Europe’s fishiest shallows were once called Maeotis Swamp
The Sea of Azov is an Eastern European shelf sea linked to the Black Sea by the roughly four-kilometre Strait of Kerch, sometimes treated as the Black Sea’s northern lobe. Don, Kuban, and other rivers dump sand, silt, and shells that build limans, spits, and a smooth, gently deepening floor.
The name probably comes from Turkish asak or azaq, lowlands, attached to the town of Azov, though a Russian legend credits a Cuman prince called Azum, supposedly killed in 1067. Greeks and Romans called it Palus Maeotis, the Maeotian Swamp, medieval Russians the Sea of Surozh after the town now called Sudak, and Ottomans Balük-Denis, the Fish Sea, for its plentiful catches. Traces of Neolithic settlement lie on ground the sea now covers. Russia holds the eastern shore and Ukraine the north-western and south-western coasts.
The Maeotian marshes near the mouth of the Tanais, today’s Don, were famous in antiquity as a barrier to nomads moving off the steppe, and the Maeotians who lived there fished, farmed and fought off invaders. Confused by strong currents and fresh water, ancient geographers labelled the sea a swamp or lake and guessed wildly at its size: Herodotus thought it matched the Black Sea, while the Pseudo-Scylax made it half as big. Some believed it connected straight to the Arctic Ocean.
Polybius predicted in the second century BC that river silt would soon seal the strait. Strabo later put the distance from the Kerch Strait to the Don at 2,200 stadia, roughly right, without realising how the sea keeps narrowing toward that end.
Milesian Greeks began colonising the coasts in the seventh century BC. The Bosporan Kingdom, named for the Cimmerian Bosporus at Kerch, stretched along both southern shores until the end of the Roman era, briefly under Pontus, trading wheat, fish and slaves for Greek and Roman goods. The Huns probably overran it in the late fourth century after defeating the Alans.
Source: Sea of Azov
