New pintadera from Phanagoria

This paper publishes a ceramic stamp for impressing a cult image on ritual bread. This stamp has been found in the Upper City excavation trench in Phanagoria in a pit near a winery from the second half of the 3rd-4h centuries BC. The pintadera features a schematic image of a male figure wearing a short chiton with the arms stretching wide. In one hand the man holds a bunch of grapes, a vine also with a bunch of grapes goes downward from his other hand. The head of the man is flanked by the letters X and A. Such stamps found earlier in Pantikapaion, Kimmerikon, Iluraton and Phanagoria (two stamps) date to the 2nd-4thcenturies AD. Images they display are varied, e. g. animals, birds, fantastic creatures, a tree, a vine or bunches of grapes, ivy leaves and kantharos. One stamp originating in Iluraton features a female figure with the arms stretching wide, her arms terminate in branchy offshoots, there are images of winged animals (griffins?) beneath them, and the letter X above the right arm. According to the substantiated opinion of V. F. Gaidukevich, the female is a tutelary goddess of life-giving forces of nature. I. T. Kruglikova views the entire set of these items as evidence of a ‘syncretic cult’ combining worship for traditional and new deities (Cybele, Attis, Astarte, Dionysus, Sabazios, Mitra and others) that spread across the Kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus in its late period. According to the author of this publication, the argument that such a variety of symbols on the stamps can be reduced to one religious cult does not apply in this case. Considering the context of the find, the image on the published stamp suggests that ritual actions involving the use of the bread marked by the stamp were linked to the cult of the deity protecting viniculture that was actively developing in this region during the first centuries of our era and later.