopol municipal administration was allocating land practically without any control, and the khora, the territory surrounding the ancient Roman settlement, was frequently built up.

The 14-story hotel on Karantynna Bay means that the Chersonesos Preserve has no chance of being included in the UNESCO list of heritage monuments, as the tall structure will disturb the landscape environment of this ancient historical site. “The city must clearly define the landscape limits of high-rise construction projects. If they build such structures in the vicinity of Chersonesos, we won’t be included in the UNESCO list,” Marchenko said. This year marks the 2,600th anniversary of Chersonesos. It is one of Ukraine’s top nine historical sites that one day may be listed as a world heritage site. If it meets UNESCO standards by some or criteria or other, this issue may be considered again only in 10-15 years.

Members of Sevastopil’s City Council have their views on the matter. Dmytro Bielyk, chairman of the urban development commission, told journalists that the City Council has no grounds for reviewing land allocations at Karantynna Bay, and that the administration of the Tauric Chersonesos Preserve is slowing down the paperwork for registering valuable archaeological sites. According to Bielyk, the sites of various construction projects on the territory of the Chersonesos necropolis were properly registered with the authorities a long time ago, and the municipal administration is governed by community interests, not archaeology, when it comes to allocating new land.

Meanwhile, the Sevastopil authorities have much bigger plans for the festivities commemorating Sevastopol’s 225th anniversary rather than Chersonesos’s 2,600th. The City Council and municipal administration have determined a “new visage of the city as seen from the sea.” At a planning meeting attended by council members and experts from the city state administration detailed planning for the territory adjoining Karantynna Bay was approved. The local newspaper Slava Sevastopolia reported that this will be a new modern city facade done in hi-tech style. There will be an embankment with free access from Cape Khrustalny to Aleksandrovsky and Martynov bays, across the Southern Pier and around Karantynna Bay, offering a view of Chersonesos. This was envisaged two years ago when a master plan for developing Sevastopil until 2025 was unveiled.

What makes this project unique is that it will change Sevastopol’s view from the sea and create a practically new landscape. This will no longer be a Soviet-style city but a polis with a landscape typical of world architecture.

FUNDING

Early this year Sevastopil officials took part in the international real estate forum MIPIM ‘08 that was held in Cannes. They brought copies of a locally-produced brochure with investment proposals based on the city’s master plan drafted by a private company called KrymNDOproekt. Valerii Mukhin, the company’s chief architect, noted that proposals are being made on the level of concepts, which does not require a great deal of funding.

The previous Ukrainian government shelved the “Long-term Program and Concept of the Development of the Tauric Chersonesos National Preserve in 2006-15” for nearly a year. It was never approved, which means the preserve cannot receive central budget funding, without which these unique monuments may be lost forever.

The program has to be revised. The original program cost 215 million hryvnias, but now this figure has increased to 314 million. “For 12 years our preserve did not receive any funds, and only half of the five-year development program adopted in 2001 has been financed,” Marchenko told journalists. Meanwhile, there are agricultural khoras dating to the 6th-14th centuries, which do not exist anywhere else in the world, and they must be preserved. According to the administration of the national preserve, the museum stocks some 200,000 archaeological finds, but for lack of properly equipped premises, only 10 percent is on display for Sevastopil residents and visitors.

HERITAGE

The uniqueness of the Chersonesos Preserve leaves no doubt as to its historical value. In November 2006 a team of archaeologists discovered the two oldest monuments of early Christianity in the CIS: vaults dating to 3-4 A.D. These burial sites are located the furthest from the ancient centers of Christianity, such as Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome, Alexandria, and Constantinople. Ancient Christian vaults dating to the early 5th century were also discovered in the Crimea in 1903-12. Early Christian burials sites dating to 3-4 A.D. have been unearthed in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, and Jordan. There are 15 such monuments in the world.

“The vaults that we discovered are proof that Christianity emerged on the territory of today’s Ukraine considerably earlier than the fourth century. The first of the vaults, found several months earlier, is the final resting place of a respected member of the early Christian community of Chersonesos. The ceiling and walls of the burial niche are decorated with frescoes. There are paintings of flowers with four petals known as konstantinovka in Bulgaria. These were used only during funeral ceremonies during the lifetime of Constantine the Great, who issued the Edict of Milan allowing Christian adherents to freely profess their religion.

There is an epitaph in the center of the niche. It reads: “Aristonius, you shall never be forgotten and your soul shall be with the righteous of this world.” There is a large sign on the ceiling, a circle with the letters X and P crisscrossed within it. This is the Cross of Constantine. The coins we found inside and near the entrance, as well as fragments of clay kitchenware and clay oil lamps, which were usually buried with the dead, allowed us to date this vault to the fourth century,” Filippenko explained.

The other burial vault, which the archaeologists have positively identified as Christian, is older. There are ancient graffiti on the ceiling and in every corner. Each portrays a ship. One of the walls bears this epitaph: “Rejoice!”