Messapes

The Messapes were the inhabitants of the southernmost part of Iapigia (Pouilles), distinct from Peucètes (area of Bari) and from Daunes (Foggia), also called Salentin S.

The origin of their name is not known well. The assumption that it means the people between two seas ( ap is a version of the word water ) was advanced.

Virgile and Hérodote speaks about it as of Greek origin (crétoise) but certain historians classify them among the people illyriens, made through the Canal of Otranto about the year thousand before J. - C.

Strabon also locates them like origin crétoise: " The country which follows immediately is Iapygie, which the Greeks call also Messapie and which the natives divide in two territories, that of Salentins around the Iapygien headland, and that of Calabres". (Strabon, Geography, deliver VI, 3,1)

Language

The language of Messapes, or Messapien , appears in a corpus of approximately 260 inscriptions going up for oldest with approximately 600 av J. - C. connection with the Illyrien resides primarily on onomastics, because Illyrien did not leave hard copies.

Example of text messapien (according to Mallory, In search off the Indo-Europeans , p. 91): klohizisthotoriamartapidovasteibasta veinanaranindarantoavasti

Example of a toponym messapien having an Albanian correspondence.

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