Published September 22,2023
Subscribe
In a press release from the Çorum Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, it was highlighted that Hattusa, situated in Boğazköy-Hattusa within the northern a part of Central Anatolia, served because the capital of the Hittite Empire, one of many main powers of the Late Bronze Age within the Near East.
The assertion famous that over 100 years of excavation in Hattusa has resulted within the discovery of roughly 30,000 clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform script, which have been registered as a part of the UNESCO World Memory List since 2001. These tablets are recognized to supply wealthy details about the historical past, society, financial system, and most significantly, the spiritual traditions of the Hittites and their neighbors.
Archaeological work led by Prof. Dr. Andreas Schachner from the German Archaeological Institute Istanbul Branch continues to uncover new cuneiform findings, including to the prevailing corpus of inscriptions.
The assertion revealed that this yr’s excavations unearthed a singular discovery inside a cult ritual textual content written in Hittite. It was a studying textual content written in an unknown language. Prof. Dr. Daniel Schwemer, the epigraphist for the excavation from the University of Würzburg in Germany, recognized this language as that of the Kalazmala nation, most probably situated within the northwestern finish of the Hittite heartland, probably the trendy Bolu or Gerede area.
Discovering one other language throughout the Hattusa archives isn’t completely surprising. According to Prof. Schwemer, the Hittites had a singular curiosity in recording rituals in international languages. The ritual texts composed by scribes of the Hittite king mirror numerous Anatolian, Syrian, and Mesopotamian traditions and linguistic environments. These rituals present invaluable insights into the little-known linguistic panorama of Anatolia through the Late Bronze Age when Hittite was not spoken. Additionally, the cuneiform texts from Boğazköy-Hattusa embody passages in different Anatolian Indo-European languages carefully associated to Hittite, corresponding to Luvian and Palaic, in addition to Hattic, a non-Indo-European language. Now, the Kalazmala language may be added to this checklist.
The textual content written within the newly found Kalazmala language is at present largely unintelligible and would require additional analysis to be deciphered.
Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Rieken, an skilled in historic Anatolian languages, has confirmed that this new language belongs to the Anatolian Indo-European language household. According to Rieken, regardless of its geographical proximity to the area the place Palaic was spoken, this textual content seems to share extra linguistic options with Luvian, a language carefully associated to Hittite. The extent of the connection between the Kalazmala language and different Luvian dialects in Late Bronze Age Anatolia would be the topic of additional analysis.
Source: www.anews.com.tr