[3] The Khazar fortress of Tamantarkhan (from which the Byzantine name for the city, Tamatarcha, is derived) was built on the site in the 7th century, and became known as Tmutarakan when it came under the control of Kievan Rus'.

The Greek colony of Hermonassa was located a few miles west of Phanagoria and Panticapaeum, major trade centers for what was to become the Bosporan Kingdom.

The city was founded in the mid-6th century BCE by Mytilene (Lesbos), although there is evidence of others taking part in the enterprise, including Cretans.

After a long period as a Roman client state, the Bosporan kingdom succumbed to the Huns, who defeated the nearby Alans in 375/376.

The Mandgelis Document, a Hebrew letter dated AM 4746 (985–986) refers to "our lord David, the Khazar prince" who lived in Taman and who was visited by envoys from Kievan Rus to ask about religious matters.

During his brief rule, he subdued the local Circassians (also known as Kasogi) and other indigenous tribes, but his success provoked the suspicion of neighboring Greek Chersonesos in the Crimea, whose Byzantine envoy poisoned him on 3 February 1066.

In 1079, Svyatoslav Yaroslavich appointed a governor (posadnik), but he was captured two years later by David Igorevich and Volodar Rostislavich, who seized the city.

The region fell under the control of the Republic of Genoa in the 14th century and formed part of the protectorate of Gazaria, based at Kaffa.

[20] The city subsequently fell into ruin and the site was rediscovered in 1792, when a local peasant found a stone with an inscription stating that Prince Gleb had measured the sea from here to Kerch in 1068.

Afterwards it might have been given a Russian folk etymology, combining t'ma ("darkness") and tarakan ("cockroach"), to mean metaphorically 'the back of beyond', the sense that Vladimir Mayakovsky gives it.