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

Volume 2, The 1st Millennium and the Eastern Mediterranean Interface

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During the 1st millennium BCE, Pre-Classical Anatolia acted as a melting pot and crossroads of languages, cultures and peoples. The political map of the world changed after the collapse of the Bronze Age, the horizon of sea routes was expanded to new interregional networks, new writing systems emerged including the alphabets. The Mediterranean world changed dramatically, and Indo-European languages – Luwic, Lydian, but also Phrygian and Greek – interacted with increasing intensity with each other and with the neighbouring idioms and cultures of the Syro-Mesopotamian, Iranian and Aegean worlds. With an innovative combination of linguistic, historical and philological work, this book will provide a state-of-the-art description of the contacts at the linguistic and cultural boundary between the East and the West.
Copyright Year:
2025
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978-90-04-72970-4
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13 Jun 2025
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978-90-04-72969-8
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12 Jun 2025
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About MyBook
Federico Giusfredi is associate professor of Ancient Near Eastern History 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.

  Stella Merlin is a postdoctoral researcher at the Federico II University of Naples. Her research within the PALaC project mainly focuses on the language contact between Greek and Anatolian languages of the 1st millennium.

  Valerio Pisaniello is associate professor of Historical and General Linguistics at the "G. d'Annunzio" University of Chieti and Pescara. His research mainly focuses on linguistics and philology of the ancient Anatolian languages.   
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Abbreviations

1 Introduction to Volume 2
 F. Giusfredi, A. Matessi, S. Merlin and V. Pisaniello
 1 What is this volume?
 2 The structure of the book
 3 Multi-authored Chapters
 4 Chronologies: Addendum
 5 Philological Conventions: Addendum

Part 1 The Ancient Near-Eastern Interface During the First Millennium



2 The Dark Age
 Federico Giusfredi and Alvise Matessi
 1 Toward the Iron Age in Anatolia and Syria: An introduction
 2 The political reorganization of the Ancient Near East during the Dark Age
 3 The fall of Hatti and its aftermath in central Anatolia
 4 Luwian Syro-Anatolia
 5 The linguistic map of the Ancient Near East after the end of the Bronze Age

3 The Iron Age
 Alvise Matessi and Federico Giusfredi
 1 Introduction
 2 The Syro-Anatolian area from the 10th century until the Assyrian conquest
 3 The Phrygian area
 4 Western Anatolia from the 10th century to the Achaemenids
 5 Concluding remarks

4 Cilicia in the Iron Age
 H. Craig Melchert
 1 Defining the topic
 2 The land
 3 Languages and speakers
 4 History

5 Iron Age Luwian in its Anatolian and Syro-Mesopotamian contexts
 Federico Giusfredi and Valerio Pisaniello
 1 Introduction
 2 Lexical interference
 3 Grammatical interference
 4 Onomastics
 5 Concluding remarks

6 Lycian and the Achaemenid Empire
 Valerio Pisaniello
 1 Lycia under Persian domination
 2 The Lycian language
 3 Sources for the study of Lycian–Iranian language contact
 4 Iranian influence on Lycian
 5 Lycian influence on Aramaic
 6 Lycians in the Achaemenid sources
 7 Concluding remarks

7 Lydian and the languages of the Achaemenid Empire
 Elena Martínez Rodríguez
 1 Introduction
 2 Onomastics and phonetic interference
 3 Lexical interference
 4 Grammatical interference
 5 Concluding remarks

8 Linguistic contact in the Anatolian Iron Age: The Phrygian data
 Bartomeu Obrador-Cursach
 1 Introduction: Phrygian, the Balkan language in central Anatolia
 2 Lexical borrowings concerning Phrygian
 3 Phonetic influences concerning Phrygian
 4 Morphological influences?
 5 Syntactical influences on Phrygian
 6 Phrygian bilinguals in the Iron Age
 7 Textual convergence concerning Phrygian
 8 Concluding remarks

9 On the fringes: Kartvelian, Armenian, Etruscan, and Lemnian
 Zsolt Simon
 1 Introduction
 2 The northeastern periphery: The Kartvelian languages
 3 The northeastern periphery: Armenian
 4 The northwestern periphery: Etruscan and Lemnian

Part 2 The Eastern Mediterranean and Aegean Interface



10 The Aegean–Anatolian Interface: Overview of the Late Bronze and Iron Age evidence (ca. 1400–700 BCE)
 Alvise Matessi
 1 Introduction
 2 The Ahhiyawa question and the historical interactions between Hittites and Mycenaeans
 3 Wiluša
 4 Sea Peoples and Philistines: An Aegean migration?
 5 Philistines in the north?
 6 Greeks in Cilicia? The problem of Hiyawa
 7 Concluding remarks

11 The Mediterranean interface: Anatolia and the Aegean in the Bronze Age
 Stella Merlin and Valerio Pisaniello
 1 Introduction
 2 The challenge of Pre-Greek: issues, boundaries, and limits.
 3 The Greeks and the Ancient Near East
 4 Narrowing the focus: Greece and Bronze Age Anatolia
 5 The problem of Mycenaean–Anatolian contacts
 6 Concluding remarks

12 Homer and Anatolian
 Filip De Decker and Stella Merlin
 1 Introduction
 2 Homeric Greek and Anatolian
 3 Concluding remarks

13 The problem of the scholarly and late evidence: Anatolian glosses in Greek
 Stella Merlin
 1 Introduction
 2 Types of sources and types of evidence
 3 Theoretical and methodological issues
 4 Long-memory echoes of Anatolian languages in Greek
 5 Concluding remarks

14 The problem of lexical borrowings from Anatolian languages into Greek
 Stella Merlin and Bartomeu Obrador-Cursach
 1 Theoretical premises
 2 Linguistic analysis of the relevant lexicon
 3 Summary and general discussion
 4 Concluding remarks

15 Greek and the Anatolian languages of the first millennium: Lycian, Lydian, and Carian
 Elena Martínez-Rodríguez and Stella Merlin
 1 Introduction
 2 Phonetic and morphological interference
 3 Grammatical interference
 4 Concluding remarks

16 Late languages of marginal attestation: Pamphylian, Sidetic, and Pisidian
 Stella Merlin and Valerio Pisaniello
 1 Introduction
 2 Pamphylian
 3 Sidetic
 4 Pisidian
 5 Concluding remarks

17 Conclusions to Volume 2
 F. Giusfredi, A. Matessi, S. Merlin and V. Pisaniello

Appendices: Addenda to Volume 1



Appendix 1: A note on the language of Kalašma
 Elisabeth Rieken and Ilya Yakubovich
Appendix 2: The language of KBo 19.164+
 David Sasseville
References
Index
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