Adapting to New Contexts: Cuneiform in Anatolia

Weeden, Mark

doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199557301.013.0028

Cited by 3 publications

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“…This social context of Hittite cuneiform writing, which seems with few exceptions not to have been used for personal economic purposes such as on a large portion of the documentation from Mesopotamia, should have some repercussions for our perception of the kind of social activity that is subsumed under Hittite cuneiform writing (Weeden 2011b).…”

Section: The Status Of Sumerian In the Late Bronze Agementioning

confidence: 99%

The “Influence” of Sumerian on Hittite Literature

Weeden¹

2020

A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages

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The question of influence between literatures should be subjected to some critical review. To speak of one literature associated with one area influencing the literature of another area might carry the assumption that there is an imbalance of power between the two in some respect, that may be expressed in terms of prestige, social domination or colonisation.According to colonial-style thought the literature that delivers the influence might be thought of as active and originating, while the one that receives the influence is supposed to be passive and receptive. "Influence" is thus a concept that one needs to treat with care, along with the closely related concepts of core and periphery, which presuppose in their most unreflected forms a unidirectional processing of information from a culturally high-standing core area towards a culturally low-standing periphery, where the message and content of the material is in some sense diluted or misunderstood.One methodological precaution that can be taken to prevent falling into traps associated with the notion of influence is to look at the way people have worked with literary material first and foremost from the perspective of local cultural norms, to try to understand specific literary forms on their own terms before appealing to explanations that invoke an outside agency or a derivation from an august tradition hallowed by its ancient sanctity. This involves looking at the use of literature as a social activity, embedded in a particular society at a particular time and place, perpetrated by particular agents with specific group interests which are hardly ever to be defined in terms of ethnic categories. It also involves recognising that all literature, as indeed all social activity, is in some sense hybrid, and that a pure type that is essentially characteristic of the people who lived in a particular area at the same time is unlikely to be found, even if the literature of the place and time specifically invokes such thematic categories as its derivation from ancient tradition and its preservation and transmission of special knowledge that is peculiar to a specific group of people. For an entry to theoretical consideration of ideas related to hybridity and influence, albeit applied to very different areas of research, the reader is referred in tokenistic fashion to the work of Homi Bhabha (e.g. 1994, 110-112) and Monica Fludernik (1998); for hybridity in literature and This is the version of the chapter accepted for publication in A companion to ancient Near Eastern languages published by Wiley.

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Section: The Status Of Sumerian In the Late Bronze Agementioning

confidence: 99%

The “Influence” of Sumerian on Hittite Literature

Weeden¹

2020

A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages

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“…Early in the 2nd millennium BCE Old Assyrian traders brought cuneiform to Anatolia, but the writing system which was attested a few centuries later in the Hittite state archives at Hattusa (central Anatolia) is not that of the Old Assyrian colonies. The question of exactly when and how cuneiform was adopted by the Hittites needs further investigation, but there is a good evidence that various neighbouring cultures had a strong hold on the scribal practice in Hattusa, and that changes in paleography were motivated by changes in ideology (Weeden 2011: 603, Waal 2012, Gordin 2014. In the process of adapting cuneiform to write languages for which it was not originally designed, the number of signs gradually reduced.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Spread of ‘Heavenly Writing’

Zorman

2014

ALA

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Cuneiform is the name of various writing systems in use throughout the Middle East from the end of the fourth millennium BCE until the late first century CE. The wedge-shaped writing was used to write ten to fifteen languages from various language families: Sumerian, Elamite, Eblaite, Old Assyrian, Old Babylonian and other Akkadian dialects, Proto-Hattic, Hittite, Luwian, Palaic, Hurrian, Urartian, Ugaritic, Old Persian etc. Over the centuries it evolved from a pictographic to a syllabographic writing system and eventually became an alphabetic script, but most languages used a 'mixed orthography' which combined ideographic and phonetic elements, and required a rebus principle of reading.

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Hittite Scribal Schools Outside of Hattusa?

Weeden

2011

Altorientalische Forschungen

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The article investigates the meagre textual evidence for Hittite scribal schools outside of Hattusa against the background of new excavations and the questions they raise about the social context of Hittite cuneiform writing. The use of the term é.dub.ba(.a) in Late Bronze Age Anatolia by contrast to Middle Bronze Age Babylonia is briefly touched on, and the institution of the é giš.kin.ti at Karahna is compared with that at Hattusa*.

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Adapting to New Contexts: Cuneiform in Anatolia

Cited by 3 publications

References 1 publication

The “Influence” of Sumerian on Hittite Literature

The “Influence” of Sumerian on Hittite Literature

The Spread of ‘Heavenly Writing’

Hittite Scribal Schools Outside of Hattusa?

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