Once Again on the So-Called "Colchis Kingdom", by Oleg Kh. Bgazhba

The question of the so-called “Colchis Kingdom” remains one of the most debated issues in the historiography of the ancient Caucasus. In this article, O. Kh. Bgazhba revisits the origins of the concept, examines the written and archaeological evidence traditionally cited in its support, and challenges the assumption that a unified state existed in Western Transcaucasia in the sixth–fifth centuries BC. Engaging critically with both Georgian and Abkhaz interpretations, the author argues that the notion of a Colchis Kingdom reflects historiographical construction rather than historical reality.

Oleg Kh. Bgazhba (1941–2024) was an archaeologist, historian and Caucasian studies scholar. He held a doctorate in historical sciences and was a professor and full member of the Abkhazian Academy of Sciences. Bgazhba conducted extensive archaeological excavations throughout Abkhazia and pioneered research into ancient ironworking in the Western Caucasus. He was the author of more than 150 scholarly works, including 15 monographs, and co-authored the textbook History of Abkhazia (2007). In 2011, he was awarded the honorary title "Honoured Scientist of the Republic of Abkhazia" for his significant contributions to Abkhazian scholarship.

Once Again on the So-Called "Colchis Kingdom"

The problem in question would appear to have been removed from the agenda as far back as 1985, in one of the chapters of the doctoral dissertation of Yuri Nikolaevich Voronov (more than thirty years ago), brilliantly defended at the leading Institute of Archaeology of the then Academy of Sciences of the USSR, overcoming sharp polemics from the majority of opponents who represented the Soviet Georgian historical school and were ardent apologists of the so-called "Colchis Kingdom". (An especially revealing transcript of his nearly seven-hour defence was published thanks to A. Skakov and V. Chkheidze.)

Yet over the past quarter-century, the mythological "Colchis Kingdom" has risen once again like a phoenix, albeit in a different national guise (sometimes under a slightly altered designation, for example: the Aea–Colchian Kingdom, said to have existed even before the Colchis Kingdom). That is, it has been a priori transformed from an ancient Georgian into an ancient Abkhaz state.

This revival has come largely through the efforts of Abkhaz scholars who, whilst writing from worthy motives, have produced work that serves primarily for internal consumption. In effect, we are witnessing a clash of different, though in both cases methodologically incorrect, interpretations (the result of a primordialist approach) of one and the same ancient Greek myth about the Argonauts, which exists in thirty-two versions. The most popular of these is the Caucasian version, which, by virtue of its very nature, cannot serve as a genuine and sole written source.

In this paper I shall refrain from naming certain local authors of the "school of dilettantes" or their publications of varying scale. That is not the point. The issue at stake is truth, which, as is known, is dearer even than "our good friend Plato".

Without entering into the question of the national character of the Colchis Kingdom, I shall endeavour once again to remind the reader that it did not exist at all—just as there was no neighbouring state of Nakhmatia allegedly opposing the Persian Empire in the sixth century BC.

I therefore consider it necessary briefly to return to several key aspects of the issue, naturally connected with the historiography of the problem.

The problem of the Colchis Kingdom arose relatively recently, at the end of the 1930s and in the 1940s. S. N. Janashia (incidentally, our fellow countryman from the village of Adzyubzha) substantiated this hypothesis at Beria's behest by interpreting certain testimonies of ancient authors, the existence of so-called Colchian coins (kolkhidki), and by formulating the general idea of the high level of development of the Colchians in the sixth–fifth centuries BC (i.e. the ancient Kartvelian tribes). This hypothesis was supported and developed by nearly all Georgian and Abkhaz researchers of that generation, and later by younger scholars as well.

However, Janashia's view was not universally accepted. For example, G. A. Melikishvili characterised the Colchis Kingdom as an underdeveloped early class society with strong survivals of the primitive communal order. Later he wrote that, even if such a kingdom had existed, it would have been decentralised, and that present-day Abkhazia and Svaneti were not part of it.

Z. V. Anchabadze, together with his Abkhaz colleagues (with the exception of Yuri N. Voronov) and the present author, argued the opposite (see the final volume of the Georgian Soviet Encyclopaedia in Russian). A. P. Novoseltsev approached the notion of the kingdom with scepticism; E. A. Molev, for his part, noted that the supposed power of the Colchian state is judged primarily from legends and myths.

A number of neutral scholars, including foreign researchers, denied the existence of a state in Colchis in the sixth–fifth centuries BC altogether: I. N. Sosnovsky, David Braund, G. Soselia, M. Dandamayev, V. Yailenko and others. A. I. Boltunova observed that in the sixth–fifth centuries BC the Colchians were still living within a primitive communal system, and that the term "Colchis" in written sources was used not as a political concept—the "state of the Colchians"—but as a geographical one, denoting the territory inhabited by them, where royal authority simply could not have existed.

