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40-487: Telipinu (or Telepinu) Proclamation is a Hittite edict , written during the reign of King Telipinu , c. 1525-1500 BCE. The text is classified as CTH 19 in the Catalogue of Hittite Texts . The edict is significant because it made possible to reconstruct a succession of Hittite Kings. It also recounts some important events like Mursili I 's conquest of Babylon of which no other Hittite document exists. Little more than

80-543: A sister language to Proto-Indo-European , rather than as a daughter language . Their Indo-Hittite hypothesis is that the parent language (Indo-Hittite) lacked the features that are absent in Hittite as well, and that Proto-Indo-European later innovated them. Other linguists, however, prefer the Schwund ("loss") Hypothesis in which Hittite (or Anatolian) came from Proto-Indo-European, with its full range of features, but

120-520: A verbal noun , a supine , and a participle . Rose (2006) lists 132 hi verbs and interprets the hi / mi oppositions as vestiges of a system of grammatical voice ("centripetal voice" vs. "centrifugal voice"). The mi -conjugation is similar to the general verbal conjugation paradigm in Sanskrit and can also be compared to the class of mi -verbs in Ancient Greek. The following example uses

160-470: A Czechoslovak archaeological team that discovered 1000 cuneiform tablets containing contracts and letters of Assyrian merchants in the Turkish village of Kültepe , and excavated the nearby ancient Hittite city of Kanesh . In 1929, Hrozný founded Archiv Orientální , which became one of the leading journals for Oriental Studies. Later in his life, he tried to decipher the hieroglyphic script used by

200-471: A rudimentary noun-class system that was based on an older animate–inanimate opposition. Hittite inflects for nine cases : nominative , vocative , accusative , genitive , dative - locative , ablative , ergative , allative , and instrumental ; two numbers : singular, and plural; and two animacy classes: animate (common), and inanimate (neuter). Adjectives and pronouns agree with nouns for animacy , number , and case . The distinction in animacy

240-409: A second he named "Ḫattuša Hittite" (or Hittite proper). The first is attested in clay tablets from Kaniš/Neša ( Kültepe ), and is dated earlier than the findings from Ḫattuša. Hittite was written in an adapted form of Peripheral Akkadian cuneiform orthography from Northern Syria. The predominantly syllabic nature of the script makes it difficult to ascertain the precise phonetic qualities of some of

280-495: Is also evidence for a length distinction. He points out that the word " e-ku-ud-du – [ɛ́kʷːtu]" does not show any voice assimilation. However, if the distinction were one of voice, agreement between the stops should be expected since the velar and the alveolar plosives are known to be adjacent since that word's "u" represents not a vowel but labialization . Hittite preserves some very archaic features lost in other Indo-European languages. For example, Hittite has retained two of

320-410: Is rudimentary and generally occurs in the nominative case , and the same noun is sometimes attested in both animacy classes. There is a trend towards distinguishing fewer cases in the plural than in the singular. The ergative case is used when an inanimate noun is the subject of a transitive verb . Early Hittite texts have a vocative case for a few nouns with -u , but it ceased to be productive by

360-597: The Hittite sound inventory . The syllabary distinguishes the following consonants (notably, the Akkadian s series is dropped), The Akkadian unvoiced/voiced series (k/g, p/b, t/d) do not express the voiced/unvoiced contrast in writing, but double spellings in intervocalic positions represent voiceless consonants in Indo-European ( Sturtevant's law ). The limitations of the syllabic script in helping to determine

400-540: The University of Vienna . In 1906, at Hattusa (modern Boğazkale, about 200 km east of Ankara ) a German expedition found the archives of the Hittite kings in cuneiform, but in an unknown language. While on active duty in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I , Hrozný published in 1917 a description of the language showing that it belonged to the Indo-European family. In 1925 Hrozný led

440-404: The proto-language . See #Classification above for more details. Hittite is the oldest attested Indo-European language, yet it lacks several grammatical features that are exhibited by other early-attested Indo-European languages such as Vedic , Classical Latin , Ancient Greek , Old Persian and Old Avestan . Notably, Hittite did not have a masculine–feminine gender system. Instead, it had

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480-508: The r / n alternation in some noun stems (the heteroclitics ) and vocalic ablaut , which are both seen in the alternation in the word for water between the nominative singular, wadar , and the genitive singular, wedenas . He also presented a set of regular sound correspondences. After a brief initial delay because of disruption during the First World War , Hrozný's decipherment, tentative grammatical analysis and demonstration of

