Ikaros (Failaka Island)

Ikaros (Greek: Ἴκαρος) was the Hellenistic name of the Kuwaiti Failaka Island, in the Persian Gulf.[1]

Having returned from his Indian campaign to Persia, Alexander the Great ordered the island to be called Icarus, after the Icarus island in the Aegean Sea.[2] This was likely a Hellenization of the local name Akar (Aramaic ´KR), derived from the ancient bronze-age toponym Agarum.[3] Another suggestion is that the name Ikaros was influenced by the local É-kara temple, dedicated to the Babylonian sun-god Shamash. That both Failaka and the Aegean Icarus housed bull cults would have made the identification tempting all the more.[4][5]

During Hellenistic times, there was a temple of Artemis on the island.[2][6][7] The wild animals on the island were dedicated to goddess and no one should harm them.[2] Strabo wrote that on the island there was a temple of Apollo and an oracle of Artemis (Tauropolus) (μαντεῖον Ταυροπόλου).[8] The island is also mentioned by Stephanus of Byzantium[9] and Ptolemaeus.[10]

Remains of the settlement include a large Hellenistic fort and two Greek temples.[11] It may have been a trading post (emporion) of the kingdom of Characene.

References
  1. J. Hansamans, Charax and the Karkhen, Iranica Antiquitua 7 (1967) page 21-58
  2. Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander, §7.20
  3. Steffen Terp Laursen: Royal Mounds of A'ali in Bahrain: The Emergence of Kingship in Early Dilmun (pp. 340–343). ISD LLC, 2017. ISBN 9788793423190.
  4. Michael Rice: The Archaeology of the Arabian Gulf (p. 208). Routledge, 2002. ISBN 9781134967933.
  5. Jean-Jacques Glassner: "Dilmun, Magan and Meluhha" (1988); Indian Ocean In Antiquity (pp. 240-243), edited by Julian Reade. Kegan Paul International, 1996. Reissued by Routledge in 2013. ISBN 9781136155314.
  6. Dionysius of Alexandria, Guide to the Inhabited World, §600
  7. Aelian, Characteristics of Animals, §11.9
  8. Strabo, Geography, §16.3.2
  9. Stephanus of Byzantium, Ethnica, §I329.12
  10. Ptolemaeus, Geography, §6.7.47
  11. George Fadlo Hourani, John Carswell, Arab Seafaring: In the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times Princeton University Press,page 131
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