Chapter 5 - Literacy and Literature in the Old Kingdom until 1500 BC

Summary

An overview of various kinds of sources shows the extent of script usage during the Old Kingdom well into the fifteenth century BC to have been relatively modest. There is evidence for some monumental and administrative use as well as for texts as aide-mémoire. The existence of an extensive chancellery with an organized tablet storage system cannot be proven. With the shift to writing in Hittite, however, came the recording of foundational texts (e.g., Anitta Text, Zalpa Tale, indigenous Anatolian myths), bolstering a sense of common identity of the young kingdom. In the same period the old so-called Palace Chronicles may have developed into the Hittite Law collection. On the whole, the Central Anatolian Hittite kingdom was still very much an oral society.