Lycia was a state or nationality that flourished in Anatolia from 15–14th centuries BC to 546 BC. It bordered the Mediterranean Sea in what is today the provinces of Antalya and Muğla in Turkey as well some inland parts of Burdur Province. The state was known to history from the Late Bronze Age records of ancient Egypt and the Hittite Empire. Lycia was populated by speakers of the Luwian language group. Written records began to be inscribed in stone in the Lycian language after Lycia's involuntary incorporation into the Achaemenid Empire in the Iron Age. At that time (546 BC) the Luwian speakers were displaced as Lycia received an influx of Persian speakers. Ancient sources seem to indicate that an older name of the region was Alope.
Tissaphernes was a Persian soldier and statesman, Satrap of Lydia and Ionia. His life is mostly known from the works of Thucydides and Xenophon. According to Ctesias, he was the son of Hidarnes III and therefore, the great grandson of Hydarnes, one of the six conspirators who had supported the rise of Darius the Great.
Xanthus or Xanthos may refer to:
Xanthos or Xanthus, also referred to by scholars as Arna, its Lycian name, was an ancient city near the present-day village of Kınık, in Antalya Province, Turkey. The ruins are located on a hill on the left bank of the River Xanthos. The number and quality of the surviving tombs at Xanthos are a notable feature of the site, which, together with nearby Letoon, was declared to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988.
Mausolus was a ruler of Caria and a satrap of the Achaemenid Empire. He enjoyed the status of king or dynast by virtue of the powerful position created by his father Hecatomnus, who was the first satrap of Caria from the hereditary Hecatomnid dynasty. Alongside Caria, Mausolus also ruled Lycia and parts of Ionia and the Dodecanese islands. He is best known for his monumental tomb and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the construction of which has traditionally been ascribed to his wife and sister Artemisia.
The Lycian language was the language of the ancient Lycians who occupied the Anatolian region known during the Iron Age as Lycia. Most texts date back to the fifth and fourth century BC. Two languages are known as Lycian: regular Lycian or Lycian A, and Lycian B or Milyan. Lycian became extinct around the beginning of the first century BC, replaced by the Ancient Greek language during the Hellenization of Anatolia. Lycian had its own alphabet, which was closely related to the Greek alphabet but included at least one character borrowed from Carian as well as characters proper to the language. The words were often separated by two points.
Pixodarus or Pixodaros, was a satrap of Caria, nominally the Achaemenid Empire Satrap, who enjoyed the status of king or dynast by virtue of the powerful position his predecessors of the House of Hecatomnus created when they succeeded the assassinated Persian Satrap Tissaphernes in the Carian satrapy. Lycia was also ruled by the Carian dynasts since the time of Mausolus, and the name of Pixodarus as ruler appears in the Xanthos trilingual inscription in Lycia.
Hecatomnus of Mylasa or Hekatomnos was an early 4th-century BC ruler of Caria. He was the satrap (governor) of Caria for the Persian Achaemenid king Artaxerxes II. However, the basis for Hecatomnus' political power was twofold: he was both a high appointed Persian official and a powerful local dynast, who founded the hereditary dynasty of the Hecatomnids. The Hecatomnids followed the earlier autochthonous dynasty of the Lygdamids in Caria.
Idrieus, or Hidrieus was a ruler of Caria as a Satrap under the Achaemenid Empire. Alongside his sister and wife Ada, he enjoyed the status of king or dynast by virtue of the powerful position he inherited from his predecessors of the House of Hecatomnus.
Letoon or Letoum in the Fethiye district of Muğla Province, Turkey, was a sanctuary of Leto located 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) south of the ancient city of Xanthos, to which it was closely associated, and along the Xanthos River. It was one of the most important religious centres in the region though never a fully-occupied settlement.
The Lycian alphabet was used to write the Lycian language of the Asia Minor region of Lycia. It was an extension of the Greek alphabet, with half a dozen additional letters for sounds not found in Greek. It was largely similar to the Lydian and the Phrygian alphabets.
In epigraphy, a multilingual inscription is an inscription that includes the same text in two or more languages. A bilingual is an inscription that includes the same text in two languages. Multilingual inscriptions are important for the decipherment of ancient writing systems, and for the study of ancient languages with small or repetitive corpora.
The Hecatomnid dynasty or Hecatomnids were the rulers of Caria and surrounding areas c. 395 – c. 330 BCE. They were satraps (governors) under the Achaemenid Empire, although they ruled with considerable autonomy as a hereditary dynasty. The dynasty had previously ruled the city of Mylasa, which became the capital of Hecatomnus, the first indigenous satrap of Caria. The dynastic capital was moved to Halicarnassus by Mausolus and Artemisia, who built the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, there. The dynasty survived the conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by Alexander the Great when Ada I, the final Hecatomnid ruler of Caria, adopted Alexander the Great as her son. The small family was remarkable for containing so many sets of married siblings.
The Nereid Monument is a sculptured tomb from Xanthos in Lycia, close to present-day Fethiye in Mugla Province, Turkey. It took the form of a Greek temple on top of a base decorated with sculpted friezes, and is thought to have been built in the early fourth century BC as a tomb for Arbinas, the Xanthian dynast who ruled western Lycia under the Achaemenid Empire.
The Tomb of Payava is a Lycian tall rectangular free-standing barrel-vaulted stone sarcophagus, and one of the most famous tombs of Xanthos. It was built in the Achaemenid Persian Empire, for Payava, who was probably the ruler of Xanthos, Lycia at the time, in around 360 BC. The tomb was discovered in 1838 and brought to England in 1844 by the explorer Sir Charles Fellows. He described it as a 'Gothic-formed Horse Tomb'. According to Melanie Michailidis, though bearing a "Greek appearance", the Tomb of Payava, the Harpy Tomb and the Nereid Monument were built according to the main Zoroastrian criteria "by being composed of thick stone, raised on plinths off the ground, and having single windowless chambers".
The Xanthian Obelisk, also known as the Xanthos or Xanthus Stele, the Xanthos or Xanthus Bilingual, the Inscribed Pillar of Xanthos or Xanthus, the Harpagus Stele, the Pillar of Kherei and the Columna Xanthiaca, is a stele bearing an inscription currently believed to be trilingual, found on the acropolis of the ancient Lycian city of Xanthos, or Xanthus, near the modern town of Kınık in southern Turkey. It was created when Lycia was part of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, and dates in all likelihood to ca. 400 BC. The pillar is seemingly a funerary marker of a dynastic satrap of Achaemenid Lycia. The dynast in question is mentioned on the stele, but his name had been mostly defaced in the several places where he is mentioned: he could be Kherei (Xerei) or more probably his predecessor Kheriga.
Mithrapāta was dynast of Lycia in the early 4th century BC, at a time when this part of Anatolia was subject to the Persian, or Achaemenid, Empire.
Perikles, was the last known independent dynast of Lycia. A dynast of Limyra in eastern Lycia c. 375–362 BCE, he eventually ruled the entire country during the Revolt of the Satraps, in defiance of the Achaemenid Empire.
The Lycian Peasants, also known as Latona and the Lycian Peasants is a short tale from Greek mythology centered around Leto, the mother of the Olympian gods Artemis and Apollo, who was prohibited from drinking from a pond in Lycia by the people there. The myth tackles the ancient Greek concept of xenia, or hospitality, as well as Leto's special connection to the land of Lycia. The impious Lycians refuse to exercise hospitality, the ritualized guest-friendship termed xenia by the ancient Greeks, or else theoxenia, which refers specifically to the instances when a god, such as Leto, is involved. The narrative is most famously known from Ovid's rendition in the poem Metamorphoses.
