Lycia

Ancient kingdom of southwestern Anatolia (Turkey), located on the Mediterranean coast between Caria and Pamphylia and extending to the Taurus Mountains, with its capital in Xanthos. In the Amarna letters of the 14th-13th centuries BC, the Lycians are described as living between the Hittites on the north and the Achaean Greeks on the coast. They participated in the Sea Peoples' attempt to invade Egypt in the late 13th century. Nothing more is known of the Lycians until the 8th century BC, when they reappear as a thriving maritime people in cities of the Lycian League. The kingdom eventually fell to Cyrus' general Harpagus. Under Achaemenian Persia and later under the rule of the Romans, Lycia enjoyed relative freedom and was able to preserve its federal institutions until the time of Augustus. It was annexed to Roman Pamphylia in 43 AD and became a separate Roman province after the 4th century. Archaeological discoveries made on sites at Xanthus, Patara, Myra, and other of its cities have revealed a distinctive type of funerary architecture. The people spoke a dialect of Indo-European Luwian. Sir Charles Fellows discovered the ruins of the cities of Lycia.

An area on the southern coast of Turkey which became a kingdom in the 1st millennium bc. Groups identified as Lycians are mentioned in the 14th century bc Amarna letters as pirates in the East Mediterranean, and were later among the Peoples of the Sea who attacked Egypt. Little is known about them in their homeland, although the French have carried out excavations in their capital Xanthos. They spoke an Indo-European tongue, which appears to be a dialect of Luwian. Some inscriptions were found at Xanthos in this language, but using an alphabet derived from the Greeks. The Lycians were absorbed into the Achaemenid empire in the 6th century bc.