A 2,500-Year-Old Sheep Bone Found in Ukraine May Have Been Used to Pray to Trojan War Hero Achilles

On Berezan Island in Ukraine, at the ancient Greek settlement of Borysthenes, archaeologists have re-examined a sheep’s shoulder blade carved with two birds and a wave-like edge. Researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences and the State Hermitage Museum now suggest that someone used it in a private ritual to ask the hero Achilles for protection. They stress that this is a hypothesis, and that the interpretation is not definitive.

A Greek outpost on the Black Sea

Borysthenes was one of the earliest Greek settlements on the northern shore of the Black Sea. The bone came out of the ground in 1989, during work by the Berezan Archaeological Expedition of the State Hermitage Museum, and researchers have now looked at it again. It belongs to a layer dated between the first half and the third quarter of the 6th century BC, a date based on the pottery in the layer and on how the layer sits relative to surviving ancient structures. The same layer also held pottery fragments and bones of domestic animals.

What the object looks like

The bone is the scapula of a sheep about two to two and a half years old. The researchers believe people cooked and ate the meat before anyone worked the bone. Someone then cut the broad edge into a row of teeth and shaped the prominent ridge across the blade into an undulating, wave-like form. On the outer surface, a sharp tool scratched two birds facing left, with folded wings and details of their plumage.

Why Achilles?

Sergei Solovyov of the Institute for the History of Material Culture and Alexey Kasparov of the Hermitage propose the link. Around the Black Sea, people venerated Achilles as a heroic or even divine figure tied to the sea, to navigation and to protection, and sanctuaries to him stood in the northern and western regions. Scholars often read the sacred birds tied to his sanctuaries in the northern Black Sea as seagulls. Gulls were familiar on an island like Berezan, and the wave-like ridge on the bone could stand for the sea. The researchers suggest that a person or a household used the bone to seek Achilles’ protection, prosperity or well-being. If they are right, it would be evidence of domestic religion outside formal temples and sanctuaries, and of a cheap ritual tool made from an ordinary animal bone.

What remains uncertain

No inscription on the bone names Achilles, and the birds cannot be identified with certainty. Their beak shapes and the hatching of their plumage also resemble corvids, possibly hooded crows. Crows had religious links to Apollo, who was important at Borysthenes, and possibly to Achilles as well, so either bird could fit an Achilles-related reading. The exact function of the object, and how people handled or displayed it, are unknown.

Why it matters

If the researchers have read the bone correctly, it shows something modest and personal: a household practicing ritual at home, with a tool made from an ordinary animal bone, and calling on a hero believed to protect sailors. Until someone finds an inscription or a close parallel, it stays an intriguing possibility and not a settled fact.

Source: Solovyov, S. and Kasparov, A., Russian Academy of Sciences and State Hermitage Museum (press release; no paper was found). Coverage: HeritageDaily, 29 October 2026.

Image credit: Russian Academy of Sciences.