Bedřich Hrozný

Bedřich Hrozný was a Czech Assyriologist who deciphered Hittite and demonstrated that it belonged to the Indo-European language family.

Hittite language: An ancient Indo-European language spoken in the Hittite Empire and recorded mainly in cuneiform. Hrozný’s decipherment established its grammar and Indo-European identity.
Boğazköy: A settlement in central Anatolia that contains the ruins of the Hittite capital Hattusa. Excavations there uncovered the archives that made Hittite decipherment possible.
Emil Forrer: A Swiss-German scholar of ancient Anatolia who studied Hittite texts and identified several languages in the Hattusa archives. His work helped establish the multilingual context in which Hrozný’s decipherment was received.
Hittite Empire: A powerful Bronze Age state centered in Anatolia that rivaled Egypt and other Near Eastern kingdoms. Hrozný’s decipherment opened its written records to historical study.
Hittite hieroglyphs: A system of signs used mainly on monuments in Bronze and Iron Age Anatolia, distinct from cuneiform Hittite writing. The script is often confused with the cuneiform tablets Hrozný deciphered.
Hittite cuneiform: A writing system that used cuneiform signs to record Hittite and other languages in Anatolia. Hrozný interpreted its signs by comparing them with known cuneiform values.
Hattusa: The ancient capital of the Hittite Empire, located at modern Boğazköy in Turkey. Its royal archives supplied thousands of tablets for Hrozný’s work.
Friedrich Delitzsch: A German Assyriologist known for research on Akkadian and the languages of the ancient Near East. His Assyriological scholarship belongs to the field from which Hrozný’s training emerged.
Treaty of Kadesh: A peace treaty between the Hittite king Hattusili III and Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II, concluded in the thirteenth century BCE. Hittite texts became accessible for studying this landmark diplomatic agreement.
Akkadian language: An extinct Semitic language of ancient Mesopotamia, recorded extensively in cuneiform. Akkadian was a known language in the same script tradition, unlike the newly identified Hittite.

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