The Obituary
Hittite was the language of the Hittite Empire, which ruled much of Anatolia and Syria during the second millennium BCE. Written in cuneiform on clay tablets stored at the capital Hattusa, it is the oldest attested Indo-European language. When the Bronze Age empires collapsed around 1180 BCE and Hattusa was destroyed, Hittite vanished from history, surviving only in buried archives. Rediscovered and deciphered in 1915, it reshaped scholars’ understanding of where the Indo-European family began.
Worth remembering
- It is the oldest Indo-European language ever recorded, a distant relative of English, Latin, and Sanskrit.
- Its decipherment in 1915 by Bedřich Hrozný proved Anatolia was an Indo-European homeland.
Sources
- Hittite is the earliest attested Indo-European language, written in cuneiform and spoken in the Hittite Empire in Anatolia. Wikipedia
- Hittite died out around the collapse of the Hittite Empire near 1180 BCE and was rediscovered through cuneiform archives. Encyclopaedia Britannica
A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.