Hittite texts

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The corpus of texts written in the Hittite language is indexed by the Catalogue des Textes Hittites (CTH, since 1971). [1] The catalogue is only a classification of texts; it does not give the texts. One traditionally cites texts by their numbers in CTH. Major sources for studies of selected texts themselves are the books of the StBoT series and the online Textzeugnisse der Hethiter. [2]

Hittite language an extinct Bronze Age Indo-European language

Hittite, also known as Nesite and Neshite, was an 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, long extinct now, is attested in cuneiform, in records dating from the 16th to the 13th centuries BCE, with isolated Hittite loanwords and numerous personal names appearing in an Old Assyrian context from as early as the 20th century BCE.

Contents

CTH numbering scheme

The texts are classified as follows:

Selected texts

Some Wikipedia articles dedicated to specific Hittite texts follow. More are to be found as sections of other articles.

Old Kingdom

Hittite military oath

The Hittite military oath is a Hittite text on two cuneiform tablets.

Hittite laws

The Hittite laws have been preserved on a number of Hittite cuneiform tablets found at Hattusa. Copies have been found written in Old Hittite as well as in Middle and Late Hittite, indicating that they had validity throughout the duration of the Hittite Empire.

Illuyanka mythical creature

In Hittite mythology, Illuyanka was a serpentine dragon slain by Tarḫunz, the Hittite incarnation of the Hurrian god of sky and storm. It is known from Hittite cuneiform tablets found at Çorum-Boğazköy, the former Hittite capital Hattusa. The contest is a ritual of the Hattian spring festival of Puruli.

New Kingdom

Kikkuli was the Hurrian "master horse trainer" of the land Mitanni" and author of a chariot horse training text written in the Hittite language, dating to the Hittite New Kingdom. The text is notable both for the information it provides about the development of Indo-European languages and for its content.

The Milawata letter is a diplomatic correspondence from a Hittite king at Hattusa to a client king in western Anatolia around 1240 BC. It constitutes an important piece of evidence in the debate concerning the historicity of Homer's Iliad.

The Tawagalawa letter was written by a Hittite king to a king of Ahhiyawa around 1250 BC. This letter, of which only the third tablet has been preserved, concerns the activities of an adventurer named Piyama-Radu against the Hittites, and requests his extradition to Hatti under assurances of safe conduct. It is so named because it mentions a brother of the king of Ahhiyawa named Tawagalawa, a name suggested by numerous scholars to be a Hittite representation of the Greek name Eteocles (Etewoklewes).

See also

Notes

  1. Laroche, Emmanuel (1971). Catalogue des textes hittites. Études et commentaires, 75 (in French). Paris. The first edition came out in 1956. A supplement was published in 1972: Laroche, Emmanuel (1972). "Catalogue des Textes Hittites, premier supplément". Revue hittite et asianique. XXX: 94–133.
  2. "Textzeugnisse der Hethiter (Hethitologie Portal Mainz)" (in German, French, Italian, and English). Gerfrid G.W. Müller & Gernot Wilhelm. 2002–2013.

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References

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