520-581: The German officer in charge that the Germans had no legal right to pursue students on the independent university's territory. A stroke in 1944 ended his scientific work. To solve the mystery of the Hittite language, Bedřich Hrozný focused on a text passage that reads: nu NINDA-an ezzatteni watar-ma ekutteni . It was known at that time that the ideogram for NINDA meant bread in Sumerian . Hrozný thought that

560-659: The Hittite kings. The script formerly known as "Hieroglyphic Hittite" is now termed Hieroglyphic Luwian. The Anatolian branch also includes Cuneiform Luwian , Hieroglyphic Luwian , Palaic , Lycian , Milyan , Lydian , Carian , Pisidian , Sidetic and Isaurian . Unlike most other Indo-European languages, Hittite does not distinguish between masculine and feminine grammatical gender, and it lacks subjunctive and optative moods as well as aspect. Various hypotheses have been formulated to explain these differences. Some linguists , most notably Edgar H. Sturtevant and Warren Cowgill , have argued that Hittite should be classified as

600-410: The Hittite language Bedřich Hrozný ( Czech pronunciation: [ˈbɛdr̝ɪx ˈɦrozniː] ; 6 May 1879 – 12 December 1952), also known as Friedrich Hrozny , was a Czech orientalist and linguist . He contributed to the decipherment of the ancient Hittite language , identified it as an Indo-European language , and laid the groundwork for the development of Hittitology . Hrozný

640-504: The Hittite noun declension's most basic form: The verbal morphology is less complicated than for other early-attested Indo-European languages like Ancient Greek and Vedic . Hittite verbs inflect according to two general conjugations ( mi -conjugation and hi -conjugation), two voices ( active and medio-passive ), two moods ( indicative mood and imperative ), two aspects (perfective and imperfective), and two tenses ( present and preterite ). Verbs have two infinitive forms,

680-723: The Hittites and scripts used in ancient India and Crete , but failed in his effort. From 1919 to 1952, he was a Professor of cuneiform research and ancient Oriental history at the Charles University in Prague . After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia he was made rector of the Charles University , holding that post in 1939–1940 (all Czech universities were closed by Germans then). In that capacity, he helped some students escape arrest during an incident in 1939, stating to

720-523: The Indo-European affiliation of Hittite were rapidly accepted and more broadly substantiated by contemporary scholars such as Edgar H. Sturtevant , who authored the first scientifically acceptable Hittite grammar with a chrestomathy and a glossary. The most up-to-date grammar of the Hittite language is currently Hoffner and Melchert (2008). Hittite is one of the Anatolian languages and is known from cuneiform tablets and inscriptions that were erected by

760-685: The [speech] of the people of Kaneš". Although the Hittite New Kingdom had people from many diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, the Hittite language was used in most secular written texts. In spite of various arguments over the appropriateness of the term, Hittite remains the most current term because of convention and the strength of association with the Biblical Hittites . The endonymic term nešili , and its Anglicized variants ( Nesite , Nessite , Neshite ), have never caught on. The first substantive claim as to

800-410: The affiliation of Hittite was made by Jørgen Alexander Knudtzon in 1902, in a book devoted to two letters between the king of Egypt and a Hittite ruler, found at El-Amarna , Egypt . Knudtzon argued that Hittite was Indo-European, largely because of its morphology . Although he had no bilingual texts, he was able to provide a partial interpretation of the two letters because of the formulaic nature of

