Lycia covered the region lying between the modern cities of Antalya and Fethiye in southern Turkey, especially the mountainous headland between Fethiye Bay and the Gulf of Antalya. The Lukka, as they were referred to in ancient Egyptian sources, which mention them among the Sea Peoples, probably also inhabited the region called Lycaonia, located along the next headland to the east, also mountainous, between the modern cities of Antalya and Mersin.
Classification
Lycian was an Indo-European language, one in the Luwian subgroup of Anatolian languages. The Luwian subgroup also includes cuneiform and hieroglyphic Luwian, Carian, Sidetic, and Pisidic. The pre-alphabetic forms of Luwian extended back into the Late Bronze Age and preceded the fall of the Hittite Empire. These vanished at about the time of the Neo-Hittite states in southern Anatolia ; thus, the Iron Age members of the subgroup are localized daughter languages of Luwian. Of the Luwic languages, only the Luwian parent language is attested prior to 1000 BC, so it is unknown when the classical-era dialects diverged. Whether the Lukka people always resided in southern Anatolia or whether they always spoke Luwian are different topics. Lycian is known from a few fairly extensive inscriptions. From them, scholars have identified at least two dialects. One is considered standard Lycian, also termed Lycian A; the other, which is attested on side D of the Xanthos stele, is termed Lycian B or Milyan, separated by its grammatical particularities. 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. Lycian became extinct around the beginning of the first century BC, replaced by the Ancient Greek language.
Endonym
A few etymological studies of the Lycian language endonym are present. These are:
Language of the mountain people : Luwian tarmi- "pointed object" becomes a hypothetical *tarmašši- "mountainous" used in Trm̃mis- "Lycia." Lycia and Pisidia each had a hill-town named Termessos.
Attarima : A previously unknown Late Bronze Age place name among the Lukka.
Termera : A Lelege people displaced by the Trojan War, first settling in Caria and assigning such names as Telmessos, Termera, Termerion, Termeros, Termilae, then displaced to Lycia by the Ionians.
Description
A number of principal features help identify Lycian as being in the Luwian group:
