Iliria

http://www.illyrians.org/pontic.html


Geografska karta sadašnjih Ilira – Albanaca, označena zelenom linijom, gdje se momentalno nalaze.

To nije velikoalbanska ideja, koju takozvana Panslavistička doktrina na Balkanu (Rusija, Srbija i Grčka) su je širili tokom 19 i 20 stoljeća, za koju su i ratove vodili, protjerali i masakrirali više od 400.000 ljudi sa svih prostora Balkana, počevši od balkanskih ratova 1908 godine, I i II svjetskog rata, i napokon od 1991 – 2000 godine na prostorima Hrvatske, Bosne i Kosovu.
U biti, to je samo prirodna potreba Ilira – Albanaca da žive u okruženju gdje neče biti granica, a što da ne i u jednoj državi sa naturaliziranim granicama.

Iliria

The beginning of Illyrian civilization
The first indications of Illyrian civilisation go back to the end of the third millennium BC, ceramic articles being the most common. First there are vases with two handles rising higher than the neck. During the Bronze Age, burials gained in solemnity, and the first tumuli appeared, the tombs often embellished with a rich funeral dressing. The popularity of tools, armour and ornaments made of bronze brought certain increase to metallurgy. Nature had a hand in this as the country was fairly rich in minerals. Social differences became accentuated, a wealthy social class and a tribal aristocracy emerged in Illyrian society. On the Maliq site among other discoveries were bronze knifes and a bronze scythe belonging to the Aegean civilization of the sixteenth century BC. We have very cause to believe that these objects, as well as a number of knifes of Mycenaean origin discovered in the tumuli at Pazhok and Vajza, reached southern Illyria via exchanges with Greece.
At the end of the Bronze Age, and especially in the first part of the Iron Age, which is chronological with the first millennium BC, the Illyrians embarked on a new stage of their economic ,social and cultural growth. The ancient cities ,the fortified tribal centers and places of refuge for the surrounding population in case of war, were generally found on the tops of the hills or mountings, or along valleys, or beside roads where they held a dominant position. These cities were to protected by thick walls, constructed with huge, rough or slightly hewn stones. These early fortresses, which varied by their size and according to the shape of the enclosure, had no towers yet and their gates were narrow. The really old fortress of Gaitan (in Shkodra region in northern Albania) is an excellent example.
The funeral trappings discovered in the two burial necropolis at Mati especially and at Kuci i Zi (In the Korce Region) are particularly important for the information they give of Illyrian civilization in the first part of Iron Age.
A large quantity of iron armors has been retrieved-swords, daggers, kandjars, knives. Armor used in self-defense by wealthy soldiers-helmets, daggers, and bronze leg-shields are plentiful. The jewels found in abundance in the woman's tombs are also made of bronze: fibulae, buttons, pendants on chains, bracelets, pins and diadems .The arms and ornaments found in the tombs were made by high-reputed master iron-workers of the Pirustae tribe, who lived in this rich mining region. From the first part of the Iron Age the civilization in southern Illyria had its own physical features, which distinguished it from neighboring civilizations.
Very little in known about the language of Illyrians. We still have not found inscriptions or documents written in this language .There are only a few rare inscription in a Messapian dialect which was spoken in southern Italy. The only evidence of ancient Illyrian are a few names or places or people or a few isolated words ,accompanied by their meaning, reported by Ancient writers. According to linguists, the Illyrian language belonged to the Indo-European group. Illyrian was a language in common use, while Greek and Latin, the latter in particular, were only used as commercial, administrative and epigraphic languages. In certain cases, to complete the Latin alphabet, the Illyrians used their own characters, apparently to reproduce the sounds which were peculiar to their own language.
Illyria was a vast country; so its regions naturally presented various geographic and climatic conditions which determined the development of various sectors of economy activity. In areas rich in minerals, jobs associated with the extraction of treatment of metals grew in number.
The warm, coastal regions, as Strabo wrote, were covered in vineyards and olive groves. The Illyrians from the southern regions were famous animal breeders, and their oxen and sheep were admired even outside Illyria. According to ancient writers Illyrians were characterized by their honesty and hospitality. Among others, Demosthenes, Diodorus of Sicily and Nicolaus of Damas tell us that the Illyrians held nothing dearer than liberty and that they never let their wounded fall into the hands of the enemy-they were ready to sacrifice their lives to defend their friends and those near to them. These authors praised their virtues as soldiers.
Not much is known about Illyrian religion during the first part of the Iron Age.
Like all primitive people, they adored everything which seemed extraordinary in nature, particularly the sun. The symbol of the sun -an empty or solid circle- is often found on pieces of Illyrian craftsmanship. Since the Illyrians had no real sculpture when their race began, and since the functions of a large number of their divinities were very similar to those of the Greek deities, they gave their gods the physiognomy and attributes of the corresponding Greek gods. So the god of the waters and forest -the Thana of the northern Illyrian regions- was linked to the Greek Artemis then later to the Roman Diana.
The same occurred with the main god of Parthinians who figures in effigy form on the bronze coin of Dyrrachium (today Durres) and Shkodra; the Greek colonists gave him the name of Zeus, with whom he shared similar characteristic and functions. But for the Illyrians these divines were the Diana of the Candavia tribe and the Jupiter of the Parthinians, and they should not of course be confused with the Roman Jupiter and Diana. Apart from these similarities, inscriptions have revealed the names of a large number of Illyrian gods. Besides Medaure, god of war, we also find Bonus, god of spring and woods, Latra, Sentona, Vidosa and many others.