840-1770: The beginning of a sentence or clause is composed of either a sentence-connecting particle or otherwise a fronted or topicalized form, and a "chain" of fixed-order clitics is then appended. The transliteration and translation of the proclamation of Anitta : ne-pi-is-za-as-ta IŠKUR-un-ni a-as-su-us e-es-ta na-as-ta IŠKUR-un-ni-ma ma-a-an a-as-su-us e-es-ta Ne-e-sa-as LUGAL-us Ku-us-sa-ra-as LUGAL-i ... LUGAL Ku-us-sa-ra URU-az kat-ta pa-an-ga-ri-it ú-e-et nu Ne-e-sa-an is-pa-an-di na-ak-ki-it da-a-as Ne-e-sa-as LUGAL-un IṢ-BAT Ù DUMU Ne-e-sa-as i-da-a-lu na-at-ta ku-e-da-ni-ik-ki tak-ki-is-ta an-nu-us at-tu-us i-e-et nu Pi-it-ha-a-na-as at-ta-as-ma-as a-ap-pa-an sa-ni-ya ú-et-ti hu-ul-la-an-za-an hu-ul-la-nu-un UTU-az ut-ne-e ku-it ku-it-pat a-ra-is nu-us hu-u-ma-an-du-us-pat hu-ul-la-nu-un ka-ru-ú U-uh-na-as LUGAL Za-a-al-pu-wa Si-ú-sum-mi-in Ne-e-sa-az Za-a-al-pu-wa pe-e-da-as ap-pe-ez-zi-ya-na A-ni-it-ta-as LUGAL.GAL Si-ú-sum-mi-in Za-a-al-pu-wa-az a-ap-pa Ne-e-sa pe-e-tah-hu-un Hu-uz-zi-ya-na LUGAL Za-a-al-pu-wa hu-su-wa-an-ta-an Ne-e-sa ú-wa-te-nu-un Ha-at-tu-sa tak-ki-is-ta sa-an ta-a-la-ah-hu-un ma-a-na-as ap-pe-ez-zi-ya-na ki-is-ta-an-zi-at-ta-at sa-an Hal-ma-su-i-iz si-i-us-mi-is pa-ra-a pa-is sa-an is-pa-an-di na-ak-ki-it da-a-ah-hu-un pe-e-di-is-si-ma ZÀ.AH-LI-an a-ne-e-nu-un ku-is am-me-el a-ap-pa-an LUGAL-us ki-i-sa-ri nu Ha-at-tu-sa-an a-ap-pa a-sa-a-si na-an ne-pi-sa-as IŠKUR-as ha-az-zi-e-et-tu Bed%C5%99ich Hrozn%C3%BD#Deciphering of

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880-446: The diplomatic correspondence of the period. Knudtzon was definitively shown to have been correct when many tablets written in the familiar Akkadian cuneiform script but in an unknown language were discovered by Hugo Winckler in what is now the village of Boğazköy , Turkey, which was the former site of Hattusa , the capital of the Hittite state. Based on a study of this extensive material , Bedřich Hrozný succeeded in analyzing

920-406: The discovery of laryngeals in Hittite was a remarkable confirmation of Saussure's hypothesis. Both the preservation of the laryngeals and the lack of evidence that Hittite shared certain grammatical features in the other early Indo-European languages have led some philologists to believe that the Anatolian languages split from the rest of Proto-Indo-European much earlier than the other divisions of

960-519: The features became simplified in Hittite. According to Craig Melchert , the current tendency (as of 2012) is to suppose that Proto-Indo-European evolved and that the "prehistoric speakers" of Anatolian became isolated "from the rest of the PIE speech community, so as not to share in some common innovations". Hittite and the other Anatolian languages split off from Proto-Indo-European at an early stage. Hittite thus preserved archaisms that would be lost in

1000-436: The geminate series of plosives is the one descending from Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops , and the simple plosives come from both voiced and voiced aspirate stops, which is often referred as Sturtevant's law . Because of the typological implications of Sturtevant's law, the distinction between the two series is commonly regarded as one of voice. However, there is no agreement over the subject among scholars since some view

1040-470: The indigenous people who preceded the Hittites, speaking a non-Indo-European Hattic language . In multilingual texts found in Hittite locations, passages written in Hittite are preceded by the adverb nesili (or nasili , nisili ), "in the [speech] of Neša (Kaneš)", an important city during the early stages of the Hittite Old Kingdom . In one case, the label is Kanisumnili , "in

1080-470: The language. He presented his argument that the language is Indo-European in a paper published in 1915 (Hrozný 1915), which was soon followed by a grammar of the language (Hrozný 1917). Hrozný's argument for the Indo-European affiliation of Hittite was thoroughly modern although poorly substantiated. He focused on the striking similarities in idiosyncratic aspects of the morphology that are unlikely to occur independently by chance or to be borrowed. They included

1120-595: The more general Late Bronze Age collapse , Luwian emerged in the Early Iron Age as the main language of the so-called Syro-Hittite states , in southwestern Anatolia and northern Syria . Hittite is the modern scholarly name for the language, based on the identification of the Hatti ( Ḫatti ) kingdom with the Biblical Hittites ( Biblical Hebrew : * חתים Ḥittim ), although that name appears to have been applied incorrectly: The term Hattian refers to

1160-497: The names of the successors of Telipinu is known for a period of about 80 years. Van Seter argues that the edict is a legal, rather than a historical text, laying out rules for royal succession in the Hittite Kingdom. Lawson criticizes this approach by saying that a quasi-legal text may also be a historical one. Mario Liverani observes that the edict should be interpreted carefully, for it is a lot more useful in understanding

