Publisher's Synopsis
These Hittite text fragments are part of a large collection found during the early Turkish-German excavations at the Hittite capital Hattusa before the Second World War. This book offers a large number of unpublished text fragments from the collection, both photographed and in transliteration, also providing philological notes to the fragments.
The fragments were originally taken to the Staatliche Museen in Berlin (which fell to East Germany after the war) and were finally returned by the German Democratic Republic to Turkey (the Museum of Ancient Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara) in 1987. They were then divided among a team of eminent Turkish Hittitologists under the supervision of Sedat Alp, but most of the pieces remain unpublished. In 2010 a new team was formed, partly consisting of members of the former team, but also supplemented by several fine younger Turkish Hittitologists. The authors of the present monograph are among these new team members.
Oguz Soysal, a Hittitologist, and Basak Yildiz Gulsen, a curator of the Ankara Museum, provide photographs and transliterations of each piece. Wherever necessary, the authors give philological notes to explain certain forms or to present relevant text variants. Each fragment, if possible, is accompanied by information on its assignment to a Hittite text or text genre, the date of the composition, the fragment's measurements, and previous bibliography.
316 illustrations (most in colour)
