Archaeologists conducting excavations in Türkiye’s northern Çorum province, house to the capital of the traditional Hittite Empire, have found a beforehand unknown Indo-European language.
Latest archaeological work within the historic metropolis led by Andreas Schachner from the German Archaeological Institute has added new cuneiform findings to this wealthy assortment.
The brand new language was noticed in a ritual textual content inscribed on a pill within the ruins of Hattusa, the Çorum Provincial Directorate of Tradition and Tourism stated Thursday in a press release.
Designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Website in 1986, Hattusa was the traditional capital metropolis of the Hittite Empire, a significant energy through the late Bronze Age (roughly 1600 to1180 BCE) within the Close to East.
Epigraphist Daniel Schwemer from the College of Wurzburg in Germany recognized the language as “a model of the language of Kalashma, which is believed to have been positioned in immediately’s Bolu or Gerede area, on the northwest finish of Hittite territory,” the directorate stated.
Insights into historical past
Over a century of excavations at Hattusa has yielded practically 30,000 clay tablets with cuneiform writing providing beneficial insights into the Empire’s historical past, society, economic system and non secular traditions.
The invention of a brand new language within the Boğazköy-Hattusha archives just isn’t completely sudden. In accordance with Professor Schwemer, the Hittites had a singular curiosity in recording rituals in overseas languages. Ritual texts written by Hittite scribes mirror varied Anatolian, Syrian and Mesopotamian traditions and linguistic contexts.
These rituals present beneficial insights into the lesser-known linguistic panorama of Late Bronze Age Anatolia (roughly from round 1600 to 1200 BCE), the place Hittite was not spoken.
In truth, the cuneiform texts in Boğazköy-Hattusha include passages not solely associated to Hittite but additionally to 2 different Anatolian languages, Luwian and Palaic, a department of the Indo-European language household, in addition to a non-Indo-European language known as Hattic, which was an historic and poorly understood language and spoken within the area of Hatti, positioned in modern-day central Türkiye, Schwemer stated.
The Kalasha (Kalasma) language might be added to this listing.
“This discovery has the potential to make important contributions to our understanding of historic languages and historical past,” he added.
The lately found textual content stays largely incomprehensible. It’s believed to belong to the Anatolian-Indo-European language household, however it shares extra linguistic traits with Luwian than Palaic, regardless of geographical proximity, in response to Professor Elisabeth Rieken, a specialist in historic Anatolian languages.
Additional analysis is required to find out its relationship with different Luwian dialects in Late Bronze Age Anatolia, Rieken stated.