Contacts of Languages and Peoples in the Hittite and Post-Hittite World

Volume 1, The Bronze Age and Hatti

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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.
Copyright Year:
2023
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978-90-04-54863-3
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03 Jul 2023
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978-90-04-54860-2
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06 Jul 2023
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About MyBook
Federico Giusfredi is associate professor of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Verona. His research focuses on the languages, texts and cultures of Pre-Classical Near East.
Alvise Matessi is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Verona. His research focuses on cultural and political landscapes and historical geography of the Pre-Classical Near East.
Valerio Pisaniello is a postdoctoral researcher of Linguistics at the University of Verona. His main research interests focus on Indo-European studies and on linguistics and philology of the ancient Anatolian languages.
This volume is a worthwhile synthetic account of the language and cultural contacts in the complex world of Bronze Age Anatolia and its adjacent areas, which follows and builds upon recent works that go beyond traditional philological analysis. It will be of interest to experts, but undoubtedly, even less versed readers will benefit by reflecting on similarities and differences between Anatolia of the second-millennium BCE and later cases of multilingual/-cultural milieus.
By Panagiotis Filos, University of Ioannina, in BMCR 2025.04.14, https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2025/2025.04.14/
List of Figures
Abbreviations

1 Introduction
 F. Giusfredi
 1 What Is This Book?
 2 What This Book Is Not
 3 Structure of the Book
 4 Multi-Authored Chapters
 5 Chronologies
 6 Philological Conventions

Part 1 The Theoretical and Historical Setting and the Earlier Phases



2 Contacts of Cultures and Contacts of Languages
 F. Giusfredi
 1 Defining ‘Contact’
 2 Language Study as a Historical Tool
 3 Types and Areas of Language Contact in the Ancient Near East
 4 Concluding Remarks

3 Interregional Contacts and Interactions during the Fourth and Third Millennia BCE
 A. Matessi
 1 Introduction: Some Definitions
 2 The Fourth and Third Millennia BCE: An Age of Migrations?
 3 Metallurgy and Areal Interactions in Early Bronze Age Anatolia
 4 Concluding Remarks

4 Society, Culture, and Early Language Contact in Middle Bronze Age Anatolia (Ca. 1950–1650 BCE)
 A. Matessi and F. Giusfredi
 1 Introduction
 2 The Old Assyrian Merchants and Their Interactions with Anatolians
 3 The Peoples and Languages of Anatolia during the Old Assyrian Period
 4 The Geography and Scope of Old Assyrian Trade
 5 The Late Kārum Period and the Anitta Text (CTH 1)
 6 Non-Old Assyrian Commercial Networks

5 History, Society, and Culture in Anatolia and Neighboring Regions during the Hittite Period (Ca. 1650–1190 BCE)
 A. Matessi
 1 Introduction
 2 The Formative Period and the Question of Ethnicity: Hittites and Hattians
 3 Hatti, Luwiya, and Pala: Core-Periphery Dialectics in Hittite Anatolia
 4 The Empire Period: A Historical Outline
 5 Shaping the Cultural Landscape of Hittite Anatolia
 6 Concluding Remarks

6 Hittite Anatolia and the Cuneiform Koiné
 F. Giusfredi, A. Matessi and V. Pisaniello
 1 The Cuneiform Koiné
 2 Cuneiform in Anatolia: The General Context
 3 Cuneiform Archives of Anatolia and the Relevant Neighboring Areas
 4 Concluding Remarks

Part 2 The Foreign Languages of the Hittite Archives and Textual Evidence for Interference



7 Sumerian Literary and Magical Texts from Hattuša
 M. Viano
 1 Corpus, Scripts, and Findspots
 2 The Purpose of Texts
 3 The Reception of Sumerian Texts at Hattuša

8 Akkadian and Akkadian Texts in Hittite Anatolia
 F. Giusfredi and V. Pisaniello
 1 Previous Studies on the Akkadian of the Hattuša Archives
 2 The Akkadian Texts from Boğazköy: A Categorization
 3 The Akkadian of Politics and Administration
 4 The Akkadian of the Cultural Tradition
 5 Concluding Remarks

9 Hattian Texts and Hattian in the Hittite Archives
 A. Rizza
 1 Denomination and Identity
 2 The Textual Documentation
 3 The Status of Hattian in Hittite Anatolia

10 Hurrians and Hurrian in Hittite Anatolia
 F. Giusfredi and V. Pisaniello
 1 Hurrians and Anatolia
 2 Areal Relationships of Hurrian and the Hurrians
 3 Hurrian Texts from the Hittite World: Chronology, Typology, and Functions
 4 The Status of Hurrian in Anatolia
 5 Concluding Remarks

11 Cuneiform Luwian in the Hattuša Archives
 I. Yakubovich
 1 What Is (Cuneiform) Luwian and Where Is Luwiya?
 2 Contact-Induced Changes
 3 The Status of Luwian in Time and Space

12 Palaic in the Hittite Archives
 F. Giusfredi
 1 What Is Palaic and Where Is Pala?
 2 Areal Relationships of Palaic
 3 The Status of Palaic in the Hittite World
 4 Concluding Remarks

13 Indo-Aryans in the Ancient Near East
 V. Pisaniello and P. Cotticelli-Kurras
 1 Indo-Iranian People in the Ancient Near East: An Overview of the Studies
 2 Sources
 3 Linguistic Analysis
 4 Concluding Remarks

Part 3 Contact Phenomena in Late Bronze Age Anatolia



14 Lexical Contact in and around Hittite Anatolia
 V. Pisaniello and F. Giusfredi
 1 Theoretical Framework
 2 The Languages Involved
 3 The Early Northwestern Interface
 4 Akkadian and the Languages of Anatolia
 5 Hurrian, Luwian, and Hittite between Hatti and Kizzuwatna
 6 Luwian and Hittite at Hattuša
 7 Concluding Remarks

15 Grammatical Interference and the Languages of the Hittite Archives
 F. Giusfredi and V. Pisaniello
 1 Grammatical Interference
 2 The Structural Levels of Grammar
 3 In the Languages of the Hittite Archives
 4 Concluding Remarks

16 Conclusion to Volume 1

References
Index
Scholars, academics, advanced students in linguistics, cuneiform studies, ancient history
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