Sidetic language
Sidetic is a member of the extinct Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is known from legends of coins, found in Side at the Pamphylian coast, that date to the period of approximately the 5th to 3rd centuries BCE, and from two Greek–Sidetic bilingual inscriptions from the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE. The Greek historian Arrian in his Anabasis Alexandri mentions the existence of a peculiar indigenous language in the city of Side, which is assumed to be the language of the coins and inscriptions.
Sidetic was probably closely related to Lydian, Carian and Lycian.
Sidetic was written with a script of the Anatolian group. The Sidetic alphabet has 31 identified letters, a few of which are clearly derived from Greek. The script has been partially deciphered, though the phonetic values of many letters are uncertain.
Evidence
Inscriptions and coins
Coins from Side were first discovered in the 19th century, which bore legends in a then-unknown script. In 1914, an altar came to light in Side with a Greek inscription and a Sidetic one, but the latter could not be deciphered. It was only after the discovery of a second Greek-Sidetic bilingual inscription in 1949, that Hellmut Theodor Bossert was able to identify 14 letters of the Sidetic script using the two bilinguals. In 1964 a large stone block was unearthed near the east gate of Side, with two longer Sidetic texts, including loan words from Greek. In 1972, a text was found outside Side for the first time, at the neighbouring town of Lyrbe-Seleukia. Currently, eleven Sidetic coins and several coins with Sidetic legends are known.Catalogue of Sidetic texts
The designated number and date of discovery are given:- S1 = S I.1.1 Artemon bilingual from Side.
- S2 = S I.1.2 Apollonios bilingual from Side.
- S3 & S4 = S I.2.1-2 Strategos dedications from Side.
- S5 = S II.1.1 Palimpsest bronze voting tablet.
- S6 = S I.1.3 Euempolos bilingual from Lyrbe-Seleukia.
- S7 = S I.2.3 Inscription on fragment of the rim of a pot.
- S8 = S I.2.4 Inscription on stone Heraldes relief.
- S9 = S I.2.5 A list of names, also interpreted as the "Athenodoros memorial" - at six complete lines, this is the longest Sidetic inscription.
- S10 = S III 5th century BC coins with around twenty different legends.
- S11 Words possibly from Mnemon, a physician of Side, who added notes in Sidetic to a Greek Hippocrates manuscript.
- S12 = S II.2.1 A steatite scarab, of uncertain provenance ; on its underside three hardly identifiable signs have been carved, possibly Sidetic.
- S13 = S I.2.6 Graffito from Lyrbe-Seleukia.
Characteristics of Sidetic
Sidetic script
Texts in the Sidetic language are written right to left in an alphabet of 31 distinct letters in inscriptions, plus another 4 characters found only on coins. Recent research is providing updates to the script: there are new letters and variants| Nolle number | N19 | N20 | N21 | N22 | N23 | N24 | N25 | N26 |
| glyph | ||||||||
| transliteration | g | χ | r | V | k | b | n2 | z |
| notes | unknown vowel | perhaps | probably |
The values of two-thirds of the letters are now firmly established, but there are still significant uncertainties: for example, while the majority view is that the frequent vertical strokes are a character denoting a sibilant, that as a genitival ending would fit in nicely with the usual paradigms of the Anatolian languages, others interpret the strokes as word dividers.
Grammar
The inscriptions show that Sidetic was already strongly influenced by Greek at the time when they were written. Like Lycian and Carian, it was part of the Luwian language family. However, only a few words can be derived from Luwian roots, like maśara 'for the gods', and, possibly, malwadas 'votive offering'. It has been argued that there were also Anatolian pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, and adverbs.The declension of nouns basically follows a familiar Anatolian language pattern:
No verbs have yet been securely identified. A promising candidate is ozad, 'he offered', dedicated', a 3rd person singular preterite with the common Anatolian ending -d.
Like the neighbouring Pamphylian language, aphaeresis is frequent in names in Sidetic, as is syncope.
Unicode
The Sidetic alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in September 2025 with the release of version 17.0.The Unicode block for Sidetic is U+10940–U+1095F: