Anatolian languages
Branch of the
Indo-European language family spoken in
Anatolia from the 3rd millennium
BCE to the early centuries
CE. The attested Anatolian languages are
Hittite, Palaic, Cuneiform Luwian (Luvian), Hieroglyphic Luwian, Lycian, Lydian, Carian, and possibly Pisidian and Sidetic. Hittite, by far the most copiously attested of the group, is known chiefly from a vast archive of
cuneiform tablets found from 1906 onward at the Hittite capital city, Hattusa, near the modern town of Bo
gazkale (formerly
Bogazköy), Tur. By the late Roman or early Byzantine period at the latest, the Anatolian languages had all become extinct. Several non-Indo-European languages of ancient Anatolia are known from cuneiform texts: Hattian (Hattic), spoken in central and northern Anatolia before the coming of the Hittites and known solely from words and texts preserved by Hittite scribes; Hurrian, spoken in the 3rd and 2nd millennia
BCE in northern
Mesopotamia and southeastern Anatolia; and Urartian (Urartean), known from Anatolian texts of the 9th – 7th centuries
BCE.
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