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Cuneiform Luwian in the Hattuša Archives
I. Yakubovich
1 What Is (Cuneiform) Luwian and Where Is Luwiya?
1.1 The Luwian Corpus in Cuneiform Transmission
Unlike most other languages of ancient Anatolia, the Luwian language is at-
tested in two different writing systems: the Anatolian adaptation of Mesopota-
mian cuneiform (cf. Chapter 6) and Anatolian hieroglyphs. It was previously
believed that these two corpora corresponded to two closely related languages,
named faute de mieux Cuneiform Luwian and Hieroglyphic Luwian. By now it
has become clear that the differences between some Luwian dialects attested
in cuneiform transmission exceed the postulated distance between Cuneiform
and Hieroglyphic Luwian, and one of the dialects attested in cuneiform trans-
mission, namely Hattuša Luwian, displays a particular resemblance to the early
form of Hieroglyphic Luwian. Therefore, it makes more sense to speak of one
Luwian language, and reserve the terms ‘cuneiform’ and ‘hieroglyphic’ for the
writing systems associated with specific Luwian corpora (Yakubovich 2010:68–
73). However, all the Luwian cuneiform texts predate the abandonment of
Hattuša, whereas the bulk of Luwian hieroglyphic texts postdate this water-
shed event in ancient Anatolian history, so the Luwian cuneiform corpus can
be used as the basis for the study of areal phenomena involving the Luwian
language before the 13th century bce. This justifies the separate treatment of
Cuneiform Luwian and Hieroglyphic Luwian in the present volume. This chap-
ter will address the evidence of Luwian cuneiform texts, while the Hieroglyphic
Luwian inscriptions will find a detailed treatment in Volume 2.
As far as we know, the term ‘Luwian’ does not reflect the name given to the
language by its speakers but rather harks back to its Hittite designation. Hit-
1 The research on this paper was conducted under the auspices of the project ‘LuwGramm: A
Grammar of the Luwian Language,’ co-directed by Elisabeth Rieken and Ilya Yakubovich and
funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (RI 1730/11–1 and YA 472/3–1). The author
of the present chapter is grateful to Stephen Durnford, Alvise Matessi, Craig Melchert, and
Andrea Trameri, who read the first draft of this manuscript and contributed to its improve-
ment, although the author naturally bears the sole responsibility for the remaining shortcom-
ings.
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