The Hittite Cuneiform

Anyone remember when the internet came into existence? Or perhaps your first encounter with the world wide web? Well that was quite a while ago and I think many of us feel as though it's just always been apart of our lives, but talk to those 15 years older and it's a different story. Just try and imagine how unique/unfathomable it was when it first started to become common....I think that's how many civilizations felt when written formats surfaced or became common.

Well i've been able to spend time searching out the roots of the Hittite language and specifically how it transitioned into a written form. This has been quite complex and confusing, but I think I finally have a fair idea of how things went! It really is quite interesting, especially when you try to put yourself in a Hittites shoes and imagine the awe that they would have been in as written text came into play.

So as a background, there is a group of languages called the Indo-European languages. This consists of several HUNDRED related languages and dialects and are actually spoken by 3 billion native speakers today. Now within this group (the Indo-european) there is a subgroup labelled the Anatolian languages, which consist of a number of already extinct languages. There are roughly 8 languages apart of the Anatolian languages and Hittite being one of them, all which are somewhat similar and no longer in use.

This is roughly the borders of the Hittite Empire

According to a book titled "The Hittites" by Oliver Gurney, inside the hittite empire there were about 8 different languages but that doesn't mean that each of them were equal in the use or composition of inscriptions. Each of them their own purposes to some extent.

The Hittite language is one of the two languages though that was used by the Kings in order to send out official documents. It's important to know that the the other language used was Akkadian and i'll share that importance a little later on.

So when the time of the written text came into play due the Hittites adopted the cuneiform way of writing probably largely due to where they lived geographically. When this happened, they also adopted many many of the Akkadian cuneiform signs and they essentially were the same written languages. 

That is why it's interesting but logical that these two written forms were used for official documents from the king exclusively.

This cuneiform is syllabary which means that each sign is read as a syllable consists of a few variations. It can have either a vowel+consonant or consonant + vowel, or a consonant +vowel + consonant.

There are a few unique things that happened when the Hittites went to a written text that I think are worthy of explaining.

These are things that Gurney explains in his book as he discussed the written languages of the hittites empire. For a long time it was suspected that many of these languages in the hittite empire had lost their laryngeals (which is a guttural sound, give it a try) which had been present in the parent speech but over time lost. Upon discovering the written text of the Hittites however, they fond that the letter h was frequently found in positions corresponding exactly to those where, in other languages, a laryngeals was supposed to have been lost. So as this happened, the so called "laryngeal theory," was vindicated. As a side note, a lot of the written text of the hittites was discovered as of recent, meaning within the last 150 years.

Single Cuneiform Symbol

The second thing which I learned as I was reading from Gurney's book is a term called "Allography"

Allography is the practice of writing a different word from that which was actually pronounced. As they discovered Hittite texts they found that they are loaded with words that are purely Akkadian and even a few sumerian words. It has been determined though that these words would not actually be pronounced in reading, they would simply conceal the corresponding Hittite word. The reader is expected to substitute the hittite word in place of it.

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FYI- Palomitas de Maiz is........popcorn!

So according to Gurney, the rules of Allography was so rigid in some cases that  many common Hittite words were never phonetically written and so they remain unknown to us even today. 

The written language of the hittites has done a lot for recent research of the Indo-european languages and it still being studied extensively to tie off the loose ends.

The cuneiform that i'm going to post is very similar to that of the Akkadians, you can see the similarity if you look at Ancient Scripts and compare.

For a better quality example, click here