Kombinacija dvijuh zastava bi bila i zastava Iliria-Macedonia.

Iliria-Makedonija

Kjo eshte kerkese e popullit shiptare ne Maqedonise, ne lidhje me emrin ne bisedimet me Greqine. Problemi do te zgjidheshte - i pranueshem per Greket, poashtu dhe Shqiptaret do te ishin te kenaqur.

Ovo je zahtjev Albanskog naroda u Makedonija, u vezi imena u pregovorima sa Grckom. Problem sa grckom bi bio resen - prihvatljiv za grcku, a i albanci bi bili zadovoljni.

We would like to stop on some interesting facts of mythology;
The ultimate hero; the son of Zeus and the mortal, Alkmene (Alcmene).
The life of Herakles was one of fearless adventure and countless sorrows; the ancient Greeks had no doubts as to his reality; historians like Herodotus (Histories, book 4, chapter 82) and Xenophon (Anabasis, book 6, chapter 2) mentioned him with no hesitation and recounted his exploits as actual historical events; the descendants of Herakles ruled numerous cities and districts for perhaps five or six hundred years after his death.
His half-brother, Iphikles (Iphicles), was also born to Alkmene but was the son of Amphitryon and conceived on the same night as Herakles; Zeus had promised that the next son born in the line of Perseus would rule Argos; Hera delayed the birth of Herakles so that his cousin, Eurystheus, could become the ruler of Argos and Herakles would be doomed to a life of wandering and hardship.
While Herakles was still a child, Hera sent serpents to kill him but Herakles managed to kill the beasts in his crib; as a young man, Herakles was bound to his cousin, Eurystheus, and was required to perform twelve Labors commonly known as the Labors of Herakles; after the completion of the Labors, Herakles was free to do as he wished but the Immortals had devised a hard life for Herakles and his life was punctuated with toil and misery; the accomplishments of his adult life have been divided into three classifications: Labors (athloi), Incidentals (parerga) and Deeds (praxeis).
The death of Herakles was particularly sad because he was accidentally poisoned by his last earthly wife, Deianeira; Herakles built his own funeral pyre and offered his bow and quiver to a man named Philoktetes in exchange for lighting the fire that would consume him; before Herakles could die an agonizing death, Athene (Athena) or Nike raised his immortal body to Mount Olympos (Olympus) where he still resides, wedded to the goddess of Youth, Hebe.
Achilles
Achilles was the son of the mortal Peleus and the Nereid Thetis. He was the mightiest warrior who fought in the Trojan War, and was the hero of Homer's Iliad. Thetis attempted unsuccessfully to make her son immortal. There are two versions of the story. In the earlier version, Thetis anointed the infant with ambrosia and then placed him upon a fire to burn away his mortal portions; she was interrupted by Peleus, whereupon she abandoned both father and son in a rage. Peleus placed the child in the care of the Centaur Chiron, who raised and educated the boy. In the later version, she held the young Achilles by the heel and dipped him in the river Styx; everything the sacred waters touched became invulnerable, but the heel remained dry and therefore unprotected.
When Achilles was a boy, the seer Calchas prophesied that the city of Troy could not be taken without his help. Thetis knew that, if her son went to Troy, he would die an early death, so she sent him to the court of Lycomedes, in Scyros; there he was hidden, disguised as a young girl. During his stay he had an affair with Lycomedes' daughter, Deidameia, and she had a son, Pyrrhus (or Neoptolemus), by him. Achilles' disguise was finally penetrated by Odysseus, who placed arms and armor amidst a display of women's finery and seized upon Achilles when he was the only "maiden" to be fascinated by the swords and shields. Achilles then went willingly with Odysseus to Troy, leading a host of his father's Myrmidons and accompanied by his tutor Phoenix and his close friend Patroclus. At Troy, Achilles distinguished himself as an undefeatable warrior. Among his other exploits, he