Among the principal arguments advanced in favour of the existence of the Colchis Kingdom are usually cited:

1. written sources (the myth of the Argonauts; the works of Herodotus, Xenophon and Strabo);
2. the allegedly high level of socio-economic development in Colchis in the sixth–fifth centuries BC (standardisation of metal and ceramic products, iron metallurgy, property differentiation, developed agriculture, crafts and trade, urbanisation, etc.);
3. monetary circulation based on the kolkhidki.

The myth of the Argonauts, by virtue of its specific character, as A. F. Losev rightly observed, cannot serve as a sole historical source—particularly given that it is a myth of another people, the Greeks, rather than of the local Colchians.

Herodotus provides no indication of the existence of a state amongst the Colchians, nor of the time of its emergence. He reports that these tribes occupied only the territory south of the River Phasis (modern Rioni), whilst the northern bank of the river up to the Caucasus Mountains was inhabited by the "neighbours" of the Colchians; that the Colchians were obliged to send tribute to the Persians every five years—one hundred boys and one hundred girls; that the aforementioned neighbours brought their tribute alongside the Colchians, that is, they were regarded as independent by Iranian officials; and that the Colchians were required to participate in Persian campaigns. Boltunova convincingly demonstrated that politically the Colchians were subordinate to the head of a Persian satrapy.

Particular attention deserves the testimony of Xenophon, an eyewitness, who personally recorded a tribal union of the Colchians in the vicinity of Trapezus, distinguishing them from the Phasians—the inhabitants of Central Colchis ("the land of the Phasians"). Meanwhile, the discussions amongst his soldiers, who sought to plunder the Phasians on the grounds that a descendant of Aeëtes "reigned" there, should most likely be explained not as indirect evidence of royal authority in Colchis, but rather by the popularity of the Argonautic myth amongst the Greek soldiers.

Strabo's testimony—"The kings who followed (after Aeëtes) ruled a land divided into sceptuchies (administrative districts) and possessed no great power"—should not be interpreted in isolation from his analogous remark concerning the Heniochi, who were governed by so-called sceptuchoi (sceptre-bearers), themselves subordinate to tyrants and kings—"amongst the Heniochi there were four". The institution of the sceptre-bearer, apparently widespread in Colchis, may have been adopted by the local tribal elite in the second half of the sixth–fifth centuries BC; as E. Grantovsky and Yu. Voronov suggest, the term represents a translation of the Iranian vaƶraka (from vaƶra—club, mace, sceptre), used as a title of nobility in the Iranian official language.

It is frequently overlooked that Strabo, like other ancient authors, employed the terms "Colchians" and "Colchis" in relation to Northern and Central Colchis primarily in a collective, geographical sense, rather than in an ethno-political one. These sources provide no reliable mention of a capital of the Colchis Kingdom prior to the late Hellenistic period, nor any reliable names of Colchian kings. These and other facts allow us to conclude that in the sixth–fifth centuries BC there was no unified state organisation in Colchis headed by a king—this is a fiction.

O. D. Lordkipanidze placed emphasis on a homogeneous bronze culture which allegedly, by the end of the second and beginning of the first millennium BC, brought Colchis closer to political unity. However, the standardisation of metal and ceramic products was characteristic of all archaeological cultures of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age across the oikoumene. He also linked the formation of the Colchis Kingdom with the widespread adoption of iron in the eighth–seventh centuries BC. Yet this represents merely a transitional period from bronze to iron. A similar picture is observed in other regions of Transcaucasia, the North Caucasus (including Central areas, for which the Abkhaz historian G. Gumba artificially constructed a state of the Vainakhs—Nakhmatia—allegedly even competing with the Persian Empire), the Black Sea region, and the Volga area. In these regions, however, state formations appeared later.

The exclamation of T. Mikeladze at an international conference of classical scholars in Vani—"There you have your kingdom!"—as he displayed more than ten iron hoes and ploughshare-like implements from sixth–fifth century BC burials, struck part of the scholarly audience (including foreign participants) as somewhat comical, especially given that he associated this evidence with surplus production and developed commodity exchange.

The burials at Vani, Itkhvisi, Eshera and elsewhere cannot be taken as evidence of clear property stratification. As several scholars (e.g. G. Lordkipanidze and others) have noted, they did not transcend the limits of patriarchal slavery. Comparable phenomena are observable amongst many tribes of Eastern and Southern Transcaucasia in the Middle and particularly the Late Bronze Age (Bedeni, Lchashen, Archadzor, etc.). In the present case, one may speak only of an incipient stratification of Colchian society: there is as yet no sharp separation between aristocratic and ordinary burials, which in Vani are of a homestead character, whilst in Itkhvisi rich and poor graves may coexist within what appears to have been a clan cemetery. Colchian dwellings were predominantly simple wooden structures of a farmstead type (with the exception of the estate at Simagre, which comprised several dwellings). Urban-type settlements in Inner Colchis may be identified only from the fourth–third centuries BC (for example, Vani).

