LYDIAN LANGUAGE

extinct Indo-European language of ancient Lydia, in the central part of the western coast of Anatolia. The texts, most of which have been found by U.S. excavators at the Lydian capital Sardis, date back to the 5th or 6th century BC, although the majority of them stem from the 4th century BC. The East Greek alphabet was the prototype for that of the Lydian texts. In 1936 Lydian was proven to be an Indo-European language by the Italian scholar Piero Meriggi, and Onofrio Carruba gave strong evidence in 1959 that Lydian should be placed in the Anatolian subgroup of Indo-European languages because Lydian shares many common features with Hittite, Luwian, and Palaic.