Leleges
Nation | Defunct
2637 BCE to 910 BCE
The Leleges ware one of the aboriginal peoples of southwest Anatolia (compare "Pelasgians"), who were already there when the Indo-European Hellenes emerged.
The Leleges were a distinct Anatolian tribe according to Homer but Leleges were an early name for the Carians, according to Herodotus; they were overcome by the Carians, according to the fourth-century BCE historian Philippus of Theangela, On Carians and Leleges, who suggested connections of the Leleges also in Messenia, in mainland Greece.It is thought that the name Leleges is not an autonym, a name these people applied to themselves, in a long-submerged tongue.
Instead, during the Bronze Age the term lulahi was in use in the Luwian language of the Hittites in Anatolia: in a Hittite cuneiform inscription priests and temple servants are directed to avoid conversing with lulahi and foreign merchants.
It is surmised that the reference is to strangers.
According to the suggestion of Vitaly Shevoroshkin, applying the term to men of the lands that would become classical Caria and Lycia, "Leleges" would then be an attempt to transliterate lulahi into Greek.Late traditions reported in Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke, and by Pausanias, derive the name from an eponymous king Lelex; a comparable etymology, memorializing a legendary founder, is provided by Greek mythographers for virtually every tribe of Hellenes.
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Artifacts of the Minoan civilization acquired by trade had arrived at Miletus beginning at about 1900 BCE.
For some centuries, the location has received a strong impulse from that civilization, an archaeological fact that tends to support but not necessarily confirm the founding legend—that is, a population influx from Crete.
According to Strabo: “Ephorus says: Miletus was first founded and fortified above the sea by Cretans, where the Miletus of olden times is now situated, being settled by Sarpedon, who brought colonists from the Cretan Miletus and named the city after that Miletus, the place formerly being in possession of the Leleges.”
The Leleges were a distinct Anatolian tribe according to Homer, but Leleges were an early name for the Carians, according to Herodotus; they were overcome by the Carians, according to the fourth-century BCE historian Philippus of Theangela, On Carians and Leleges, who suggested connections of the Leleges also in Messenia, in mainland Greece.
The area surrounding Ephesus, located midway between the Mediterranean and the Dardanelles, was already inhabited during the Neolithic Age (about 6000 BCE) as was revealed by the excavations at the hoyuk (mounds) at Arvalya and Cukurici Mounds.
Excavations in recent years have unearthed settlements from the early Bronze Age at the Ayasuluk Hill.
A burial ground from the Mycenaean era (1500-1400 BCE) with ceramic pots will be discovered in 1954 close to the ruins of the basilica of St. John.
This was the period of the Mycenaean Expansion when the Achaioi (as they were called by Homer) settled in Ahhiyawa during the fourteenth and the thirteenth centuries BCE.
Scholars believe that Ephesus was founded on the settlement of Apasa (or Abasa), a Bronze Age-city noted in fourteenth century BCE Hittite sources as in the land of Ahhiyawa.
The city of Ephesus itself is founded as an Attic-Ionian colony in the tenth century BCE on the Ayasuluk Hill, three kilometers from the center of antique Ephesus (as attested by excavations during the 1990s at the Seljuq castle ).
The mythical founder of the city is Androklos, son of king Kadros and a prince of Athens, who had to leave his country after the death of his father.
According to legend, he founded Ephesus on the place where the oracle of Delphi became reality ("A fish and a boar will show you the way").
Androklos drove away most of the native Carian and Lelegian inhabitants of the city and united his people with the remainder.
He was a successful warrior and, as king, he was able to join the twelve cities of Ionia together into the Ionian League.
During his reign, the city began to prosper.
Various traditions debate the founding of Halicarnassus, situated on the Gulf of Kos near the modern town of Bodrum, Turkey, but they agree in the main point as to its being a Dorian colony.
The figures on its coins, such as the head of Medusa, Athena and Poseidon, or the trident, support the statement that the mother cities were Troezen and Argos.
The inhabitants appear to have accepted as their legendary founder Anthes, mentioned by Strabo, and were proud of the title of Antheadae.
Halicarnassus is planted among six Carian towns: Theangela, Sibde, Medmasa, Euranium, Pedasa or Pedasum, and Telmissus.
These with Myndus and Synagela (or Syagela or Souagela) constitute the eight Lelegian towns.