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Panticapaeum (Greek: Παντικάπαιον; see also List of traditional Greek place names), present-day Kerch: an important Greek city and port in Taurica (Tauric Chersonese), situated on a hill (Mt. Mithridates) on the western side of the Cimmerian Bosporus, founded by Milesians in the late 7th–early 6th century BC.

In the 5th–4th centuries BC, the city became the residence first of the Archaeanactids and then of the Spartocids, dynasties of Greek kings of Bosporus, and was hence itself sometimes called Bosporus. Its economic decline in the 4th–3rd centuries BC was the result of the Sarmatian conquest of the steppes and the growing competition of Egyptian grain. The last of the Spartocids, Paerisades V, apparently left his realm to Mithridates VI Eupator, king of Pontus.

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