Contacts Of Languages And Peoples In The Hittite And Post Hittite World

Ever since the early 2nd millennium BCE, Pre-Classical Anatolia has been a crossroads of languages and peoples. This book provides a state-of-the-art study of linguistic and cultural contacts in a region that was the bridge between the East and the West

Ever since the early 2nd millennium BCE, Pre-Classical Anatolia has been a crossroads of languages and peoples. Indo-European peoples – Hittites, Luwians, Palaeans – and non-Indo-European ones – Hattians, but also Assyrians and Hurrians – coexisted with each other for extended periods of time during the Bronze Age, a cohabitation that left important traces in the languages they spoke and in the texts they wrote. By combining, in an interdisciplinary fashion, the complementary approaches of linguistics, history, and philology, this book offers a comprehensive, state-of-the-art study of linguistic and cultural contacts in a region that is often described as the bridge between the East and the West. With contributions by Paola Cotticelli-Kurras, Alfredo Rizza, Maurizio Viano, and Ilya Yakubovich.

In dealing with a wide range of aspects of the life, activities, and customs of the Late Bronze Age Hittite world, this book complements the treatment of Hittite military and political history presented by the author in The Kingdom of the Hittites (OUP, 1998). It aims to convey to the reader a sense of what it was like to live amongst the people of the Hittite world, to participate in their celebrations, to share their crises, to meet them in the streets of the capital or in their homes, to experience the sights, sounds, and smells of a healing ritual, to attend an audience with the Great King, and to follow his progress in festival processions to the holy places of the Hittite land. Through quotations from the original sources and through the word pictures to which these give rise, the book aims at recreating, as far as is possible, the daily lives and experiences of a people who for a time became the supreme political and military power in the ancient Near East.

The first comprehensive overview of the development of literacy, script usage, and literature in Hittite Anatolia (1650-1200 BC).

Covers the major languages, language families, and writing systems attested in the Ancient Near East Filled with enlightening chapters by noted experts in the field, this book introduces Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) languages and language families used during the time period of roughly 3200 BCE to the second century CE in the areas of Egypt, the Levant, eastern Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Iran. In addition to providing grammatical sketches of the respective languages, the book focuses on socio-linguistic questions such as language contact, diglossia, the development of literary standard languages, and the development of diplomatic languages or “linguae francae.” It also addresses the interaction of Ancient Near Eastern languages with each other and their roles within the political and cultural systems of ANE societies. Presented in five parts, The Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages provides readers with in-depth chapter coverage of the writing systems of ANE, starting with their decipherment. It looks at the emergence of cuneiform writing; the development of Egyptian writing in the fourth and early third millennium BCI; and the emergence of alphabetic scripts. The book also covers many of the individual languages themselves, including Sumerian, Egyptian, Akkadian, Hittite, Pre- and Post-Exilic Hebrew, Phoenician, Ancient South Arabian, and more. Provides an overview of all major language families and writing systems used in the Ancient Near East during the time period from the beginning of writing (approximately 3200 BCE) to the second century CE (end of cuneiform writing) Addresses how the individual languages interacted with each other and how they functioned in the societies that used them Written by leading experts on the languages and topics The Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages is an ideal book for undergraduate students and scholars interested in Ancient Near Eastern cultures and languages or certain aspects of these languages.

Excerpt from The Hittites and Their Language IN 1887 I published a small volume on 'altaic Hieroglyphs and Hittite Inscriptions, ' now sold out. In this I explained the reasons for suppos ing this script to be decipherable by aid of Mongol speech, and added tentative renderings of some of the shorter texts; while the reader was duly warned that much time would elapse before final results, on the lines laid down, could be expected. I received kind encouragement from several well-known specialists to continue the study, which has now occupied me for ten years, with results which confirm the original suggestions. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.