1200-476: The nature of Hittite phonology have been more or less overcome by means of comparative etymology and an examination of Hittite spelling conventions. Accordingly, scholars have surmised that Hittite possessed the following phonemes: Hittite had two series of consonants, one which was written always geminate in the original script, and another that was always simple. In cuneiform , all consonant sounds except for glides could be geminate. It has long been noticed that

1240-764: The norm for other writings. The Hittite language has traditionally been stratified into Old Hittite (OH), Middle Hittite (MH) and New Hittite or Neo-Hittite (NH, not to be confused with the polysemic use of " Neo-Hittite " label as a designation for the later period, which is actually post-Hittite), corresponding to the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms of the Hittite history ( c.  1750 –1500 BC, 1500–1430 BC and 1430–1180 BC, respectively). The stages are differentiated on both linguistic and paleographic grounds. Hittitologist Alwin Kloekhorst (2019) recognizes two dialectal variants of Hittite: one he calls "Kanišite Hittite", and

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1280-596: The other Indo-European languages. Hittite has many loanwords, particularly religious vocabulary from the non-Indo-European Hurrian and Hattic languages. The latter was the language of the Hattians , the local inhabitants of the land of Hatti before they were absorbed or displaced by the Hittites . Sacred and magical texts from Hattusa were often written in Hattic, Hurrian and Luwian even after Hittite had become

1320-453: The second sentence, ekutteni , had the stem eku- , which seemed to resemble the Latin aqua (water). He thus translated the second sentence as "you (will) drink water". Hrozný soon realized that the Hittites were speaking an Indo-European language, which greatly facilitated the decipherment and interpretation of Hittite cuneiform texts. Building upon these insights, he continued his work and

1360-428: The series as if they were differenced by length , which a literal interpretation of the cuneiform orthography would suggest. Supporters of a length distinction usually point to the fact that Akkadian , the language from which the Hittites borrowed the cuneiform script, had voicing, but Hittite scribes used voiced and voiceless signs interchangeably. Alwin Kloekhorst also argues that the absence of assimilatory voicing

1400-464: The situation at the time it was written than in reconstructing the past history. Telipinu Proclamation Hittite language By the Late Bronze Age , Hittite had started losing ground to its close relative Luwian . It appears that Luwian was the most widely spoken language in the Hittite capital, Hattusa, in the 13th century BC. After the collapse of the Hittite New Kingdom during

1440-475: The suffix -an might be the Hittite accusative singular ending. Then, he assumed that the second word, ed-/ezza- , had something to do with the bread and thought that it could be the verb eat . The comparison with Latin edo , English eat , and German essen led him to infer that NINDA-an ezzatteni means "you (will) eat bread". In the second sentence, Hrozný was struck by the word watar , which recalled English water and German Wasser . The last word of

1480-450: The three laryngeals ( * h₂ and * h₃ word-initially). Those sounds, whose existence had been hypothesized in 1879 by Ferdinand de Saussure , on the basis of vowel quality in other Indo-European languages, were not preserved as separate sounds in any attested Indo-European language until the discovery of Hittite. In Hittite, the phoneme is written as ḫ . In that respect, Hittite is unlike any other attested Indo-European language and so

1520-487: The time of the earliest discovered sources and was subsumed by the nominative in most documents. The allative was subsumed in the later stages of the language by the dative - locative . An archaic genitive plural -an is found irregularly in earlier texts, as is an instrumental plural in -it . A few nouns also form a distinct locative , which had no case ending at all. The examples of pišna- ("man") for animate and pēda- ("place") for inanimate are used here to show

1560-443: The verb ēš-/aš- "to be". Hittite is a head-final language: it has subject-object-verb word order , a split ergative alignment , and is a synthetic language ; adpositions follow their complement , adjectives and genitives precede the nouns that they modify, adverbs precede verbs, and subordinate clauses precede main clauses . Hittite syntax shows one noteworthy feature that is typical of Anatolian languages: commonly,

1600-595: Was born in Lysá nad Labem , Bohemia , Austria-Hungary . In the town of Kolín he learned Hebrew and Arabic . At the University of Vienna , he studied Akkadian , Aramaic , Ethiopian , Sumerian and Sanskrit , as well as the cuneiform used in Asia Minor , Mesopotamia and Persia . He also studied orientalism at Humboldt University of Berlin . In 1905, following excavations in Palestine, he became professor at

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