The Sanigs and Their Place in Early Abkhaz History

The territory of the Sanigs then extended north-west as far as the Aheunt River, identified with the modern Asha near Sochi, beyond which lived the Zilchs, or Zikhs. If the population around Dioscurias did not change significantly from the first to the third centuries CE, as suggested by the written sources, then the Sanegs, Sanics, Soanes, and Sanigs represent one and the same ancient Abkhaz tribal group, namely the Geniochi. In later sources, the Sanigs are consistently described as “the tribe living adjacent to the Abasgians”, with the Abask River marking their eastern boundary. According to Procopius, they later lived beyond the Zikhs, suggesting a shift or exchange of territories, though sixth-century accounts still preserved the memory of a time when the Sanigs occupied a much larger area extending from Sebastopolis to Pityus.

Sanig Culture

The material culture of the Sanigs in the early first millennium CE has largely been studied outside the present territory of Abkhazia, with the exception of the second century Greek inscription reading “King Pakur” on a silver vessel and an inlaid gilded rhyton of the fourth century from Achmarda. In the locality of Loo, to the west of Sochi, a richly furnished female burial was found in a stone tomb. The grave contained several silver vessels, over twenty gold buttons, plaques, beads, pendants, gold earrings, a needle case, a perfume flask and a ring. Also found was a glass vessel with a Greek funerary inscription manufactured in Alexandria in Egypt, and a silver brooch, a fibula, similar brooches are known to have been widespread in the region in the third century CE. Most of the gold items from this burial resemble the products of Bosporan workshops of the beginning of the Common Era.

Equally interesting is the burial of a warrior from Matsesta, dating to the third century CE. He was accompanied into the afterlife by an iron sword, a clay jug, a glass vessel, a silver cup with relief images and three silver coins from Caesarea in Cappadocia dating to the reign of Emperor Trajan, and other items.

A richly furnished burial of another warrior was found in Krasnaya Polyana, dating no earlier than the fourth century CE. Alongside the deceased were an iron sword, three spearheads, a battle axe of iron, the remains of a wooden shield with a bronze gilded boss, similar bosses have been found in the Tsebelda valley, the centre of Apsilia, a silver dish depicting a Persian noble hunting bears and three silver coins depicting Emperor Hadrian. The dish belongs to early Sasanian, that is, Persian, art. A single line inscription on the outside of the dish states that it originally belonged to Varahran, king of Kerman, who ruled from 262 to 274 CE.

These and other materials indicate broad economic and cultural connections of the Sanigs, primarily with Rome and the Bosporan Kingdom. The flow of imported goods into Sanigia was facilitated by an ancient transit route that led from the coast through Vorontsovka, around Mount Akhun to Krasnaya Polyana and further to the North Caucasus.
In Krasnaya Polyana a clay pitcher was also found, produced by an Apsilian workshop in the fourth to fifth centuries, which indicates real contacts between the Sanigs and the Apsils. In the fourth century Byzantine fortifications were constructed on the territory of Sanigia, and contacts between the local population and the classical world intensified.

Sanigs, also Sadz, as Ancestors of the Abkhaz

The kinship between the Abkhaz and the Sanigs is indicated by the fact that in medieval sources the Sanigs are located in the same territory where later the closely related Abkhaz tribe of the Sadz appears. The toponym “Sandripsh”, meaning the territory inhabited by the Sadz, derives from the name Sanig. The root of the word, “san”, is preserved in the name “San dripsh” or “Tsan dripsh”. In this territory one encounters river names ending in “ta” and “psta”, including Mzymta, Khosta, Matsesta, the latter interpreted in Abkhaz as “fire river”.

In the early medieval period the Sanigs, the Sadz, even though they used their own vernacular in everyday life, had already formed an ethnic branch of the Abkhaz feudal community. It is precisely to the Sadz that Georgian authors of the late medieval period apply the name “Jiki”, and the territory they occupied is described as “Jiketia”.