Hittitology
The Hittite , more rarely Altanatolistik called, is an interdisciplinary science. It primarily comprises the language, history, culture, religion and archeology of the ancient Anatolian people of the Hittites , in a broader sense also of other cultures and peoples of ancient Anatolian antiquity .
designation
The term Hittitology , like the term Hittite for the most important ancient Anatolian people and Hittite for their language, is basically wrong. It goes back to the biblical name Hittim . This is wrong, however, because Hittim is a name for Syrians of the 1st millennium BC. Chr. Was not for the now so called Anatolian people of the v second millennium. BC. The Hittites called their language after the city Nesa-Kane as násilí , nesili or nešumnili . They called themselves the people of Hattuša after the name of their capital . The Akkadians called their homeland Land Hatti , and the Egyptians Land Hata .
The actually incorrect and anachronistic term Hittite has meanwhile become firmly established in science and is retained as a traditional term.
Work area
The Hittitology deals in a narrower sense with the history, language and culture as well as the material legacies of the people of the Hittites, who established a large empire in Central Anatolia and Northern Syria that existed in the 2nd millennium BC for about 450 years. The most important city was the capital Hattuša.
In a broader sense, Hittitology - then sometimes also called Old Anatolian Studies - deals with the languages, history, culture and religion as well as the archeology of the whole of Old Anatolia. This includes a period from the Neolithic to the Hellenistic period . In part, languages such as Palaic , Luwian (cuneiform Luwian and hieroglyphic Luwian), Hattic and Hurrian are dealt with, the evidence of which was found in Hittite archives. There are also languages such as Lydian , Phrygian (both often combined to Lydian / Phrygian), Lycian and others. This also names some of the peoples, empires and landscapes that Hittitology deals with. In addition to the Hittites with the Hatti , Luwi , Palaern , the Mittani Empire and the Urartians as well as the landscapes of Mysia , Lydia , Caria , Ionia , Lycia , Pamphylia , Pisidia , Cilicia , Bithynia , Pontos , Paphlagonia , Phrygia , Cappadocia and parts of Armenia . But all these peoples and their research take a back seat to the Hittites and their research.
Hittitology itself is a branch of ancient oriental studies . This is due not only to the connection between ancient oriental cultures, but also to the cuneiform script borrowed from Mesopotamia / Northern Syria . At most universities, Hittology is also practiced within Indo-European Studies.
swell
Sources for the Hittitology are primarily the found texts in the languages and various scripts of the peoples described above. Then there are the archaeological remains.
Problems with exploiting the sources are that they were mostly written in a narrative style and do not contain any precise data. Therefore, exact dates are often not possible and sometimes diverge by up to 30 years. But unlike other sources in the Ancient Near East, the sources often provide information about the background and motives behind political decisions. In the case of the Hittites, one can even speak of their own historiography. The end of the Hittite Empire has been problematic for research to this day, for which there are innumerable - sometimes more, sometimes less plausible - explanations, none of which has yet been able to establish itself as generally valid, not least because of the poor sources Has.
The archaeological sources range from monumental and everyday architecture to plastic and ceramics to everyday objects. A group of finds of particular importance are the seals , which are also of great importance for historiography.
The most important publications, working tools and principles of order for indexing the traditional texts:
The dig numbers
The cuneiform tablets found during the excavations received signatures. Since texts have been extracted from Anatolian soil for over a hundred years, there are different signatures. The texts of the Winckler excavations at the beginning of the twentieth century were given the signature Bo and a subsequent number (example Bo 1322). The much smaller part that was acquired by the Berlin Museum itself in the antique trade and also kept there was given the signum VAT plus number, example: (VAT 2378), and marked these pieces as the property of the museum.
The cuneiform editions
In over 100 years of Hittite research, various series of publications were created in order to publish the text material found. From 1916 onwards, a first series with text editions appeared under the editorship of the German Orient Society. These first booklets with autographed cuneiform texts were published under the title Cuneiform texts from Boghazköi (cited as KBo). From 1917 to 1924 the series Boghazköi-Studien (cited as BoSt.) Was published, which, under the sole editor-in-chief of Otto Weber, created the opportunity to devote oneself to more detailed individual questions for the study of Hittite. Bedrich Hrozny published in this series in 1917 with the first two volumes his first development of the Hittite. After the publication of KBo VI, this series was initially discontinued in 1921 and replaced by the publication of cuneiform documents from Boghazköi (cited as KUB). After the Second World War , the publication of the texts in the KBo series was resumed and continued to this day. Since then, over a hundred edition folders have appeared in both series together and have made the Hittite text material public.
