"Old Hittite" redirects here. For the Old Hittite Kingdom, see Hittites § Old Kingdom.
Hittite
𒌷𒉌𒅆𒇷nešili
Region
Anatolia
Era
attested 17th to 12th centuries BC
Language family
Indo-European
Anatolian
Hittite
Writing system
Hittite cuneiform
Language codes
ISO 639-2
hit
ISO 639-3
Variously: hit – Hittite oht – Old Hittite htx – Middle Hittite nei – New Hittite
Linguist List
hit Hittite
oht Old Hittite
htx Middle Hittite
nei New Hittite
Glottolog
hitt1242
This article contains cuneiform script. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of cuneiform script.
Hittite (natively: 𒌷𒉌𒅆𒇷, romanized: nešili[1] / "the language of Neša", or nešumnili / "the language of the people of Neša"), also known as Nesite (Nešite/Neshite, Nessite), 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.[2] The language, now long extinct, is attested in cuneiform, in records dating from the 17th[3] (Anitta text) 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.
By the Late Bronze Age, Hittite had started losing ground to its close relative Luwian. It appears that in the 13th century BC, Luwian was the most widely spoken language in the Hittite capital, Hattusa.[4] After the collapse of the Hittite New Kingdom during 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.
^Hoffner & Melchert (2008), p. 2)
^Yakubovich 2020, p. 221–237.
^van den Hout, Theo, (2020). A History of Hittite Literacy: Writing and Reading in Late Bronze-Age Anatolia (1650–1200 BC), Published online: 18 December 2020, Print publication: 07 January 2021, "Introduction": "...The hero of this book is literacy, writing and reading, in the Hittite kingdom in ancient Anatolia, or modern-day Turkey, from roughly 1650 to 1200 bc, give or take several years or perhaps even a decade or two..."
instead of cuneiform script. Hittite (natively: 𒌷𒉌𒅆𒇷, romanized: nešili / "the language of Neša", or nešumnili / "the language of the people of Neša")...
The Hittites (/ˈhɪtaɪts/) were an Anatolian Indo-European people who formed one of the first major civilizations of Bronze Age West Asia. Possibly originating...
Luwian. Long after the extinction of the Hittitelanguage, Luwian continued to be spoken in the Neo-Hittite states of Syria, such as Milid and Carchemish...
Turkey. The best known Anatolian language is Hittite, which is considered the earliest-attested Indo-European language. Undiscovered until the late 19th...
other symbols. Language portal Asia portal Hittite cuneiform is the implementation of cuneiform script used in writing the Hittitelanguage. The surviving...
The corpus of texts written in the Hittitelanguage is indexed by the Catalogue des Textes Hittites (CTH, since 1971). The catalogue is only a classification...
Indo-European language of the Hittite Empire. The Hittites referred to the language as "hattili" (there are no attestations of the name of the language in Hattic...
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...
Hittite phonology is the description of the reconstructed phonology or pronunciation of the Hittitelanguage. Because Hittite as a spoken language is...
The grammar of the Hittitelanguage has a highly conservative verbal system and rich nominal declension. The language is attested in cuneiform, and is...
that the Hittites where a much more influential culture than previously thought with their own art and language. Sayce concluded that the Hittite hieroglyphic...
the Luwian language, meaning "Low Country". Subsequent research suggests that the adverb katta meaning 'down, below' is exclusively Hittite, while its...
Palaic is an extinct Indo-European language, attested in cuneiform tablets in Bronze Age Hattusa, the capital of the Hittites. Palaic, which was apparently...
Uriah the Hittite (Hebrew: אוּרִיָּה הַחִתִּי ʾŪrīyyā haḤītī) is a minor figure in the Hebrew Bible, mentioned in the Books of Samuel, an elite soldier...
cuneiform was itself adapted to write the Hittitelanguage in the early second millennium BC. The other languages with significant cuneiform corpora are...
designation for the Hittite state. Complex questions related to etymology of endonymic terms for Hattians, their land, language and capital city (Hatti...
Assuwa (Hittite: 𒀸𒋗𒉿, romanized: aš-šu-wa) which originally referred only to a portion of northwestern Anatolia. The term appears in Hittite records...
Hittite art Hittite art was produced by the Hittite civilization in ancient Anatolia, in modern-day Turkey, and also stretching into Syria during the...
the term šumerû is uncertain. Hebrew שִׁנְעָר Šinʿar, Egyptian Sngr, and Hittite Šanhar(a), all referring to southern Mesopotamia, could be western variants...
Wilusa (Hittite: 𒌷𒃾𒇻𒊭 URUwi5-lu-ša) or Wilusiya was a Late Bronze Age city in western Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) known from references in fragmentary...