Contacts of Languages and Peoples in the Hittite and Post-Hittite World - (Ancient Languages and Civilizations) (Hardcover)

About the Book

Pre-Classical Anatolia has always been a crossroads of languages and peoples. This volume provides a state-of-the-art study of linguistic and cultural contacts in Anatolia, with specific focus on the Aegean interface and on the Ancient Near East in the 1st millennium BC.

Book Synopsis

During the 1st millennium BCE, Pre-Classical Anatolia acted as a melting pot and crossroads of languages, cultures and peoples. The political map of the world changed after the collapse of the Bronze Age, the horizon of sea routes was expanded to new interregional networks, new writing systems emerged including the alphabets. The Mediterranean world changed dramatically, and Indo-European languages - Luwic, Lydian, but also Phrygian and Greek - interacted with increasing intensity with each other and with the neighbouring idioms and cultures of the Syro-Mesopotamian, Iranian and Aegean worlds. With an innovative combination of linguistic, historical and philological work, this book will provide a state-of-the-art description of the contacts at the linguistic and cultural boundary between the East and the West.

About the Author

Federico Giusfredi is associate professor of Ancient Near Eastern History at the University of Verona. His research focuses on the languages, texts and cultures of Pre-Classical Near East.

Alvise Matessi is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Verona. His research focuses on cultural and political landscapes and historical geography of the Pre-Classical Near East.

Stella Merlin is a postdoctoral researcher at the Federico II University of Naples. Her research within the PALaC project mainly focuses on the language contact between Greek and Anatolian languages of the 1st millennium.

Valerio Pisaniello is associate professor of Historical and General Linguistics at the "G. d'Annunzio" University of Chieti and Pescara. His research mainly focuses on linguistics and philology of the ancient Anatolian languages.