The dissertation research examines the general picture of the presence on the territory of Ukraine in the 3rd century BCE – 4th century CE of such Eastern beliefs as the Phrygian cults of the Mother of the Gods (Cybele), Attis and Sabazios, the Egyptian cults of Serapis (Osiris) – Isis – Harpocrates (Horus) and Zeus Ammon, the so-called “Pontic” Mithraism and the beliefs in Mithras Taurocton and Jupiter Dolichenus, which were widespread among the Roman legionaries present in the Northern Black Sea Region. It has been established that in the Archaic (6th century BCE) and Classical periods (5th–4th centuries BCE) the Ionian version of the Asia Minor cult of the Mother of the Gods, brought by the Greeks, began to spread in the Greek colonies of the Northern Black Sea Region. Its characteristic feature at that time was the absence of worship of her companion, the paredros Attis. It has been traced that in Hellenistic and Roman times, the worship of the Mother of the Gods acquired a mass character. Analysis of sacred objects dedicated to the Mother of the Gods clearly indicates that this belief could have had both a private and a public character. Some doubts have been expressed regarding the hypothesis of the spread of the cult of Cybele among the Scythians, since the image of the “Mistress of Beasts” on the ornaments found in Scythian burial mounds does not correspond to the traditional iconography of the Mother of the Gods. It has been determined that cult objects from the Northern Black Sea region that represent Attis date mainly to the 4th century BCE – 3rd century CE. The number of such finds is estimated at dozens, which, compared to the images of the Mother of the Gods discovered there, indicates that Attis did not play a very large role in her cult in this region. The sacred monuments from the Northern Black Sea region, which some scholars associate with the cult of Sabazios, have been analyzed. It is pointed out that some of these artifacts (a bronze hand from the Ukrainian Steppe, a bone hand and rods from Chersonese) can be cautiously interpreted as indirect evidence of minor manifestations of this belief in the Northern Black Sea region, brought there by Roman soldiers from the Danube region. It is suggested that the hypotheses about the syncretic deity Astarte-Anahita-Aphrodite Urania or the so-called Great Goddess may have been only artificial constructions built on an arbitrary interpretation of various kinds of archaeological materials. It has been found that the so-called images of Astarte, identified as early as the 2nd half of the 19th century from clay figurines or images on coins, can now be attributed with high probability to one of the iconographic types of representation of the goddess Aphrodite Urania. The idea has been developed that in the 1st century BCE, after the Pontic king Mithridates VI Eupator became the ruler of the Bosporan Kingdom, the so-called “Pontic” version of Mithraism began to spread in this region. It has been traced that a small number of artifacts, namely fragments of marble reliefs and statues, votive altars, indicate a slight spread in the 2nd–3rd centuries AD in Tyre, Olbia, Chersonese and the fortress of Charax of the “Roman” version of Mithraism. A similar situation is observed with Jupiter Dolichenus. A review of monuments belonging to Egyptian cults allows us to state that firstly faience beads in the form of scarabs and lions (6th–5th centuries BCE) began to enter the Northern Black Sea region and the Ukrainian Steppe, which could play the role of apotropaic objects among the ancient Greek, Scythian, and later Sarmatian populations and gained great popularity. The rest of the material comes from the Northern Black Sea Region. The sacred objects discovered there testify that Egyptian beliefs in their Hellenized version spread in the Greek colonies of the region starting from the 3rd century BC and existed there until the end of the ancient era. Eleven statuettes related to Eastern cults come from the territory of the Ukrainian Forest-Steppe. All of them are images of the deities Serapis (Osiris) – Isis – Harpocrates (Horus). This also includes the Egyptian gem found in Volyn at the beginning of the 20th century. The geography of discovery of these artifacts is quite wide – from Pokuttya in the West to the left-bank Kyiv region in the East. The presence among the indicated artifacts of statuettes of Egyptian origin, which were more widespread in those parts of the Roman Empire where the influence of Hellenistic culture was minimal or completely absent, as well as the similarity of the figures of Serapis to those found in the Danube region, may indicate that they entered the territory of the Ukrainian Forest-Steppe not from the Northern Black Sea region, but rather from Roman Dacia. With some probability, it can be assumed that at least some of these objects were used for cult purposes.
