Book contents
- A History of Hittite Literacy
- A History of Hittite Literacy
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Map
- Timeline and Hittite Kings
- Sigla and Abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 Writing and Literacy among the Anatolians in the Old Assyrian Period
- Chapter 3 From Kanesh to Hattusa
- Chapter 4 First Writing in Hattusa
- Chapter 5 Literacy and Literature in the Old Kingdom until 1500 BC
- Chapter 6 The Emergence of Writing in Hittite
- Chapter 7 A Second Script
- Chapter 8 The New Kingdom Cuneiform Corpus
- Chapter 9 The New Kingdom Hieroglyphic Corpus
- Chapter 10 The Wooden Writing Boards
- Chapter 11 The Seal Impressions of the Westbau and Building D, and the Wooden Tablets
- Chapter 12 In the Hittite Chancellery and Tablet Collections
- Chapter 13 Scribes and Scholars
- Chapter 14 Excursus
- Chapter 15 The End and Looking Back
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- General Index
Chapter 6 - The Emergence of Writing in Hittite
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2020
- A History of Hittite Literacy
- A History of Hittite Literacy
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Map
- Timeline and Hittite Kings
- Sigla and Abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 Writing and Literacy among the Anatolians in the Old Assyrian Period
- Chapter 3 From Kanesh to Hattusa
- Chapter 4 First Writing in Hattusa
- Chapter 5 Literacy and Literature in the Old Kingdom until 1500 BC
- Chapter 6 The Emergence of Writing in Hittite
- Chapter 7 A Second Script
- Chapter 8 The New Kingdom Cuneiform Corpus
- Chapter 9 The New Kingdom Hieroglyphic Corpus
- Chapter 10 The Wooden Writing Boards
- Chapter 11 The Seal Impressions of the Westbau and Building D, and the Wooden Tablets
- Chapter 12 In the Hittite Chancellery and Tablet Collections
- Chapter 13 Scribes and Scholars
- Chapter 14 Excursus
- Chapter 15 The End and Looking Back
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- General Index
Summary
Having adopted the cuneiform writing system from Mesopotamia, geared towards writing Semitic languages, the Hittites had to adapt it to their Indo-European language. Ignoring the Semitic distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants they devised a system of single and double written consonants to express what was probably a distinction between short and long consonants. They also significantly restricted the use of multiple readings for single signs, standardized the shape of several signs, introduced reader-friendly spaces to separate words, and developed new cuneiform signs to render texts in other, related Indo-European (Palaic) and non-Indo-European (Hattian, later also Hurrian) languages. The latter innovation enabled the recording of non-Hittite liturgy as part of a national religious system and was part of a deliberate politics to unify Central Anatolian population groups into a single kingdom. The creation of a national literature was also part of this.
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- A History of Hittite LiteracyWriting and Reading in Late Bronze-Age Anatolia (1650–1200 BC), pp. 101 - 119Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021