Alphabetic scripts of Anatolia (Recai TEKOĞLU)

EPIGRAPHIES OF ANATOLIA: their histories and their future 

24 – 27 April 2018 AKMED, Antalya, TURKEY 

Symposium Booklet (General Info / Program / Abstracts) 

KOÇ UNIVERSITY 

Suna & İnan Kıraç Research Center for Mediterranean Civilizations Symposium on the EPIGRAPHIES OF ANATOLIA: their histories and their future 

ORGANISATION COMMITTEE 

Fatih ONUR 

Akdeniz University, Antalya, TURKEY 

Charlotte ROUECHÉ 

King’s College, London, UK 

SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY COMMITTEE 

Gabriel BODARD SAS, 

University of London, UK 

Michèle BRUNET 

Lumière-Lyon 2 University, FRANCE 

Thomas CORSTEN

 University of Vienna, AUSTRIA 

Johannes NOLLÉ 

Commission for Ancient History and Epigraphy of DAI in Munich, GERMANY 

Scott REDFORD SOAS, 

University of London, UK 

Recai TEKOĞLU 

Dokuz Eylül University, İzmir, TURKEY 

Recai TEKOĞLU 

Alphabetic scripts of Anatolia

 (25 April, Wednesday, 11.20-12.00) 

At the beginning of the first millennium B.C., when the idea of the alphabet as a new system of writing came to influence peoples in the geographical limits of traditional Anatolian cultures, the local ruling entities, still having their cultural and political origins from the 2nd millennium B.C. were not so ready to adopt and practice it voluntarily, as their state idea was still shaped by the post-Hattusa events. Some of the responses followed practices inherited from successors of Hattusan intellectual environments including royal family members, priests and scribes, i.e. they continued to use the Anatolian hieroglyphic script resting upon a conservative ideology, that is the ancestors’ culture. Some of them were more or less ephemeral, lasting for short periods without establishing a definitive tradition. Some of them combined the historical tradition with contemporary international expectations. And some of them created a new path, on the basis of current ideological tendencies which dominated the fields of cultural activities. It is likely that the spread of the alphabet took place gradually in the SyrioAnatolian states from the second part of the 9th century B.C. The most decisive impact on their culture, which cannot be related to the immigration of North Semitic population groups into southern Anatolia, was the arrival of the Phoenician alphabet which drew the attention of international societies. Kilamuwa, king of Sam’al, a Luwian, was the first to record a document arranged in alphabet form within the historical and traditional borders of Anatolian cultures, a fact that is attributed mostly in favour of the infiltration of North Semitic peoples into Anatolia, or against political and cultural weakness of the Luwian populations. 18 Epigraphies of Anatolia: their histories and their future Almost a century later the occasional use of the Phoenician alphabet together with the Anatolian hieroglyphs within the same inscription was natural, due to the existence of multi-lingual and multi-cultural societies and it could be read and translated by non-Luwian speakers. The Eastern Mediterranean shores were a good melting pot for the local and international commercial communities to exchange new ideas. It is very likely that the information on the practice, technology and methodology of alphabetic documents were disseminated to western Anatolia, the Aegean islands and even to Greece from such multi-lingual meetings. The opinion, suggested and adopted by many historians and linguists, that the Greeks learnt the alphabetic writing system from the West Semitic peoples, mainly from the Phoenicians, and then transmitted it to Western Anatolian cultures like the Phrygian, Lydian, Carian and Lycian should be debated. In reality there is not a large gap between the frequency of Phoenician documents in Anatolia and the early appearance of the epichoric scripts of Western Anatolian cultures. In this presentation, the intention is to suggest that the epichoric alphabets of Anatolia were derived from a Proto-Littera-Anatolica, which was born from the cultural influence of West Semitic cultures. 

Recai Tekoğlu

TEKOĞLU, Recai Dokuz Eylül University, TURKEY Department of History Ancient history; Anatolian languages/scripts; classical philology; linguistics tekoglur@icloud.com