As I packed for my trip to Colchis I thought of Jason and how he must have felt when told to travel to a foreign place such as Colchis. Colchis is now a part of the Republic of Georgia in the Soviet Union. Geographically, “ancient Colchis comprised the land bounded by the Black Sea to the west, the Caucasus Mountains to the north, the Surami Range to the east and the Meskhetian Mountains to the south,” (great adventures, 1). As I have acquainted myself with the mythology of the Argonauts quest with Jason in the late Bronze Age I looked into going to a field school to help people look for questions that still stump archeologists today. As I researched Colchis the name of a field school in the ancient city of Vani stood out. I called the head of the archeology department and asked if I could take a two week long trip to help acquaint people with Colchis and the tale of Jason and the Argonauts capturing the Golden Fleece. I was told that “the days are often warm and in the evenings are quite cool and that shorts and a tank top are not appropriate for visiting the Georgian monasteries and churches,” (great adventures, 3). I was excited to get the chance to inform my classmates about my trip and I geared up my knowledge of the trip that Jason took on that glorious day to Colchis.

All of my research came from books and what the Internet has provided. As I read books I noticed that most authors focused on the land of Colchis rather than the trip that Jason took itself. I think that this tends to happen because we still don’t know really what took place in ancient Greece. Something that I found interesting is that authors wrote about this trip that Jason took to Colchis, but that the Colchian people have no written record that Jason was ever there. Why did Jason even go to Colchis? In mythology it is written that “Jason was usurped his rightful throne by Pelias and that the only way to get the throne back was if Jason went to Colchis and bring back the Golden Fleece to Boetoia,” (Columbia Encyclopedia, Jason). As I read this excerpt from the encyclopedia I thought that this must have upset Jason to be told that he would need to travel to Colchis which to the Greek people “lay at the fringes of the inhabited world,”(Romey, 28). Colchis as stated earlier was situated on the Black Sea and around two different mountain ranges, in the middle of what I would call nowhere in a land of barbarians! As I packed I listened to some tapes that taught me to speak a little Russian which is the language of some of the people that are in Georgia and around the Black Sea area. As I listened I thought to myself how Jason must have felt sailing on that long journey not knowing what to expect as he landed on this land of marshy shores. In the Argonautica it describes Jason and his crew sneaking off “into Colchian territory at night and seeing the bodies of dead people hanging from trees and being almost defleshed and watching in horror as these dead people were gathered up burned and buried in collective pits,” (Romey, 31). I was hoping that I would not run into that type of scene with professors of archeology and mythology. I had packed and was on my way out when I received a phone call reminding me to pack lightly and to bring my toiletries that I would be using because there are not a lot of Wal-Mart’s in Colchis.

I went to the airport and traveled via Air Georgia, the flight attendants were very nice and helped me refine the art of speaking Russian with an Okie accent. I was getting prepared for my 40 hour or so bus ride from the airport to Tbilisi as I soaked up time with some good research stuff I had brought to pass the time away. I spent hours with people that did not smell good and I had very poor knowledge of the language so I am sure that they thought that a Mexican Okie was a great addition to the bus ride! I tried to get some help from my bus driver and he told me in broken English to see this man he knows in Trabzon named Aivar. I met him and became good friends. He knew Vani really well and he also knew a lot of the folklore of the Argonaut voyage from the people in Vani. In exchange he wanted my necklace for his daughter and $100 in American money to use him as a guide for the week. I agreed and he took me to Vani to meet with the people at “the Archaelogical Expedition of the Centre for Archaelogical Studies of the Georgian Academy of Sciences under the direction of Otar Lordkipanidze,” (Lordkipanidze, 153). I will refer to it as the Centre from now on in the paper. I met with Otar and he introduced me to some of his colleagues and asked what I was doing my research on and I said that I was interested in ancient Colchis as seen through Jason and the Argonauts. He replied that I was in the right place and took me to see where the excavations were being performed.

Almost everything that I saw has been discovered in Vani, which is a large city located in Colchis. I noticed something very strange that I had not thought of that existed in the Bronze Age, jewelry. I saw earrings, bracelets and necklaces of all shapes and sizes that were made with pure gold and with such intricacies that I wanted a pair to take home. As I walked around the area that housed the artifacts I noticed a glimmer that looked like gold sparkling in the sunlight. As I walked closer I noticed that I did see gold, on a sheepskin! As I looked at this piece of sheepskin and wondered why people would put gold on sheepskin and puzzled at what I had seen I asked Mr. Lordkipanidze why there was gold on this sheepskin. He replied that it was a common practice “for mining gold to skin a sheep and use the skin to trap gold and filter the gold out of the skin upon drying it out in the sun,” (Lordkipanidze, 171). I was impressed that this band of barbarians knew to use the skins of animals to trap a precious commodity such as gold. There were many clay pots and pitchers that have been recovered throughout the ruins of Vani. As a matter of fact the archeologists have been able to look at the pots and give people an idea of when it was made due to the writings or markings on the pot. There were so many that I saw I could not tell you which pot belonged to the Bronze Age that Jason sailed, but there are many that archeologists can get an idea of what life was like in Vani.

