[Tools] Coming soon: Ancient Hittite cuneiform scripts will be accessible online

Tablet on display at the Oriental Institute, with the caption: Hittite Cuneiform Tablet: Legal Deposition(?) Baked clay Hattusha Late Bronze Age (13th century BC) A6004 A6004 – VBot 30 – CTH 832 (Source: Wikipedia)

The Hittites played a prominent role in Anatolia 3500 years ago. Their empire extended from as far East as Carchemish all the way West to the Mediterranean Sea and as far South as Syria. First deciphered a century ago, their language (written in a Cuneiform script) is considered to be the oldest preserved Indo-European language. And for the first time ever, 30,000 documents written in the Hittite language will make their way on-line for researchers to study.

Personal thoughts: that is very exciting. Prior to this effort, finding Hittite texts was difficult as there was not one consolidated place or publication to store them. And if you could find such a thing, it was not cheap. Even the University of Chicago’s Hittite dictionary (consisting of many volumes and still incomplete) is difficult to obtain. I do hope that this online publication provides translations and lexicons and is not limited to just transliterations of the texts.

Published by petros