Archaeologists have continued their excavations at Turkey's Boğazköy-Hattusha, the former capital of the Bronze Age Hittite empire. This year, they discovered a new language written on a tablet detailing a foreign ritual.
New Language Discovered Among Ruins of Ancient Empire
Ancient languages are abundant in the ancient city of Hattusha, which served as the capital of the Hittite empire that ruled north-central Turkey in the late Bronze Age (1650-1200 BCE). Over the past century, excavations at the Boazköy-Hattusha archeological site have found about 30,000 cuneiform tablets that describe the culture, history, and society of Bronze Age Anatolia. The once-dominant capital of this location was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986 due to its extensive Bronze Age heritage.
Although Hittite is the oldest recorded Indo-European language (and the linguistic tree through which English originated), most of the tablets discovered in Hattusha are written in other regional languages, including Luwian, Palaic, and Hattic. But this year's investigations at the site turned up a startling find - a new language.
Additionally, a recitation is written in a foreign tongue concealed in this particular antique cultic manuscript. According to the archaeologists, the Hittite inscription alludes to an expression from the Kalašma language, which was spoken in a region that would have been on the Hittite empire's northern frontier.
According to Daniel Schwemer, Chair of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Germany, the Hittites were particularly interested in documenting rites in other languages. These rituals shed light on the little-known linguistic geography of Late Bronze Age Anatolia when languages other than Hittite were also spoken and provided insightful viewpoints.
The cuneiform texts in Boazköy-Hattusa include passages from Hattian. This language is not Indo-European in origin, as well as from Luwian and Palaca and two other Anatolian-Indo-European languages closely linked to Hittite. Now, these can be expanded to include the Kalašma language.
Experts can confirm that the language is a member of the Anatolian Indo-European family, which also contains Luwian, Palaic, and Hittite.
Indo-European Languages
Indo-European languages comprise several hundred related languages and dialects that include most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, the Indian subcontinent, and ancient Anatolia. Most of the languages from these regions can trace their roots back to an original "mother" language.
Experts believe the Proto-Indo-European language likely originated around the Black Sea in southern Ukraine. Evidence points to Kalama being located on the other side of the Black Sea, closer to the region where Palaic was spoken, than either Bolu or Gerede in contemporary Turkey. The newly found tongue, nevertheless, is more similar to Luwian, a tongue used by people in the southeast of the Hittite empire.
Even though only a tiny portion of the Kalama language is currently known, it is highly likely that additional evidence of this long-forgotten tongue is still out there, hidden somewhere in the vast lengths of Anatolia.
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