Tanais Tablets

The Tanais Tablets are two tablets dated late 2nd-3rd century AD, and written in Greek from the city of Tanais, in the proximity of modern Rostov-on-Don, Russia. At the time, Tanais was composed of a mixed Greek and Sarmatian population. The tablets are public inscriptions which commemorate renovation works in the city. One of the tablets, Tanais Tablet A, is damaged and is not fully reconstructed. The other one, Tanais Tablet B, is fully preserved and is dated to 220 AD.

The tablets were discovered by Russian archaeologist Pavel Mikhailovich Leontjev in 1853 and are today kept in the lapidary of the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. The tablets are considered important for the early Croatian history.

Among the names on the tablets are those of three men: Horoúathos, Horoáthos, and Horóathos (Χορούαθ[ος], Χοροάθος, Χορόαθος). Those names scholars interpret as anthroponyms of the Croatian ethnonym Hrvat. The ethnonym Hrvat is generally considered to be of Iranian origin, and that can be traced to the Tanais Tablets. The Tanais Tablet B mentions Horoathos as the son of Sandarz which is a Scytho-Sarmatian name, and scholars view this as an indication that early Croats could have been at that time Sarmatians or Alans who became Slavicized in the following centuries.

The tablets were discovered by the Russian archeologist Pavel Mihajlovič Leontjev (1822-1874) in September 1853. Mostly international scholars wrote about the tablets, while of Croatian scholars Stjepan Krizin Sakač, Dominik Mandić and Radoslav Katičić. However, during the time of Yugoslavia, Yugoslavian scholars avoided discussing them, or mainly wrote about them in a superficial way and misinterpreted (Ferdo Šišić, Trpimir Macan, Josip Horvat, Bogo Grafenauer, Jaroslav Šidak, Gordan Ravančić, Ivan Biondić, Stjepan Pantelić etc.), and sometimes malicious manner, for example, Miroslav Krleža saw the connection as "historical lunacy", while Nada Klaić ignored and only mentioned them for the criticizing of the Iranian-Caucasian theory of the Croatian ethnogenesis. The open debate only followed after the collapse of Yugoslav Communism.

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