Sikeler

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Area of ​​the Sikeler (Siculi) on the island of Sicily z. At the time of the Greek colonization

The Sikeler , also Sikuler (ancient Greek Sikeloi , Latin Siculi ) were residents of eastern and northern Sicily at the time of the Greek colonization .

Prehistory according to ancient sources

Sikeler are already mentioned in the Odyssey of the Greek poet Homer and there they are associated with the slave trade . Furthermore, an older, faithful maid who cares for Odysseus' father Laertes is called Sikelerin ( Σικελὴ ).

According to Thucydides , who cites information from the Sikeler, the Sikelers originally immigrated to Sicily from Italy and displaced the Sicans to the west. This is said to have happened 300 years before the arrival of the Greeks in Sicily. Subsequently, the island, which was previously called Sikania, is said to have been named after the Sikelern. According to Diodorus , the Sikelians settled in uninhabited areas that the Sicans had previously left the east of the island because of an Etna eruption. According to Philistus of Syracuse , quoted by Dionysius of Halicarnassus , the later inhabitants of Sicily crossed over to Sicily in the 80th year before the Trojan War . It was not Ausons or Elymers , but Ligurians who led Sikelos, a son of Italos. They were driven from their homeland by the Umbrians and the Pelasgians .

History during the Greek colonization

From the second half of the 8th century BC onwards, the Sikelians were colonized by Greek colonists. Chr. Increasingly displaced inland. Sikeler fought partly as mercenaries in Greek armies. For example, B. Hippocrates of Gela in the early 5th century, besides the Greeks, also hired many Sikelers for the expansion of his mounted troops . Around 465 BC BC Duketios united a number of Sicilian tribes, which were increasingly oppressed by the Greek expansion inland. Under his leadership, the Sikeli marched against Greek cities and destroyed some of them, including 460 BC. Chr. Morgantina . Ultimately, however, the Sicilian uprising failed. In addition to Sicily, Sikelers are said to have lived on the Italian mainland in the 5th century BC.

language

The Siculian language , which so far has mostly only been known through short texts, is one of the Indo-European languages . It is probably one of the Italian languages .

Alleged links with sea peoples

There are opinions that the Sikeler are identical with the sea ​​people of the Tjeker ( tkr , also Šikal , Šikel transcribed), which is encountered in Egyptian sources. The Tjeker are again mostly associated with the in a 1200 BC. Document (RS 34.129) from Ugarit called Šikaläer ( Ši-ka-la-iu-a , where Šikala is the country name) equated, probably based on Breadsted's transcription Sikel for the Turkish . However, equating the Šikaleans with the Šekeleš mentioned in Egyptian sources is also being considered . The document found in Ugarit is a letter from the Hittite great king demanding that the city prefect of Ugarits repatriate a man who had fallen into the hands of the Šikaleans, "who live on ships". However, the question of whether the Šikaläer and thus the Tjeker or Šekeleš can actually be equated with the Sikeler is a matter of debate in research.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Homer, Odyssey 20, 381-384.
  2. ↑ Homer Odyssey 24.210; 24,366; 24.389.
  3. ↑ Thucydides , The Peloponnesian War 6: 2, 4–5.
  4. ↑ Diodor , Bibliothéke historiké 5,6,3.
  5. ↑ FGrHist 556 F46 (Jacoby); Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae 1,22,41.
  6. ↑ On Duketius see Jona Lendering: Ducetius . In: Livius.org (English).
  7. ↑ Manfred Weippert: Historical text book for the Old Testament (= floor plans for the Old Testament. Volume 10). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-525-51693-5 , p. 208, note 50.
  8. ↑ James H. Breasted : The Ancient Records of Egypt. Volume IV: The twentieth to the twenty-sixth dynasties. Reissued, Russell & Russell, New York 1962, p. 59.
  9. ↑ Edwart Noort: The Sea Peoples in Palestine. Kok Pharos, Kampen NL 1994, p. 85 ff .; Robert G. Tykot: Sea Peoples in Etruria? Italian Contacts with the Eastern Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age. In: Etruscan Studies. Journal of the Etruscan Foundation. No. 1, 1994, pp. 59-83 (full text) .
  10. ↑ Most recently, among others, Olga Tribulato: Language and Linguistic Contact in Ancient Sicily. Cambridge University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-1-107-02931-6 , p. 51 (with further evidence for this thesis).