Hittite language

Hittite is an extinct Anatolian Indo-European language spoken in the Hittite Empire and recorded mainly in cuneiform on clay tablets. Its texts preserve the oldest substantial corpus of any Indo-European language.

Indo-European languages: A language family spanning most of Europe and parts of Asia, descended from a prehistoric common ancestor. Hittite belongs to this family and preserves some of its earliest written evidence.
Hattusa: The capital of the Hittite Empire, whose ruins lie near modern Boğazkale in Turkey. Its archives yielded the largest collection of Hittite texts.
Sumerograms: Sumerian logograms used to write words in texts composed in another language. Hittite scribes used these signs while readers supplied Hittite pronunciations.
Treaty of Kadesh: A peace treaty concluded by the Hittite king Hattusili III and Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II. Its Hittite version shows the language serving imperial diplomacy.
Laryngeal theory: A theory that reconstructs consonants in Proto-Indo-European to explain patterns in its descendant languages. Hittite evidence strengthened the case for consonants previously reconstructed from indirect evidence.
Anatolian languages: An extinct branch of Indo-European languages once spoken in Anatolia. Hittite is the best-attested member of this branch.
Hittite cuneiform tablets: Clay documents inscribed in Hittite using cuneiform, including royal, legal, ritual, and diplomatic texts. These tablets provide the principal evidence for Hittite vocabulary and usage.
Akkadograms: Akkadian words or signs used as logograms in texts written in another language. They appear alongside Hittite forms in the cuneiform scribal tradition.
Hittite laws: A collection of legal provisions preserved in Hittite cuneiform tablets. Their clauses expose Hittite legal vocabulary and changing social rules.
Proto-Indo-European language: The reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Hittite forms have reshaped reconstructions of its vocabulary and sound system.

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