After I had viewed the remnants of what has been found in Vani, Mr. Lordkipanidze took me for a walk around the city of Vani. After he had showed me where the temples and houses that the Colchian people had lived and worshipped in we talked about his research into social structures of the Colchian people. Something that I did not realize was the Colchian people did not have a unifying language, as a matter of fact

“it is unlikely that a single Colchian nation ever really existed. It was said that more than 70 different languages could be heard in the marketplace and that ‘Colchian’ like ‘Scythian’ or ‘Celt’ was probably a generic Greek term for peoples of broadly similar culture living in a particular region of the world,” (Ascherson, 200).

As we talked Aivar, my guide, asked if I had seen the Black Sea up close and I had replied that I had not seen it, but would love to see it if Mr. Lordkipanidze would accompany us. He agreed and Aivar set off in his taxicab to the Black Sea as Mr. Lordkipanidze and I talked more about the Colchian people. An interesting topic that Aivar brought up was that the Greek people referred to the Black Sea as the “Pontos Exainos, but the Argonauts referred to it as Pontos Euxeinos,” (Colchis, 1). As we approached the sea I had thought of what I had read about the Black Sea saying: “The Black Sea, the dirtiest in the world, is dying an agonizing death because 90 percent of the basin is now anoxic,” (Ascherson, 257). I had looked at what anoxic had meant and ran into an interesting fact that “if the Argo had sunk on the journey, her timbers and the Argonauts themselves would still be sitting intact on the blue-grey bottom mud, for there is no oxygen in the water which would allow them to rot," (Ascherson, 258). There is no oxygen or very little oxygen in the Black Sea, which means that all the metal would have been dissolved, but the bones of the Argonauts would have survived. I looked at this vast sea and thought to myself that it is amazing that brave men would travel nearly 1500 miles from ancient Greece to Colchis so Jason could rule instead of his uncle Pelias. To the people of Greece “Colchis evoked magic and especially witchcraft, particularly practiced in the family of Aeetes,” (Braund, 21).

Throughout the story of the Argonauts we are told about the magic that Medea performs and that the land itself was almost magical. As I looked all around me at that moment I could almost picture landing in a strange and unfamiliar place. As I looked around me at the ruins of Colchis I could feel what Jason must’ve felt, that this land was scary and foreign, but I had faith in the gods and that they would provide protection.

We had gone back to the Centre and I was given instructions on how to dig and what to look for at the archeological site in Vani. My trip was filled with wonder and intrigue as I unearthed some small objets in the dirt and grime at Vani. I met many people who had read about the story of Jason and the Argonauts and were intrigued that this trip full of adventure and mystery took place. The story itself “holds a unique position in Western literature as the earliest epic story of a voyage that has survived, it even predates Homer’s Odyssey,” (Severin, 11). This story brings together people of different races, nationalities and age to a place far away from reality and for a moment you see what early life was all about. There are still many places to be explored and every day the people at the Centre look for people with eager hands and open minds to help uncover the earth and discover what the people of the past have left for us.

As I packed Mr. Lordkipanidze came to my tent and asked if I needed any more information for my paper and I replied no, but I did ask him one more personal question. After I had looked at the artifacts that were uncovered and researched more about Colchis I wondered if the story of Jason and the Argonauts is true? I posed this question to Mr. Lordkipanidze and he replied “Of course there is no archeological evidence yet for such a trip, but I believe in the myth of Jason as it reflects the earliest Greek exploration remember Troy wasn’t a fantasy to the Greeks,” (Romey, 34). With that reply we said goodbye and he encouraged me to come back again when I had more time to really get dirty.

As my plane landed I was exhausted and tired and all I wanted to do was take a shower, but I had to write down all that I had seen in the past two weeks before I lost it. There is so much more to write, but I would encourage anyone with a desire to learn and a desire to do a lot of research to go to the Centre and participate in looking at history up close and helping uncover the past so that our future generations will know more about Greek culture.

Ascherson, Neal. Black Sea. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995.

Braund, David. Georgia in Antiquity Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.

Lordkipanidze, Otar. “Vani: an ancient city of Colchis.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies. 32 (1991): 151-195.

Romey, Kristen M. “Land of the Golden Fleece.” Archaelogy. 54.2 (2001): 28-35.

Severin, Tim. The Jason Voyage. London: Century Hutchinson, 1985.

“Jason, In Greek Mythology.” Columbia Encyclopedia. 1985 ed.

“Colchis, The Land of the Golden Fleece, Republic of Georgia.” Feb. 25, 2004. http://www.great-adventures.com/destinations/rep_georgia/colchis.html

“So where is Colchis?” Feb.25, 2004. http://www.showgate.com/medea/colchis.html