Anatolian language
The Anatolian languages are an Extinct language, extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Anatolia. The best known Anatolian language is Hittite language, Hittite, which is considered the earliest-attested Indo-European lan ...
spoken in the late
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...
polity of Kalašma, which lay on the northwest fringe of the
Hittite Empire
The Hittites () were an Anatolian peoples, Anatolian Proto-Indo-Europeans, Indo-European people who formed one of the first major civilizations of the Bronze Age in West Asia. Possibly originating from beyond the Black Sea, they settled in mo ...
Bolu
Bolu is a city in northern Turkey, and administrative center of the Bolu Province and of Bolu District,
Discovery
The first (and thus far only) Kalasmaic text was discovered in 2023, by researchers at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg. It is written on a clay tablet indexed KBo 71.145.Schwemer 2024 p. XIX The tablet, written in
Hittite cuneiform
Hittite cuneiform is the implementation of cuneiform script used in writing the Hittite language. The surviving corpus of Hittite texts is preserved in cuneiform on clay tablets dating to the 2nd millennium BC (roughly spanning the 17th to 1 ...
of the 13th century BCE, is one of several Hittite texts recording rituals of the empire's subjects and neighbouring peoples. Its Hittite-language introduction describes its main text as in "the language of Kalašma" ().
The language was deciphered by Prof. Daniel Schwemer in the 71st volume of the edition "Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazköi (Cuneiform Texts from Boghazköi)" and is part of the Anatolian branch of the
Indo-European language family
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...
as confirmed by Prof. Elisabeth Rieken at
Philipps-Universität Marburg
The Philipps University of Marburg () is a public research university located in Marburg, Germany. It was founded in 1527 by Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, which makes it one of Germany's oldest universities and the oldest still operating Protes ...
. Its place within the Anatolian languages is uncertain, but it has been hypothesized to be part of the
Luwic
The Anatolian languages are an extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Anatolia. The best known Anatolian language is Hittite, which is considered the earliest-attested Indo-European language.
Undiscovered until the late ...
subgroup.
A detailed analysis of the text was published in November 2024 by Elisabeth Rieken, Ilya Yakubovich and Daniel Schwemer.