HOW HITTIT LANGUAGE WAS SOLVED ?
We are in the first half of the 19th century. The year is 1833.
A French archaeologist and explorer, Charles Felix-Marie Texier türkiye'dedirhitit LANGUAGE NASA. This thirty-two-year-old archaeologist - probably because of the excitement and enthusiasm of his youth, is vigorously searching for ancient remains that seem to be scattered here and there, and unearth the main parts of them that are actually under the ground. Its aim is to find the ruins of Tavion, an ancient but important city in Galatia, which is located in the Central Anatolian region today, mentioned by Strabo of Amasya in his work named "Geographika (Geography)". Strabon introduces Tavion, who was in the territory of Galatia at that time, with the following words:
"Tavion is the trade center of those who live in that part of the country, where there was a monumental statue of Zeus made of bronze and a sacred place where people took shelter."
On the route that our traveler Charles Texier took, his path falls to Boğazköy within the Kızılırmak arc. While wandering in the secluded countryside of Anatolia at that time, he encountered some ruins.
Where are these ruins?
What are the ruins of an ancient city or civilization?
Confused Charles Texier.
When he climbs the hill rising against him randomly, his astonishment will increase more and more. When you look at it from above, stone blocks hit your eyes. When he looks a little more and does a mental exercise on what he sees, he realizes that a spark is glowing in his brain:
“These may be ruins from a city they've seen, however. And not so, "a city as big as Athens in its heyday."
What about the Tavion, which he hoped to find in the countryside of Anatolia, leaving his country France to look for, could it be?
He's not sure.
As he continues on his way, he encounters two separate doors. One has a human body relief; the other is a stone lion statue. But these do not fit any of the styles of ancient art or architectural work that he has ever seen or envisioned.
So, who are then the creators of these different types of works, and they are the people of what civilization level?
The young archaeologist is then taken to the place known as Yazılıkaya under the guidance of a peasant. Where they arrive, you can see some reliefs on the rock, which resembles an open tunnel. These are human figures with cones on their heads and belts on their clothes. Then, in the tunnel right next to that tunnel, he saw larger reliefs, winged creatures on the rock. If all the reliefs he saw represent divine creatures, shouldn't it be an open-air temple?
Charles Texier is about to lose himself out of surprise. When he collects himself, he grasps the truth:
Although the ruins he saw in the distance from his location were not Tavion he was so passionately looking for, he unwittingly discovered the remains of a much larger city.
Well, who could be the founders of this city?
Charles Texier could not find a name for it.
Our aim is not to describe an archaeological discovery in detail. These details are beyond our scope anyway. We are trying to make small excursions in the time tunnel of Anatolian civilizations.
Let's continue our trip now.
Texier, on his return to Paris from his Eastern journey, presented his studies, observations, drawings and plans to the scientific world in 1839 with his monumental work named "Description de l'Asie Mineur". He stated in his work that he had to accept the following truth:
“Boğazköy ruins prove the existence of a nation with great culture. But the science of history of the 19th century, all BC. For 2 thousand years he had been unaware that such a nation was alive ”.
So, how did the nation that created this great culture come about?
In order to give a clearer and clearer answer to this question, we will have to go back to very old dates and take a small journey through the time corridors of Anatolia's 2000 BC and earlier years.
B.C. The period dated between 3000-1200 is called the Bronze Age. Mesopotamian sources called Anatolia the Hatti Country during this period. This is the oldest known name of Anatolia. The representatives of this period in Anatolia are "Hatti", the creators of a brilliant civilization. Hatti did not only give their names to Anatolia at that time, but another society that will establish the first empire in these lands centuries later; They have also led to the formation of a synthesis of culture and civilization, as well as a great political power, by influencing Asian immigrants, who have no relation with them in terms of race or religion.
The language the Hatties speak is not of Semitic or Indian European origin.
But isn't it weird?
The Hatti, who had established such a brilliant civilization, did not use writing.
Anatolia BC. He was introduced to writing in the early 2000s, but it was thanks to the trade relations that the Assyrian merchants had with Hatti. Mesopotamians, on the other hand, had been using writing for almost two thousand years. Assyrian merchants established trade colonies known as Karum under the supervision of the Hatti beys in the Central Anatolia region. The most important of these was Kaneş Karumu (Kültepe) near Kayseri.
