DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4668#0091
II.] Note on the Sacred Angle. 73
current of many migrations and supplied the arena of
many collisions. That island took its appellation not
from the Romans—for they, as Ovid tells us, called it
Trinacris, from its three-cornered shape—but from the
Sikeli, a tribe who, according to Thucydides, immi-
grated into it from the Southern part of Italy, with
which territory the island was for centuries intimately
associated. Now the Sikeli bear a name which
is meaningless in Greek or Latin, but in Egyptian
signihes, without change or modification of any kind,
" Sons of the Angle;" while the similar but more
suggestive title of " Pirates of the Angle " is found in
the Greek name Laestrygones, another race who dwelt
there, of such high antiquity that Thucydides confesses
bis ignorance of their origin. From hence, too, we
may not improbably derive our own word "sickle," or
"sikel," as it used to be spelt. For the sickle-sword (of
which an Angle was a symbol in the priestly alphabet of
®Sypt) was, as may still be seen upon the monuments,
the sacred weapon with which the Egyptian monarch slew
the captives ; and as Captain Burton has shown in his
well-known treatise on the sword, it is the instrument
from which both the Eastern scimitar and the cutlass of
our own sailors take shape.
Again, at the Eastern extremity of the Levant, the
name of Angle once more appears in a double form, and
*i still more marked and suggestive connection. Right
opposite the mouths of the Nile, just in the locality
where sea-immigrants from Egypt would probably land
after passing the almost harbourlcss coasts of Palestine,
be the countries of Kilikia and Phoenicia, each expressing
current of many migrations and supplied the arena of
many collisions. That island took its appellation not
from the Romans—for they, as Ovid tells us, called it
Trinacris, from its three-cornered shape—but from the
Sikeli, a tribe who, according to Thucydides, immi-
grated into it from the Southern part of Italy, with
which territory the island was for centuries intimately
associated. Now the Sikeli bear a name which
is meaningless in Greek or Latin, but in Egyptian
signihes, without change or modification of any kind,
" Sons of the Angle;" while the similar but more
suggestive title of " Pirates of the Angle " is found in
the Greek name Laestrygones, another race who dwelt
there, of such high antiquity that Thucydides confesses
bis ignorance of their origin. From hence, too, we
may not improbably derive our own word "sickle," or
"sikel," as it used to be spelt. For the sickle-sword (of
which an Angle was a symbol in the priestly alphabet of
®Sypt) was, as may still be seen upon the monuments,
the sacred weapon with which the Egyptian monarch slew
the captives ; and as Captain Burton has shown in his
well-known treatise on the sword, it is the instrument
from which both the Eastern scimitar and the cutlass of
our own sailors take shape.
Again, at the Eastern extremity of the Levant, the
name of Angle once more appears in a double form, and
*i still more marked and suggestive connection. Right
opposite the mouths of the Nile, just in the locality
where sea-immigrants from Egypt would probably land
after passing the almost harbourlcss coasts of Palestine,
be the countries of Kilikia and Phoenicia, each expressing