Aventinus 80

Johannes Turmayr's 1520 History of Bavaria, Chapter 80 - translated and annotated by Ras Feqade, AD 2021.

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## 80. Of King Ylsing, the emperor in Germania, and what happened in his time all over the world.

After king Larein, Germany had 53 years' administration of his son **Ylsing**, of whom one can still find old rhymes (the old Germans, our forefathers chronicles) here and there. He built a town in the Netherlands and on the Rhine in the duchy of Cleve, named Ylsiburg after him, as Cornelius Tacitus reports in the book he wrote about the Germans; he calls him Ulysses after the style of the Greek and Latin tongues. The city would now be Wesel. Homer, the earliest poët, also sends his Greek Ulysses (from the sea voyage he wrote twenty-four books) to Germany, as the oft mentioned Tacitus indicates, between the Rhine and the great German sea, where Homer sets hell and purgatory, from which the Scots have devised their patrizenloch, which the old (as I think) put in the German lands at the open seas, how the Scots also come from Germany and come from the Saxons.

[We are now after the gap, and Ylsing seems to have reigned from 1298 to 1245 BC, 53 years as stated here and in Anderson. Thus he could not have been the son of Larein 1597-1546 BC as assumed by Aventinus and Anderson, who seem unaware of the gap. King Ylsing is also somewhat too early to be the Homer's Ulysses in the Trojan war. No further German kings after Alman are mentioned in the *Defloratio* or *Supplement*, but plainly Aventinus' account is dependent on the same master source with the gap in the same place.

However, the account of Saxo Grammaticus on the Danish kings, and other Scandinavian sources, seem to cover the intervening gap. Thanks to Saxo we can reconstruct events immediately following Larein, in the period 1546-1535 BC, with mention of a 'Saxon' general Syfrid battling a Jutish renegade called Toste the Wicked, but Syfrid is defeated and constrained to join forces with Toste against king Hadding of Dania, who eventually prevails after a series of wins and losses for both parties.

We also know the name of a 'Saxon' king, Hunding, whom king Helge of the Danes slew, seizing Jutland, around 1400 BC. Saxo calls him Hunding son of king Syric, but the Poetic Eddas clearly remember Hunding himself as a king, and his sons Eyolf, Alf, Hyorvarth and Hovarth or Haeming. Other Norse sagas also record his slayer Helge as seizing Queen Aloph of Saxony around this time, presumably Hunding's widow, by whom he begat his daughter Urse.

These are the only indications of what transpired in the intervening time, suggesting heightened Danish interference in Germania. Anderson adds that Ylsing built Ulsiburgum and Emmerick on the Mayne river.]

And the aforementioned king Ylsing would also give his name to the water Ylz, which falls into the Danube at Passau. The old Bavarians used this name much as the old letters indicate. And the poetic way is that they all did, as many heroes have one name, ascribe to one of their languages: So what the German Hercules and Ulysses and the like have done more, they ascribe everything to the Greek Hercules and Ulysses.

During this time of this king Ylsing, the Germans with their king **Galter** fell upon Asia, and so did the women with their queens **Aigen** and **Kym**. Kym built a city in the middle of the land of Aeolia and Lydia on the Greek sea in Asia towards the west, named it after her Kym, where the earliest Greek poets Homer and his cousin Hesiod, likewise the ancient historian Ephorus, were born. From Aigen the Greek sea is still called Aegean, wherein she drowned. The above-mentioned German force, men and women, settled at the watercourse with the name Sangarius in the country now called greater Turkey. Then **Priam**, the last King of Troy, along with other princes and lords also kings, was sent there by his father, King **Laomedon** (so he says to Queen Helene in the third book of the destruction of the city of Troy in Homer) but one knew the German crowd gained nothing. Priam made peace and alliance with the war women, so they later, as I will write, helped against the Greeks.

[Galter is the king Galathes II of French accounts and the *Supplement*, who ruled Celtica ca. 1318-1267 BC and subdued the Sarmatians, and it seems here he ruled the Cimmerian-Getae federation when the curtain reopens after the gaps. He is also mentioned in the Scandinavian annals of this time, which state he was king of Saxony, and killed (in 1298 BC) in battle against the Swedish king Hother. This would suggest that Ylsing actually succeeded Galter over all the Germans in 1298 BC, rather than being his contemporary. Thus Ylsing may also have ruled the Celts in the time from 1298 to 1267 BC - when the *Supplement* indicates the next Celtic king Namnes ascended.

The Amazon queens Aigen and Kym (Cyme) were also contemporary with Ylsing.

Priam is known to history as Piyama radu, and before becoming king of Troy in 1233 BC, had been active in politics between the Hittites and Greeks etc. in the reign of his father Laomedon (1266-1233 BC)]