THE HITTITE LANGUAGE
Maurice Bloomfield
Johns Hopkins University
In the summer of 1916 there came to the hands of American scholars a report by Professor Friedrich Hrozný, of the University of Vienna, printed in the Mittheilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, Nr. 56 (December, 1915), in which he dealt with the Hittite language. Professor Hrozný was one of a group of Orientalists commissioned by the Berlin Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft to decifer the Hittite cuneiform documents which had been excavated a number of years before by Professor Hugo Winckler in Boghazköi in Cappadocia, and which were then deposited in the Imperial Ottoman Museum in Constantinople. No communication of an historical or filological character could have been more startling; Professor Hrozný claimed that Hittite was Indo-European, and inaugurated his thesis by a sensational exhibit of etymological and grammatical illustrations. One thing was clear without further ado: if his illustrations were based upon sound deciferment of the cuneiform characters; if his translations were impeccable; if the resulting speech units admitted of no other linguistic interpretations than those proposed, and if they did not represent merely a small selection of I. E. assonances, such as any language might furnish; then Hittite must be Indo-European.
Hrozný promised a full treatise, but during the troubled years following not much reached our shores, except reviews of his thesis by various European scholars, the majority of whom accepted his conclusions without any kind of reservations, tho a sceptical voice or two could be heard in the midst of the chorus of acclaim. Not until the spring of 1920 were we privileged to see Hrozný’s full treatise, entitled ‘Die Sprache der Hethiter’, published in Leipzig in 1917; and it is this treatise, along with a volume of Hettitic cuneiform texts of Boghazköi, in transcription, translated and commented upon by the same scholar, which furnish the main basis of the present discussion.[1] In addition,
- ↑ Hethitische Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazköi, in Umschrift mit Übersetzung und Kommentar, von Friedrich Hrozný. i. Lieferung, Leipzig, 1919. Subsequently appeared a treatise by Carl J. S. Marstrander, entitled Caractère
