Hittite language
Extinct Bronze Age Indo-European language / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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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.
Hittite | |
---|---|
𒌷𒉌𒅆𒇷 nešili | |
Region | Anatolia |
Era | attested 17th to 12th centuries BC |
Indo-European
| |
Hittite cuneiform | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-2 | hit |
ISO 639-3 | Variously:hit – Hittiteoht – Old Hittitehtx – Middle Hittitenei – New Hittite |
hit Hittite | |
oht Old Hittite | |
htx Middle Hittite | |
nei New Hittite | |
Glottolog | hitt1242 |
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.