New Ancient Language Discovered
Archaeological study in the Middle East is revealing how a long-forgotten ancient culture promoted multiculturalism and political stability through hitherto unknown linguistics. The groundbreaking finds are also offering new light on the functioning of early empires. Excavations in Turkey, in the ruins of the Hittite empire's ancient capital, are uncovering extraordinary evidence that the imperial civil service contained entire departments dedicated to researching the faiths of subject peoples. According to the evidence, Hittite leaders instructed their civil servants in the second millennium BC to record subject peoples' religious liturgies and other traditions by writing them down in their respective local languages (but in Hittite script) - so that those traditions could be preserved and incorporated into the empire's highly inclusive multicultural religious system. So far, ancient language specialists have uncovered that Hittite civil workers saved and recorded religious materials from at least five ethnic groups. The most recent example was discovered only two months ago. It was discovered to be written in an obscure Middle Eastern language that had been forgotten for up to 3,000 years. Over the years, 30,000 full and fragmented clay tablet writings have been discovered at the ruins of Hattussa (now known as Bogazkoy), about 100 miles east of modern Turkey's capital, Ankara.The vast majority were written in Hittite, the empire's primary language. However, the Hittite government's scribes penned about 5% of them in the languages of the empire's minority ethnic groups, such as the Luwians (from south-eastern Anatolia), Palaians (from north-west Anatolia), and others. The discovery demonstrates that even the most obscure languages in the empire were being written down, researched, and preserved. This increases the prospect of more tiny, previously unknown Middle Eastern languages being unearthed and recorded on Hittite imperial clay tablets in the line of ancient scriptoria that researchers are now excavating at Bogazkoy. All documents in the empire's civil service were written in a Hittite version of cuneiform, a pre-existing Mesopotamian-originating script (the world's oldest writing system), consisting of wedge-shaped lines grouped in groups signifying syllables. In ancient times, the area of the Middle East that is now Turkey was exceptionally rich in languages. The excavations of the ancient scriptoria in Bogazkoy will help linguists better comprehend the evolution of ancient Bronze Age Indo-European languages, which are distantly linked to English. The current digs are being conducted by Professor Andreas Schachner of the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul, with paleo-linguists from Wurzburg and Istanbul universities studying the texts on the clay tablets."Bronze Age Middle Eastern history is only partly understood - and discovering additional clay tablet documents is helping scholars to substantially increase our knowledge," said Wurzburg University professor Daniel Schwemer, who is leading the investigation into the newly discovered texts. Because technological innovations (particularly the use of iron, the development of sophisticated ultra-lightweight war chariots, and the establishment of a substantial civil service) enabled the expansion of warfare and government, as well as the formation of ever-larger empires, the civilization fundamentally altered human history. The ongoing archeological investigation at Bogazkoy is revealing surprising new information on how Hittite civilization functioned - and consequently how it aided in the transformation of human history.