As regards the kolkhidki, a significant number of scholars attribute their minting to a polis, primarily Phasis (E. L. Pakhomov, D. Lang, E. Pokhitonov, A. I. Boltunova, G. F. Dundua, Yu. N. Voronov and others). Their arguments are as follows: the earliest types of kolkhidki display stylistic and technical features of Ionian (Milesian) coinage—images of a reclining lion and a lion's head, associated with the cult of Apollo, popular both in Miletus and in Phasis; the presence of seven different Greek letters and signs on Colchian triobols, most likely the initial letters of magistrates' names, characteristic of polis minting; the variety of denominations (tetradrachm, didrachm, drachma, half-drachma, etc.), typical of a polis rather than a royal court; and the absence of other Greek coinage in Inner Colchis before the fourth century BC, indicating the commercial hegemony of the city minting the kolkhidki. Coinage long remained a purely Greek phenomenon and was adopted only slowly by non-Greek peoples; it arose from the needs of the polis.

Herodotus' account of the population of Colchis in the sixth–fifth centuries BC, politically dependent upon Achaemenid Iran, is also corroborated by archaeological evidence. He notes that the Colchians' armament consisted of wooden helmets, leather shields, short spears and machaira daggers. Yet until the fourth century BC, not a single machaira has been found in Colchian complexes. Instead, long (Sindian–Maeotian) and short akinakai were widely used (G. F. Gobedzhishvili, M. V. Baramidze, G. K. Shamba, Yu. N. Voronov and others). It is possible that some of this weaponry was of Persian origin.

For example, the bronze scabbard of such a dagger from Myrkhyaul closely resembles daggers depicted in the reliefs of Persepolis. From the mid-sixth–fifth centuries BC, bronze items with bits (Itkhvisi, Vani, Krasny Mayak, etc.) are attested in Colchis, comparable to Persian finds from the Athenian Acropolis (late sixth century BC). Bits with plate-shaped three-holed cheekpieces from the Eshera burial, associated with a Panathenaic amphora, were accompanied by various conical and spherical bells. Similar bits are known from sixth-century BC complexes in Armenia, within the sphere of Iranian influence. Such bells adorned horse harness in Assyria, Iran and Urartu already in the eighth–seventh centuries BC, reaching Transcaucasia most likely only in the sixth century BC and becoming widespread in the second half of the sixth–fifth centuries BC.

+ Greeks and "Georgians" in ancient Colchis, by Philip L. Kohl and Gocha R. Tsetskhladze

+ Nationalism, politics, and the practice of archaeology in the Caucasus, by Philip Kohl and Gocha Tsetskhladze

+ The Georgian-Abkhazian Conflict | The value of the past, by Victor A. Shnirelman

The broad penetration of gold artefacts into the life of the indigenous population of Colchis can at present be dated only to the middle of the second half of the sixth century BC. Only then did such items begin to enter the sphere of the Colchian tribal aristocracy. Owing to the scarcity of precious metal and artefacts made from it, the Colchians and their northern neighbours up to the Caucasus Range were obliged, as noted above, to pay tribute in "live goods".

It must also be borne in mind that most ornaments from Vani of the sixth–fourth centuries BC display no continuity with the monuments of the Colchian–Koban cultural circle.

An analysis of Colchian jewellery of the sixth–fourth centuries BC led Yu. N. Voronov to conclude that:

1. a) the "artistic culture of this circle" in Colchis was predominantly of ancient Near Eastern origin, primarily generated by Achaemenid Iran;
2. b) the epithet polychrysos ("rich in gold"), first applied to Colchis in a fourth-century BC Greek-composed epitaph over the grave of the epic Aeëtes, reflects a situation no earlier than the second half of the sixth to the first half of the fourth century BC.

The principal types of supposedly distinctive Colchian ceramics of the sixth–fourth centuries BC (the so-called spezifisch-kolkhische)—jugs with tubular handles, cups and flasks—are known throughout the Caucasus and have no prototypes in earlier Colchian pottery (the earliest specimens of this triad were discovered at Simagre in a layer of the second half of the sixth century BC).

The temple at Sairkhe is of particular interest: in the powerful plastic outlines of its columns, though with less ornate bases, it resembles a structure at Persepolis (550 BC). It is therefore possible that Sairkhe housed one of the administrative centres of the nineteenth satrapy of the Iranian state.

Thus, written sources and archaeological materials testify against the thesis of an "independent and powerful" ancient Georgian Colchis Kingdom, allegedly existing in Western Transcaucasia in the sixth–fifth centuries BC, or even earlier. This conclusion equally applies to the view of certain Abkhaz scholars who assert that the mythical Colchis Kingdom did indeed exist, albeit in a different, ancient Abkhaz form—perhaps on the grounds that this territory was at the time inhabited by ancient Abkhaz Heniochi and Phasians.

It is well known, however, that not everything patriotic is scientific; and conversely, not everything scientific is patriotic. This axiom must be remembered by all historians, particularly those who lay claim to representing a national school.