Hittite

The earliest attested Indo-European language and the principal language of the kingdom of Hatti, centered on the Anatolian plateau in what is now central Turkey. Hittite is preserved in tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets recovered from the Hittite capital Hattusa, ranging from royal annals and ritual texts to legal codes and the diplomatic correspondence that linked the Late Bronze Age Near East. Hittite scribes called their own language Nešili or Nešumnili, “the language of Nesa,” after an early Hittite center; the modern name “Hittite” derives instead from Hatti, the older indigenous name for the region that the Hittites adopted as the designation of their kingdom.

The language is conventionally divided into Old Hittite (c. 1650–1500 BCE), Middle Hittite (c. 1500–1400 BCE), and New Hittite (c. 1400–1180 BCE), with the largest body of attestations belonging to the New Hittite period. The Late Bronze Age collapse around 1180 BCE marks the effective end of the language; its close Anatolian relatives Luwian and Palaic survived somewhat longer.

@misc{onomastikon-hittite,
  author = {Rajagopal, Shriram},
  title = {Hittite},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://onomastikon.org/languages/hittite}},
  note = {Onomastikon: A Digital Atlas of Ancient Names}
}