The Black Sea was a busy water crossroads of the ancient world. Its southern coast, Pontus, was a land where Greek communities lived and flourished for 3000 years. The name “Pontus” (Greek Πόντος, translit. Pontos) is also the Greek word meaning “sea.” In Greek mythology, Pontus together with Gaia fathered the earliest sea deities.
Many ancient ethnic groups lived in Pontus before the arrival of Greeks: Chalybes, Leukosyroi, Makrones, Mossynoikoi, Muški, Tibarenoi, Laz, Georgians, Armenians, Cimmerians, and the famous female-only warriors Amazons, amongst many. Some of the peoples living in the area gradually became Hellenized or, during the Roman and Byzantine periods, Christianized.
Around 11th century BC, Greek seafarers and explorers appeared in the region. The epic stories about Jason and the Argonauts' journey to Colchis, the tales of Hercules navigating the Black Sea, and Odysseus wandering into the land of the Cimmerians, as well as the myth of Zeus constraining Prometheus to the Caucasus mountains as a punishment, can all be seen as reflections of early contacts between the first Greek colonists and the local tribes.
The earliest known written description of Pontus is that of Scylax of Korianda, who in the 7th century BC described Greek settlements in the area. In fact, the era of massive colonization begins in the 8th century AD, with Ionian city-state Miletus establishing Sinope in an extremely strategic coastal location. In 756 BC Sinope founded the cities of Trebizond, Kromni, Pterion, Kytoros and other famous cities of the region. From the 6th century BC it was part of the Persian Empire, then became the Kingdom of Pontus under Mithridates the Great till 64 BC, where it was subjugated by Romans and became the Roman Province of "Pontus and Bithynia".
Under the Byzantine Empire, Pontus came under the Armeniac Theme and its capital Trebizond became a center of culture and scientific learning. With the overthrow of the Byzantine state by crusaders in 1204, brothers Alexios and David Komnenos founded the Empire of Trebizond, an independent kingdom which flourished for almost 3 centuries. The monasteries of Pontus became centers of letters and arts and attracted scholars from the former Capital. Pontic humanists and scholars such as the chronicler Michael Panaretos, the mathematician and astronomer Grigorios Chioniadis and the theologians Bessarion the Cardinal, George Trebizondius and George Amiroutzis excelled in the sciences and letters.
The region fell into the hands of the Ottomans 8 years after the Fall of Constantinople and the numerous Greek peoples of Pontus faced extensive Islamization. Nevertheless, Pontic Hellenism, especially from 1800 onwards, enjoyed great economic, cultural and social growth, till WWI when Turks began systematic large-scale displacements and exiles. With the end of Russian involvement in WWI, the Christian minorities of Pontus became the prey of the Chets, unruly convicts recruited by the Young Turks Movement. By 1923, tens of thousands of Pontic Greeks had been executed, with the death toll reaching 350,000 according to some historians. In 1994, May 19 was proclaimed "Remembrance Day for the Genocide of the Greeks in Pontus". The Pontic genocide is recognized by 3 countries besides Greece - Sweden, Armenia and the Netherlands.
In the exhibition you will find traveler iconography from the 16th to the 19th centuries, photographs , proverbs, ethnographical content such as notebooks with customs and traditions of the Pontus, clothing and objects of daily use, depictions of monuments and many other records that illuminate the centuries-long presence of Hellenism in Pontus.
The exhibition contains items from the following institutions:
