Hittite land at about 2500 B. C.[1] More likely they came to the Hittites from Mittani. It seems quite clear that both the god names and the ‘horse numerals’, as we may now call them, are not ‘Aryan’, but Sanskrit; the numeral aika, as compared with aiva, the Achemenidan Persian and Avestan form, as well as the specific Vedic form of the four god names, makes this almost certain.
Simultaneously Forrer, in the paper just quoted, and Hrozný, in an essay published in 1920,[2] show that the Boghazköi inscrip- tions contain many languages in cuneiform script. Forrer counts eight, of which the language hitherto designated flatly as Hittite comprises about nine tenths of the entire material. Forrer finds in addition: Sumerian, Akkadian, 'Urindisch', Harrian, Proto- Hittite, Luvian, and Palāic. Hrozný does not differ much. When the texts say ‘he speaks Hittite’[3] they mean not the assumed I. E. Hittite, but the autochthonous Proto-Hettitic, described by Forrer, l. c., p. 1033 ff.; this is neither Indo-European, nor Shemitic, nor at the present time correlated with any other group of languages. On the other hand the supposedly I. E. Hittite seems, according to both authors, to be well entitled to the name Kanesian, named after the city of Kaneš. But this latter designation is never indicated by an ethnical adjective as is the case with the other languages (Harlili, Hattili, Lūili, Palā-umnili). Instead there occurs, more frequently than the mention of Kaneš, the ethnical designation Nāšili, which Forrer takes to be the same as Kanesian, but Hrozný renders it by ‘our’ (i. e. ‘our language', 'the home language'), from a glibly assumed, and more than dubious stem nas = I. E. nos. Under these circumstances the interrelation, if any, between Kaneš and Nāšili is wholly puzzling, tho it does seem that both refer to the main language whose character we are about to discuss.
The Luvian which seems to have been spoken in the land or the city of Lūjja[4] (MĀT ALULu-u-i-ia) is regarded by Hrozný
- ↑ ‘Die acht Sprachen der Boghazköi-Inschriften’, von Dr. Emil Forrer, Sitzungsber. d. preuss. Akad., 1918, p. 1036.
- ↑ ‘Über die Völker und Sprachen des alten Chatti-Landes’, Boghazköi-Studien, 5. Heft = iii. Stück, 2. Lieferung.
- ↑ Nu hattili-halzai.
- ↑ Hrozný shows some reason for identifying Lūjja with Arzawa; see his paper, pp. 39 ff.