History of Hittiteology
Beginnings
The exploration of the Hittites began in 1834 with the discovery of the city of Hattuša and the associated rock sanctuary Yazılıkaya by the French architect Charles Texier near the Turkish village of Boğazköy (now Boğazkale ). The city was initially incorrectly identified with the cities of Pteria and Tavium, which are known from sources . The people of the Hittites were already known, but based on hieroglyphic inscriptions , they were suspected to be in Syria . A connection to Anatolia could not be established at this time. It took decades before the Syrian and Anatolian texts could be linked.
It was not until the 1880s that identification with the capital of the Hittites was able to establish itself. After Ernest Chantre found some clay tablet fragments from a still unknown language in Hattuša in 1893 - the same language in which the Arzawa letters from the Amarna archive found in 1887 were written - an international race for the excavation license began. The Englishman John Garstang was the first to apply for this license. But thanks to the intervention of the German Emperor Wilhelm II, who was fascinated by archeology , with the Turkish Sultan, the excavation permit was granted to the German Hugo Winckler .
The first excavation campaign began in 1906 and continued - with interruptions - until 1912. The archaeologists immediately made extensive discoveries. In addition to works of art and everyday objects, numerous clay tablets were also found. Some could be evaluated because they were written in Akkadian , but the majority was written in the language of the Arzawa letters . Since the cuneiform script had been deciphered for a long time, one could read these texts, but not yet understand them. Jørgen Alexander Knudtzon , like his colleagues Sophus Bugge and Alf Torp , suspected in 1902 that the Hittite language was Indo-European, but his assumption was initially not recognized and was sharply rejected, especially by traditional Indo-European studies, so that Knudtzon revoked his thesis. It was only when the Indo-Europeanist Ferdinand Sommer underlined the Indo-European character of Hittite in his volume Hittite I in 1920 that the ongoing discussions about the linguistic position of Hittite fell silent.
Development of the Hittitology 1915 to 1945
The Czech Assyriologist Bedřich Hrozný was able to provide proof that Hittite is an Indo-European language in 1915 in the 66th volume of the communications of the German Orient Society . In the same volume, the ancient historian Eduard Meyer also presented an initial historical evaluation of the material, which was initially brief. This laid the foundation for Hittite philology . In the following decades, Hittitology quickly expanded into a science.
The finds made by Winckler were brought to the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin . The scientific evaluation and edition of the Hittite texts also took place there. It was the then director Otto Weber who, in an agreement with the Ottoman antiquities administration, managed to get the texts from Istanbul to Berlin. Weber was also the driving force behind the processing of the texts since 1916. He recruited the necessary staff. Much of this work was done by the museum's curator, Hans Ehelolf . Emil Forrer , a young Swiss orientalist who also worked in Berlin, quickly recognized the different languages of the texts. He also made a list of characters. In addition to Ehelolf, researchers such as Johannes Friedrich , Albrecht Goetze and Ferdinand Sommer laid the foundations for Hittite grammar and lexicography . Science experienced new impulses from 1931, when the excavations in Hattuša were resumed by the German Archaeological Institute under the direction of Kurt Bittel .
Up until now Germany was the center of international Hittitology, but in the wake of the National Socialists' seizure of power and their reprisals it lost some of the most important researchers. Goetze left Germany for Denmark in 1933 and finally went to Yale in 1934 . Hans Gustav Güterbock went to Ankara in 1936 , where he taught until 1948. After a year in Sweden, he was appointed to the University of Chicago . Ehelolf died in 1939. Forrer finally left Berlin in July 1945. Due to his views on the Achijawa question (in which today's research is more on his side) and his university career, which was repeatedly unhappy for him, he completely turned his back on Hittitology and devoted himself to it new research topics in El Salvador.
