Elymian is the extinct language of the ancient Elymian people of western Sicily. Its characteristics are little known because of the extremely limited and fragmentary nature of the surviving texts.
| Elymian | |
|---|---|
| Region | Sicily |
| Ethnicity | Elymians |
| Extinct | 3rd century BC[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | xly |
xly | |
| Glottolog | elym1237 |
 Elymian was spoken in the red region. | |
The origins of Elymian and its exact relationships with other languages are unclear due to scarcity of data. It is generally assumed to have been an Indo-European language,[2][3] but its classification within the Indo-European family is disputed. It has been speculated that Elymian was related to either the Italic languages or the Anatolian languages (such as Hittite), although both theories are disputed - with the first as preferred by the scholars.[4]
An Early Iron Age idiom, Elymian seems to have been spoken until the 3rd century BC.[1]
Characteristics
editOnly a handful of Elymian texts have survived, dating from between the 6th and 4th centuries BC. These comprise a few proper names recorded by non-Elymian sources; inscriptions in the Greek alphabet on several coins, which include the names of Elymian cities; and inscriptions in the Greek alphabet on about 170 fragments of pottery (found mostly in a votive deposit at the ruined Elymian city of Segesta). These texts have been identified as Elymian, based on their evidently non-Hellenic characteristics, location and age.
The majority of textual artefacts are very short and fragmentary, comprising only a few letters. A small number of longer texts apparently contain a personal name and may have been dedicatory epigraphs. They sometimes appear to resemble Hellenic dedicatory epigraphs, in which an anthroponym in genitive form is followed by a verb literally meaning "I am" in order to convey "belonging".
A vase found at Montedoro, around 15 km southwest of Palermo, features one of the few complete inscriptions in Elymian. It has been tentatively translated to read "I [the pot] am [a gift] of Ata Tuka", or "I am [a gift] of Ata of [= son of] Tuka".[5]
Classification
editThe inclusion of Elymian within the Indo-European language family is generally accepted, but its further affiliation to the established branches of Indo-European is still disputed.[2] Proposed classifications of the Elymian language can be summarized under two main positions.
Some historical linguists agreed that some peculiarities of that language – like non-alphabetic symbols engraved on some dedicatory fragments of pots, and genitive in -ai found in almost all the complete sequences – are suggestive of a connection to the Anatolian languages, and in particular, to Hittite. Other historical linguists classified Elymian as related to the Italic languages on the basis of other possible features.[2]
Subsequently, the latter thesis found success among the scholars, whose broad consensus recognizes Elymian as an Italic idiom for northwestern Sicily (albeit without the support of overwhelming evidence), although a different italicity from Siculian, spoken further east; instead the Anatolian thesis is no longer carried on,[4] except for a minority.[1]
However, any resolution of the question of affiliation appears to rely on further archaeological investigations at Elymian settlements in western Sicily.
References
edit- ^ a b c "Early Iron Age (map)". Indo-european.eu: Languages, Cultures & Peoples. May 2021.
- ^ a b c Marchesini, Simona (2012). "The Elymian Language". In Tribulato, Olga (ed.). Language and Linguistic Contact in Ancient Sicily. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 95–114. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139248938.005. ISBN 9781139248938.
All scholars agree that Elymian is a language of the Indo-European family (p. 96).
- ^ Schrijver, Peter (2000). "Elymian". In Price, Glanville (ed.). Encyclopedia of the languages of Europe. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 136–137. ISBN 0631220399.
- ^ a b Biondi, Laura; Rockenhaus, Melanie. "Elimo" [Elymian]. Mnamon: Ancient writing systems in the Mediterranean: a critical guide to electronic resources. Pisa, Italy. Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa, Italy): laboratorio di Storia, Archeologia, Epigrafia, Tradizione dell'antico. Retrieved 16 May 2024.
- ^ Luciano Agostiniani (1977). Iscrizioni anelleniche di Sicilia: le iscrizioni elime. L. S. Olschki. ISBN 9788822222855.
Further reading
edit- Ambrosini, Riccardo. "Italica o anatolica la lingua dei graffiti di Segesta?". In Studi e Saggi Linguistici, VIII, 1968, 160–172 (In Italian)
- Agostiniani, Luciano. "Iscrizioni anelleniche di Sicilia, I: Le iscrizioni elime". Firenze, 1977. (In Italian)
- Laboratorio Di Storia, Archeologia (2008). Biondi, Laura (ed.). Elymian — 5th century BC. Translated by Rockenhaus, Melanie. Pisa, Italy: Scuola Normale Superiore Laboratorio di Storia, Archeologia, Epigrafia, Tradizione dell'antico. doi:10.25429/sns.it/lettere/mnamon000. ISBN 978-88-7642-719-0.
{{cite book}}:|website=ignored (help) - Agostiniani, Luciano; De Cesare, Monica; Enegren, Hedvig Landenius (2014). "Garments for a goddess? Apropos of an inscribed loom weight from Segesta". Rivista di Archeologia (38): 57–73. ISSN 0392-0895.
- Durante, Marcello. "L'enigma della lingua degli Elimi". In: AA. VV. Φιλίας χάριν. Miscellanea di studi classici in onore di Eugenio Manni, 1980, III, 881–888. (In Italian)
- Kolb, M. J., Speakman, R. J. (2005). “Elymian Regional Interaction in Iron Age Western Sicily: A. Preliminary Neutron Activation Study of Incised/Impressed Tablewares”. In: Journal of Archaeological Science (JAS) Volume 32, Issue 5. pp. 795–804. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2005.01.003
- Prag, Jonathan (2020). "The Indigenous Languages of Sicily". Palaeohispanica (20): 531–551. doi:10.36707/palaeohispanica.v0i20.376. ISSN 1578-5386. S2CID 230709663.
- Rizzo, Antonino, "Segesta", in Monetazione della Sicilia antica