2023-09-22 11:33:08
At this excavation site at the foot of Ambarlikaya in Bogazköy-Hattusha in Turkey, a cuneiform tablet with a previously unknown Indo-European language was discovered. – ANDREAS SCHACHNER / DEUTSCHES ARCHÄOLOGISCHES INS.
MADRID, 22 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) –
An excavation in Türkiye, at the Bogazköy-Hattusha site, where the capital of the Hittite Empire was locatedhas brought to light an unknown Indo-European language recognized on clay tablets.
The Hittites were one of the great powers of Western Asia during the Late Bronze Age (1650 to 1200 BC).
The excavations at Bogazköy-Hattusha They have been carried out for more than 100 years under the direction of the German Archaeological Institute. The site has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986; So far, almost 30,000 clay tablets with cuneiform writing have been found there.. These tablets, which were included in UNESCO’s World Documentary Heritage in 2001, provide rich information about the history, society, economy and religious traditions of the Hittites and their neighbors.
Annual archaeological campaigns led by the site’s current director, Professor Andreas Schachner of the Istanbul Department of the German Archaeological Institute, continue to expand the cuneiform finds. Most of the texts are written in Hittite, the oldest documented Indo-European language and the dominant language at the site. However, this year’s excavations yielded a surprise. Hidden in a cult ritual text written in Hittite is a recitation in a hitherto unknown language.
Professor Daniel Schwemer, director of the Chair of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the Julius-Maximilians University (JMU) in Würzburg, Germany, is working on the cuneiform finds from the excavation. He reports that the Hittite ritual text refers to the new language as the language of the land of Kalasma. This is an area in the northwest corner of the Hittite heartland, probably in the area of present-day Bolu or Gerede.
The discovery of another language in the Bogazköy-Hattusha archives is not entirely unexpected, as explained it’s a statement Daniel Schwemer: “The Hittites were especially interested in recording rituals in foreign languages.”
These ritual texts, written by scribes of the Hittite king, reflect diverse traditions and linguistic environments from Anatolia, Syria, and Mesopotamia. The rituals provide valuable glimpses into the little-known linguistic landscapes of Late Bronze Age Anatolia, where not only Hittite was spoken. Thus, the Bogazköy-Hattusha cuneiform texts include passages in Luwian and Palaic, two other Anatolian Indo-European languages closely related to Hittite, as well as in Hatic, a non-Indo-European language. Now the language of Kalasma can be added to these.
Being written in a newly discovered language, the Kalasmaic text is still largely incomprehensible. Daniel Schwemer’s colleague Professor Elisabeth Rieken (Philipps-Universität Marburg), a specialist in ancient Anatolian languages, has confirmed that the language belongs to the Anatolian Indo-European language family.
According to Rieken, despite its geographical proximity to the area where Palaic was spoken, the text appears to share more characteristics with Luwian. The close relationship between the Kalasma language and the other Anatolian Luwian dialects of the Late Bronze Age will be the subject of further research.
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