Anatolian hieroglyphs
writing system
Anatolian hieroglyphs are an indigenous logographic script native to central Anatolia, consisting of some 500 signs. They were once commonly known as Hittite hieroglyphs, but the language they encode proved to be Luwian, not Hittite, and so the term Luwian hieroglyphs is increasingly also used. They are typologically similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs, but do not derive graphically from that script, and they are not known to have played the sacred role as did hieroglyphs in Egypt. There is no demonstrable connection to Hittite cuneiform.
Name
In his 1996 chapter on Anatolian Hieroglyphs, H. Craig Melchert wrote:
The system therefore has been and continues to be known widely as the "Hittite Hieroglyphs." The inscriptions on seals consist only of names, titles, and sometimes good-luck symbols such as that for 'well-being'. It is inappropriate to view these as texts in a given language… All actual texts written in the hieroglyphs are in Luvian, an Indo-European language closely related to, but distinct from, cuneiform Hittite…
History
Individual Anatolian hieroglyphs are attested from the second and early first millennia BC across Anatolia and into modern Syria. A biconvex bronze personal seal was found in the Troy VIIb level (latter half of the 12th century BC) inscribed with Anatolian hieroglyphs. The earliest examples occur on personal seals, but these consist only of names, titles, and auspicious signs, and it is not certain that they represent language. Most actual texts are found as monumental inscriptions in stone, though a few documents have survived on lead strips. In the Neo-Hittite period, hieroglyphs may have also been used for "everyday" documents that have not survived because they were written on perishable materials.
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This entry incorporates text from “Anatolian hieroglyphs” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.