Post-war Hittitology
Despite many problems, Germany remained a, if not the center of Hittite research even after the Second World War. The problem, however, was that the division of the land also resulted in a division of the finds. The finds from Winckler's excavation were in East Berlin, the finds from Bittel's excavation in West Berlin. So it came about that from the 1950s there were two edition series for Hittite cuneiform texts from Hattuša. In the West, at Heinrich Otten's instigation, the series of cuneiform texts from Boghazköi (KBo) was revived in 1954 , which had already appeared in six issues between 1916 and 1923. In East Berlin, they relied on the preliminary work of Ehelolf and his team and issued the series of cuneiform documents from Boghazköi (KUB). Here, too, Otten was one of the driving forces. Over the years, Helmut Freydank , Horst Klengel and Liane Jakob-Rost were in charge of editing the texts. To this day, the two series are the most important edition series in international Hittitology.
Postwar Hittitology is associated with four big names:
- In his early works, Hans Gustav Güterbock contributed a lot to the history of the Hittites, their mythology and sphragistics . Later he was instrumental in the development of Hittitology, first in Turkey and later in the USA.
- Annelies Kammenhuber was instrumental in researching the Hittite and other Anatolian languages. She researched the dating of texts and created a Hittite thesaurus and began a second edition of Johannes Friedrich's Hittite dictionary .
- Emmanuel Laroche was a French linguist who had worked on various ancient Anatolian languages on a philological level, although only Catalog des textes hittites should be mentioned here, an overview of the known Hittite texts and their versions.
- Heinrich Otten was the excavation philologist in Hattuša for many years. As already mentioned, he edited various volumes of the KUB and KBo . At the Mainz Academy of Sciences he is also leading a project that is creating a thesaurus for the Hittite vocabulary. He is the pioneer of Hittite palaeography . In addition, Otten was the teacher of most of the German and international Hittiteologists.
The excavations in Hattuša continued in 1952, again led by Kurt Bittel. He led the excavations until 1977. He was initially followed by Peter Neve , and from 1993 by Jürgen Seeher . Today the exploration of the city's topography is quite advanced. The corpus of text is also continuously being expanded with new discoveries.
In the meantime, the excavations are no longer concentrated only on Hattuša. Various other places are also being excavated today. Last but not least, new text finds are brought to light. Many places previously known only as names can now be safely assigned. Not least Sedat Alp and Massimo Forlanini have made an outstanding contribution to the ancient Anatolian geography . In the 1970s and 1980s, for example , Tahsin Özgüç carried out important excavations in Maşat Höyük , where he made a large clay tablet archive accessible. Aygül Süel and Mustafa Süel unearthed a clay tablet archive near Ortaköy (Hittite: Šapinuwa ) in 1990 , and Andreas Müller-Karpe has been digging successfully in Kuşaklı since 1993 .
The steady increase in texts also leads to a constant increase in new knowledge. Today, Hittitology is the best developed part of ancient oriental ethnology from a historiographical point of view. However, there are many problems with the exact dating. Often events can be arranged in a relative chronology, but exact dates are often only possible in connection with known dates from the history of other peoples - mostly the Egyptians. In the 1960s there was a debate, sometimes very polemical, as to whether palaeography can or should be used as a dating aid. This problem has now been solved: It is assumed that texts can at least roughly be dated due to their character shapes.
Tools
First of all, a dictionary is of outstanding importance for Hittitology. Johannes Friedrich's Hittite Dictionary (HW) from 1952 (supplemented by additional booklets 1957, 1961 and 1966) was considered exemplary for a long time, but is no longer up-to-date due to the constant number of new finds. That is why Annelies Kammenhuber worked from 1975 until her death in 1995 on a second edition of the work. The HW² is broader than its predecessor, describes the evidence in detail and in some cases also gives the etymology a lot of space. Currently the letters A , E and the first third of the letter H are edited. 1976 began at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago under the direction of Güterbocks and Harry Angier Hoffner, Jr.s with the creation of a new dictionary. This Chicago Hittite Dictionary (CHD), which is based on the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD), is more general and concise than the HW², dispenses with the etymologies and is structured more philologically. There are also two smaller etymological dictionaries by Jaan Puhvel ( Hittite Etymological Dictionary , since 1984) and Johann Tischler ( Hittite Etymological Glossary , since 1983).
The Hittite Sign Lexicon (HZL), 1989, by Christel Rüster and Erich Neu, is essential for basic learning of cuneiform script .
Johannes Friedrich was also the author of the most important Hittite grammar. ( Hittite elementary book. First part: Kurzgefasst Grammar , 1940, 1966²). Annelies Kammenhuber's Old Little Asian Language , which appeared in the Handbuch der Orientalistik in 1969, is also important . Despite various individual studies and new findings, a new grammar is still pending.
