Branch of the Indo-European language family spoken in Anatolia in the 2nd1st millennia BC.
The attested Anatolian languages are Hittite, Palaic, Luwian (Luvian), Hieroglyphic Luwian, Lycian, and Lydian. Hittite, by far the most copiously attested of the group, is known chiefly from a vast archive of cuneiform tablets found in 1905 at Hattusas (now Bogazköy, in north-central Turkey), the capital of the Hittite empire; Hittite texts date from the 16th to 13th century BC. By the late Roman or early Byzantine period at the latest, Anatolian languages had all become extinct. Several non-Indo-European languages of ancient Anatolia, all known from cuneiform texts, are also sometimes considered Anatolian languages: Hattic, spoken in central Anatolia before the coming of the Hittites and known solely from words and texts preserved by Hittite scribes; Hurrian, spoken in the 2nd millennium BC in northern Mesopotamia and southeastern Anatolia; and Urartian (Urartean), known from northwestern Anatolian texts of the 9th7th centuries BC.