The Bosporan kings were the rulers of the Bosporan Kingdom, an ancient Hellenistic Greco-Scythian state centered on the Kerch Strait (the Cimmerian Bosporus) and ruled from the city of Panticapaeum. Panticapaeum was founded in the 7th or 6th century BC; the earliest known king of the Bosporus is Archaeanax, who seized control of the city c. 480 BC as a usurper. The Archaeanactid dynasty ruled the city until it was displaced by the more long-lived Spartocid dynasty in 438 BC. After ruling for over three centuries, the Spartocids were then displaced by the Mithridatic dynasty of Pontus and then its offshoot the . The Tiberian-Julian kings ruled as client kings of the Roman Empire until late antiquity.