Although no longer up-to-date, the books Kulturgeschichte Asia Minor (1933, new as Asia Minor , 1957) by Albrecht Goetze and Oliver Robert Gurney's The Hittites (1952) are fundamental to the historical presentation. A new cultural history and a grammar are currently pending. At least there are some more recent presentations on specialty areas, such as the political-military (Horst Klengel: Geschichte des Hittitischen Reiches , 1999; Trevor Bryce : The Kingdom of the Hittites , 1998) and the history of religion ( Volkert Haas : Geschichte der Hittitischen Religion , 1994 ; Maciej Popko : Religions of Asia Minor , 1995). Both sub-areas are thus described using the current state of knowledge. In 2007 Jörg Klinger summarized the current state of knowledge in Die Hittiter .
Hittology as a subject
After the official deciphering of the Hittite script, Hittiteology quickly began to establish itself as a subject, initially at German universities. Only a little later, the Hittitological studies began in other Western and Eastern European countries as well as the USA. Outside of this area, after the Second World War , exploration of Old Anatolia began in Israel , Japan and most recently in China . And of course, in Turkey , to which most of Anatolia belongs today, Hittitology has been practiced to an increasing extent since Kemal Ataturk . Especially Güterbock, who fled Nazi Germany, and the Turk Sedat Alp played a major role in the development of the subject at the University of Ankara and ancient Anatolian archeology in general.
Hittitology is currently facing a turning point in Germany. As a smaller subject, it is facing the end in many places because it is not uncommon for small subjects to be canceled for cost reasons. One problem is that Hittitology is seldom to be studied as a separate subject, but is taught predominantly within Ancient Oriental Studies or Indo-European Studies and is often given little attention there.
At the Ruhr University in Bochum , a separate chair for hittology was set up in 1987, headed by Erich Neu (ad personam), but has since been dissolved after Erich Neu's death. In 1990 thirteen students were enrolled there for the subject.
The focus of Hittite research in Germany is:
- Free University of Berlin, Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies
- Philipps University of Marburg, Institute for Oriental Studies and Linguistics
- Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg, Chair of Oriental Studies
- Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
The Hittite Research Department of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz is of particular importance for Hittite Studies in Germany
In the Netherlands there are two places where you can study Hittitology in English:
- at the Amsterdam Center for Ancient Studies and Archeology (ACASA) of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Universiteit van Amsterdam by Joost Hazenbos
- at the Institute for Area Studies (LIAS), Assyriology Department at the University of Leiden by Willemijn Waal
International bodies
An important body that also often takes on Hittitology is the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale , a regular international congress held for the entire ancient oriental world. A first congress only for Hittitology took place in Çorum in 1990 and has been held every three years since then.
See also
literature
- Hans J. Nissen : Geschichte Alt-Vorderasiens , Munich 1999, ISBN 3-486-56373-4 ( Oldenbourg plan of history volume 25).
- Joost Hazenbos : Hittitology . In: Der Neue Pauly Volume 14 (2000), Col. 413-418.
- Robert Oberheid: Emil O. Forrer and the beginnings of Hittitology . A biography of the history of science, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-019434-0 .
- Silvia Alaura, “Nach Boghasköi!” On the prehistory of the excavations in Boğazköy-Hattuša and on the archaeological research up to the First World War. Presentation and documents (13th DOG broadcast). Berlin 2006. 259 pages, 7 plates, 53 ills.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ute Möller: Seven are looking for keys to the Hittite cuneiform script . In: Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung No. 304 (December 29, 1994)
- ↑ http://www.fu-berlin.de/studium/studienangebote/grundstaendige/altorientalistik_kombi/index.html
- ↑ http://www.uni-marburg.de/fb10/ios/sprachwissenschaft/fachgebiet/vergl_sprachwiss/
- ↑ http://www.hethiter.net/
- ↑ http://www.uni-muenchen.de/studium/studienangebote/studiengaenge/studienfaecher/hethitolo_/index.html
- ↑ http://www.adwmainz.de/index.php?id=59
- ↑ Universiteit van Amsterdam: Home - ACASA. Retrieved March 27, 2017 (English).
- ↑ Assyriology. Retrieved March 27, 2017 (American English).