The Bogazkoy archives are a collection of texts found on the site of the capital of the Hittite state, the city of Hattusas (now Bogazkoy in Turkey). They are the oldest extant documents of the state, and they are believed to have been created in the 2nd millennium BC. The archive contains approximately 25,000 tablets. [1]
The archive contains royal annals, treaties, political correspondence, legal texts, inventory texts along with instructions, texts related to administration, mythological texts, and religious texts. [2] Also a tablet describing a peace treaty between a Hittite Ruler and an Indo aryan King which was witnessed by the Vedic Deities such as Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Nasatya etc.
Most tablets were found to be written in the Hittite language. However, some of the tablets are written in Hurrian, and a few paragraphs of the tablets are written in Hattic. Akkadian is also a common language, though it is interspersed with Hurrian and Hittite. [3] Given that the writing is mostly in cuneiform, there are Sumerograms interspersed throughout the texts regardless of language.
The Bogazkoy Archives were discovered in 1906 by Hugo Winckler and Theodore Makridi. [2]
The Hittites were an Anatolian Indo-European people who formed one of the first major civilizations of Bronze Age West Asia. Possibly originating from beyond the Black Sea, they settled in modern day Turkey in the early 2nd millennium BC. The Hittites formed a series of polities in north-central Anatolia, including the kingdom of Kussara, the Kanesh or Nesha kingdom, and an empire centered on Hattusa. Known in modern times as the Hittite Empire, it reached its peak during the mid-14th century BC under Šuppiluliuma I, when it encompassed most of Anatolia and parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia.
The Hurrians were a people who inhabited the Ancient Near East during the Bronze Age. They spoke the Hurrian language, and lived throughout northern Syria, upper Mesopotamia and southeastern Anatolia.
The Anatolian languages are an extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Anatolia, part of present-day Turkey. The best known Anatolian language is Hittite, which is considered the earliest-attested Indo-European language.
Mitanni, earlier called Ḫabigalbat in old Babylonian texts, c. 1600 BC; Hanigalbat or Hani-Rabbat in Assyrian records, or Naharin in Egyptian texts, was a Hurrian-speaking state in northern Syria and southeast Anatolia with Indo-Aryan linguistic and political influences. Since no histories, royal annals or chronicles have yet been found in its excavated sites, knowledge about Mitanni is sparse compared to the other powers in the area, and dependent on what its neighbours commented in their texts.
Luwian, sometimes known as Luvian or Luish, is an ancient language, or group of languages, within the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. The ethnonym Luwian comes from Luwiya – the name of the region in which the Luwians lived. Luwiya is attested, for example, in the Hittite laws.
Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform scripts are marked by and named for the characteristic wedge-shaped impressions which form their signs. Cuneiform is the earliest known writing system and was originally developed to write the Sumerian language of southern Mesopotamia.
Hittite, also known as Nesite, is an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken by the Hittites, a people of Bronze Age Anatolia who created an empire centred on Hattusa, as well as parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia. The language, now long extinct, is attested in cuneiform, in records dating from the 17th to the 13th centuries BC, with isolated Hittite loanwords and numerous personal names appearing in an Old Assyrian context from as early as the 20th century BC, making it the earliest attested use of the Indo-European languages.
Hattusa, also Hattuşa, Ḫattuša, Hattusas, or Hattusha, was the capital of the Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age during two distinct periods. Its ruins lie near modern Boğazkale, Turkey, within the great loop of the Kızılırmak River.
Hurrian is an extinct Hurro-Urartian language spoken by the Hurrians (Khurrites), a people who entered northern Mesopotamia around 2300 BC and had mostly vanished by 1000 BC. Hurrian was the language of the Mitanni kingdom in northern Mesopotamia and was likely spoken at least initially in Hurrian settlements in modern-day Syria.
Pinikir, also known as Pinigir, Pirengir, Pirinkir, and Parakaras, was an Ancient Near Eastern astral goddess who originates in Elamite religious beliefs. While she is only infrequently attested in Elamite documents, she achieved a degree of prominence in Hurrian religion. Due to her presence in pantheons of many parts of the Ancient Near East, from Anatolia to Iran, modern researchers refer to her as a "cosmopolitan deity."
Anitta, son of Pitḫana, reigned ca. 1740–1725 BC, and was a king of Kuššara, a city that has yet to be identified. He is the earliest known ruler to compose a text in the Hittite language.
The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations is located on the south side of Ankara Castle in the Atpazarı area in Ankara, Turkey. It consists of the old Ottoman Mahmut Paşa bazaar storage building, and the Kurşunlu Han. Because of Atatürk's desire to establish a Hittite museum, the buildings were bought upon the suggestion of Hamit Zübeyir Koşay, who was then Culture Minister, to the National Education Minister, Saffet Arıkan. After the remodelling and repairs were completed (1938–1968), the building was opened to the public as the Ankara Archaeological Museum.
Kurunta was a younger son of the early 13th century BC Hittite king Muwatalli II and cousin of Tudhaliya IV. Kurunta was thereby a Hittite prince and king of Tarhuntassa country. It has been suggested that he may have captured the Hittite capital for a very short time during the reign of the Hittite king Tuthaliya IV and declared himself a great king.
Sapinuwa was a Bronze Age Hittite city at the location of modern Ortaköy in the province Çorum in Turkey about 70 kilometers east of the Hittite capital of Hattusa. It was one of the major Hittite religious and administrative centres, a military base and an occasional residence of several Hittite kings. The palace at Sapinuwa is discussed in several texts from Hattusa.
Šamuḫa is an ancient settlement near the village of Kayalı Pinar, c. 40 km west of Sivas, in the Sivas Province of Turkey. Located on the northern bank of Kizil Irmak river, it was a city of the Hittites, a religious centre and, for a few years, a military capital for the empire. Samuha's faith was syncretistic. Rene Lebrun in 1976 called Samuha the "religious foyer of the Hittite Empire".
Hittite cuneiform is the implementation of cuneiform script used in writing the Hittite language. The surviving corpus of Hittite texts is preserved in cuneiform on clay tablets dating to the 2nd millennium BC.
The Hurrian songs are a collection of music inscribed in cuneiform on clay tablets excavated from the ancient Amorite-Canaanite city of Ugarit, a headland in northern Syria, which date to approximately 1400 BC. One of these tablets, which is nearly complete, contains the Hurrian Hymn to Nikkal, making it the oldest surviving substantially complete work of notated music in the world. While the composers' names of some of the fragmentary pieces are known, h.6 is an anonymous work.
Kešši or Kešše is the eponymous protagonist of a narrative of Hurrian origin known from Hattusa and Amarna. Fragments of versions in Hurrian, Hittite and Akkadian have been discovered. Individual events vary between them, and they do not fully correspond to each other, but it is agreed that they record variants of the same main narrative. In addition to Kešši himself it involved his wife Šintalimeni, his mother, his wife's evil brother Udipšarri, a number of Hurrian deities such as Kušuḫ and Kumarbi and other characters. The Hurrian version preserves sections focused on Kešši's despair after he is asked to donate his emmer, an argument between him and his wife and a number of references to events involving deities. The Hittite passages describe how Kešši abandoned his duties towards the gods and his mother after getting married, a hunting trip and a number of dreams he has in its aftermath. Individual elements of the narrative have been compared to tales focused on other heroes, namely Gurparanzaḫ and Gilgamesh.
The Kalašma language, or Kalasmaic, is an extinct Anatolian language spoken in the late Bronze Age polity of Kalašma, which lay on the northwest fringe of the Hittite Empire, likely in or around what is now the Turkish province of Bolu.