Later, BC. Around 2000, Anatolia was shaken by a wave of migration. As a result of this tremor that lasted for nearly three hundred years, when everything settled down, we see that an organized state was established within the arc of Kızılırmak in Central Anatolia. Actually, it would be more correct to say "Empire" for this state. We call the people who founded this empire Hittites (although they named themselves Nesili according to the tablets captured and call Nesice as the language they speak), and Hittite in their language. As a matter of fact, these later immigrants did not change the names of their new homeland, as we learned from the Tables, they called it the Land of Hatti as it was said before.
In 1906, long after the discovery of Charles Texier, archaeologist Dr. This time the Germans started excavations under the direction of Hugo Winckler. Numerous cuneiform tablets were unearthed during these excavations. Some of these tablets were written by Assyrian merchants and were in the well-known Akkadian language. By reading the tablets written in this language, it was definitely revealed that Anatolia was called the Land of Hatti and that Boğazköy, where excavations were carried out, was the capital of this country, Hattusa.
However, in addition to the tablets written in Akkadian, tablets written in cuneiform writing, but in an unknown language until then, were also found during these excavations. The problem was now tangled in solving this language.
What language was it and what language group did it belong to?
The solution to this problem was given to a young German linguist, Bedrich Hrozny of Czech origin.
Winckler died in 1913. In the same year, the German Oriental Sciences Institute sent a group of Assyrian scientists to Istanbul. Their task was to classify and transcribe the Hittite cuneiform tablets that were unearthed during the Boğazköy excavations. 34-year-old young Assyrian scientist Bedrich Hrozny was among these officers. At the age of 24, he participated in excavations in Northern Palestine and published interesting articles on cuneiform texts; Hrozny was a talented young scientist who was appointed professor in Vienna in 1905.
Most of the tablets found in Boğazköy were written in Akkadian from the Sami language group. However, a language that was not even clear from which group was asked to be analyzed.
This would require a difficult effort.
More precisely, a key to open the tongue!
It would not be wrong to say that Hrozny did not have any difficulties in finding this key thanks to his superior intelligence and high language skills.
With the help of ideograms, Hrozny would solve the mystery of this unknown language.
Ideogram, which means "thought writing" as a word, is the symbol that expresses a thought with pictures or figures. For example, if a picture or a sign that expresses a concept concretely is placed between the writing of an unknown language, the ideogram is used. Hrozny had first read the words fish and father with the help of ideograms, but he knew very well that reading so little would not be enough to decipher the language of a nation. Presumably, he encountered a sentence while his mind was walking back and forth in feelings of frustration and hopelessness. His despair suddenly said, "I wonder?" The sentence that turned hope into hope was something like this:
"Nu ninda-an ezzatteni watar- ma ekkuteni"
The only word Hrozny knows in this sentence is "ninda", which means "bread". He also learned this word from Sumerian ideograms. Hrozny uses reasoning from this discovery:
"If the word bread is mentioned in a sentence, it is possible that the word food is used in the same sentence."
The young linguist begins to list the words that mean "food" in ancient and modern Indo-European languages within this logic. He gets excited suddenly. Because he found the similarity he was looking for in the old high German word "ezzan". He continues his mental efforts: It is also natural that the word water, the object of the act of drinking, is included in a sentence expressing the act of eating. This word reveals itself clearly in the sentence:
"Watar"
For example, watar, which means "Water" in English, "Wasser" in German, and "Vatar" in Old Saxon language; If not "Water" in the Hittite language, what else could it mean? As for the word Ekkuteni, it also brought to mind the word "Aqua", which also means "Water" in Latin.
And he translates the sentence in line with these arguments:
"Now you will eat bread and then drink water!"
After that, it was easy. All the efforts of the young archaeologist were not wasted; The meanings of the mysterious writings of this mysterious people, who came to Anatolia from abroad, were thus clarified.
With the dissolution of the text, it was revealed that Hittite was an Indo-European language. The rest will - if I say so - come like a sock rip off ...
Quote: LIGHT RISES FROM ANATOLIA
(Ex Anatolia Lux)
