Bogazköy Archive

The Treaty of Kadesh

tablet

The Bogazkoy archives are a collection of texts found on the site of the capital of the

Hattusas (now Bogazkoy in Turkey). They are the oldest extant documents of the state, and they are believed to have been created in the 2nd millennium BC. The archive contains approximately 25,000 tablets.^[1]

Content

The archive contains royal annals, treaties, political correspondence, legal texts, inventory texts along with instructions, texts related to administration, mythological texts, and religious texts.[2] Also a tablet describing a peace treaty between a Hittite Ruler and an Indo aryan King which was witnessed by the Vedic Deities such as Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Nasatya etc.

Language

Most tablets were found to be written in the Hittite language. However, some of the tablets are written in Hurrian, and a few paragraphs of the tablets are written in Hattic. Akkadian is also a common language, though it is interspersed with Hurrian and Hittite.^[3] Given that the writing is mostly in cuneiform, there are Sumerograms interspersed throughout the texts regardless of language.

Discovery

The Bogazkoy Archives were discovered in 1906 by Hugo Winckler and Theodore Makridi.^[2]

Studying

Hans Ehelohf wrote "Hans Ehelohf and the Bogazköy Archive in Berlin" after years of studying and translating.^[4]
Hans Gustav Güterbock studied the archive and wrote multiple books about it for over 60 years.^[4]

References

^ "The Hittite cuneiform tablets from Bogazköy". UNESCO. Retrieved 2020-07-30.
^ ^a ^b Cem p.1
^ Cem p.2
^
Oriental Institute (Chicago)
.

Bibliography

Karusu, Cem (1996). Some remarks on archive-library/Systems of hattusa-yîoğazköy.
S2CID 195978847
.

[1] "The Hittite cuneiform tablets from Bogazköy". UNESCO. Retrieved 2020-07-30.

[:0-2] Cem p.1

[3] Cem p.2

[:1-4] 
Oriental Institute (Chicago)
.

[1]

[3]

[2]

[4]