Lycia of Turkey

Lykia Monuments

Lykia Map

 

Lycia is situated at the south-western tip of Anatolia, to the south of Caria. The Hellenes gave it this name at the time of Homer. It is thought that its people were those referred to as “Lukka” in the Hittite documents, and that they were probably influenced by the Luvians. Homer wrote that they were descended from a Hellene, Glaukos, and a Lycian princess, so as to be able in part to attribute the oriğin of the Lycians to the Hellenes. Herodotus himself states that the Lycians were the result of a fusion of an indigenous population with Cretan immigrants brought there by Sarpedon, and regards this version of their origin as a tradition inherited from Crete and Caria.

Ephorus, the author (in the fourth century BC) of the first universal history, states also that the immigrant Cretans, after having founded Miletus in Caria, spread towards the interior and the south of Anatolia. It is possible that Herodotus, who was interested in the relationship of the Lycians with Crete, allowed himself to be influenced by Cretan emigrants of his own times.

It is more probable that things happened the other way round, and that it was Crete which was influenced by Anatolian emigrants. The Lycian language, which has not yet been deciphered, would also have been an indigenous language, not Indo-European. Philologists are generally in agreement on the Anatolian origin of this language, from which Greek later borrowed part of its vocabulary.


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