The following location names are the current location name in the official language of the current nation. If applicable, I use a common anglicized name but otherwise transliterate according to the American Library of Congress and provide the Cyrillic in parentheses.
In 1829 the parents of Dzhiordzhi Chercheste (Georgii Cherchesov) found the body of a stemmed cup along the left bank of the Ursdon River in an area known as the ‘arv’. When they uncovered the cup, the land was part of the Russian Empire’s Terek Cossack Host. Over 100 years later, the archaeologists E. G. Pchelina and V. N. Kasati were alerted to this find, and in 1938 they surveyed and excavated the area. The archaeologists acquired the cup from Chercheste and brought it to the Northern Ossetian State Joint Museum of History, Architecture, and Literature (then the North Ossetian Regional Museum) in Vladikavkaz (then Ordzhonikidze). Later in the same year, the cup was sent to the State Hermitage Museum, where it is still housed.
In the 1930s, the nearest village to the find location was Dagom (Дагом); however, a village called Ursdon has since developed nearby at the confluence of the Ursdon and the Duvadonystau rivers. Ursdon is presently located in the Alagirskii District (Алагирский Район) in the North Ossetia–Alania Republic (Республика Северная Осетия — Алания), Russian Federation.
Trever, K. V., and V. G. Lukonin. Sasanidskoe serebro: sobranie Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha: khudozhestvenniia kul’tura Irana III-VIII vekov. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1987.
Adamova, A. T., and A. B. Nikitin, eds. Iran v Ermitazhe: Formirovanie kollektsii. Saint Petersburg: State Hermitage Publishing House, 2004.
Pchelina, E. G. “Ursdonskoe ushchel’e v Severnoi Osetii.” Trudy otdela Vostoka Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha 4 (1947): 135-154.
Trever, K. V. “Sasanidskii Serebrianyi kubok iz Ursdonskogo ushchel’ia v Severnoi Osetii.” Trudy otdela Vostoka Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha 4 (1947): 119-132.
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