captured twenty-three towns in Trojan territory, including the town of Lyrnessos, where he took the woman Briseis as a war-prize. Later on Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks, was forced by an oracle of Apollo to give up his own war-prize, the woman Chryseis, and took Briseis away from Achilles as compensation for his loss. This action sparked the central plot of the Iliad, for Achilles became enraged and refused to fight for the Greeks any further. The war went badly, and the Greeks offered handsome reparations to their greatest warrior; Achilles still refused to fight in person, but he agreed to allow his friend Patroclus to fight in his place, wearing his armor. The next day Patroclus was killed and stripped of the armor by the Trojan hero Hector, who mistook him for Achilles.
Achilles was overwhelmed with grief for his friend and rage at Hector. His mother obtained magnificent new armor for him from Hephaestus, and he returned to the fighting and killed Hector. He desecrated the body, dragging it behind his chariot before the walls of Troy, and refused to allow it to receive funeral rites. When Priam, the king of Troy and Hector's father, came secretly into the Greek camp to plead for the body, Achilles finally relented; in one of the most moving scenes of the Iliad, he received Priam graciously and allowed him to take the body away.
After the death of Hector, Achilles' days were numbered. He continued fighting heroically, killing many of the Trojans and their allies, including Memnon and the Amazon warrior Penthesilia. Finally Priam's son Paris (or Alexander), aided by Apollo, wounded Achilles in the heel with an arrow; Achilles died of the wound. After his death, it was decided to award Achilles' divinely-wrought armor to the bravest of the Greeks. Odysseus and Ajax competed for the prize, with each man making a speech explaining why he deserved the honor; Odysseus won, and Ajax then went mad and committed suicide.
During his lifetime, Achilles is also said to have had a number of romantic episodes. He reportedly fell in love with Penthesilia, the Amazon maiden whom he killed in battle, and it is claimed that he married Medea.
Pyrrhus
Neoptolemus, also called Pyrrhus, was the only son of Achilles and grandson of Peleus. When Achilles disguised himself as a girl in the court of the king of Scyros to avoid taking part in the Trojan War, he had an affair with Deidamea, the king's daughter, who bore him the child. Twenty years later in the war, after the death of Achilles and Ajax and no signs of victory for the Greeks, the Greeks desperately captured the Trojan seer, Helenus, and forced him to tell them under what conditions could they take Troy. Helenus revealed to them that they could defeat Troy if they could achieve the poisonous arrows of Heracles (then at Philocthetes); steal the Palladium (which lead to the building of the famous wooden horse of Troy); and persuade Achilles' son to join the war. The Greeks made haste to fetch Neoptolemus at Scyros, and brought him to Troy.
Being the youngest of the Greek warriors at that time, Neoptolemus' behavior was also the most savage and cruelest among them, often being contrasted to Achilles. Among those he killed in the war were the courageous King Priam, his youngest daughter Polyxena, and Hector's son Astyanax. After the fall of Troy, he took Hector's widow, Andromache, as a concubine and sailed to the Epirot Islands with Phoenix and Helenus. He became the king of Epirus who condemned Odysseus to exile after the latter slayed the large number of suitors at his house. Neoptolemus had a son named Molossus from Andromache, and he is also said to have a daughter, Olympia, who later became the mother of Alexander the Great.
Eventually, Neoptolemus met his death either after he later robbed Hermione from her husband Orestes, or after he tried to claim satisfaction from the death of Achilles to the god who killed the hero, Apollo. In either case, Orestes murdered him in Apollo's temple at Delphi, but some say it was a Delphian cult of Apollo who killed him.