LUWIAN LANGUAGE

also called Luvian, or Luish, extinct Indo-European language primarily of the southern part of ancient Anatolia. It was closely related to Hittite, Palaic, and Lydian and was a forerunner of the Lycian language. Modern knowledge of Luwian comes primarily from passages introduced by the adverb luwili (in Luwian) in cuneiform tablets discovered in the ruins of the Hittite archives at Bogazky (in modern Turkey); these passages were spoken in the rituals of some deities. The pioneering work on Cuneiform Luwian was done by Emil Forrer in 1922. In addition to Luwian passages in the cuneiform tablets, a number of inscriptions occur in a hieroglyphic system of writing that originated with the early Hittite stamp seals of the 17th and 18th centuries BC. Hieroglyphic Luwian (often called Hieroglyphic Hittite) texts have been found dating from as late as the last quarter of the 8th century BC. Most of the work of deciphering the language was completed in the 1930s, although more was learned about the meaning of the writing after the discovery in 1947 of the Karatepe bilingual inscriptions, written in both Hieroglyphic Luwian and Phoenician. Hieroglyphic Luwian is thought to represent an eastern dialect of Luwian, while Cuneiform Luwian represents a central dialect. The Lycian language (q.v.) of about 600200 BC, written in an alphabetic script, is believed to be descended from a West Luwian dialect. See also Hittite language.