17 June 2025 The Future is the Product of the Past

3,000-Year-Old Lost Anatolian language ‘Kalašma’ deciphered

In 2023 excavation site at the foot of Ambarlikaya in Boğazköy-Hattusha in Turkey, a cuneiform tablet with a previously unknown Indo-European language was discovered. The newly-discovered language, Kalašma, belongs to the Anatolian-Indo-European languages family.

Based in central Anatolia, Türkiye, and with Hattuša as its capital, the Hittite Kingdom and later Empire is acknowledged as one of the principal Old World empires of the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East between 1650 and 1200 BCE from both rich archaeological remains and textual sources.

The tablet contains an introduction stating that a ritual expert conjures in (the language of) Kalašma.The Hittite ritual text refers to the new idiom as the language of the land of Kalašma. This is an area on the north-western edge of the Hittite heartland, probably in the area of present-day Bolu or Gerede.

“These texts show that Anatolia was a multilingual and multicultural place in 2000 BC,” says Prof. Andreas Schachner, head of excavations at Hattuša.

The tablets, written in Kalašma, a language similar to the Luwian used by the Luwians who lived in southern Anatolia and about whom little is known, contain texts on daily life and celebrations.

The 174 tablets containing the Kalašma language were deciphered in a study conducted by Prof. Dr. Daniel Schwemer from the Department of Near Eastern Languages at the University of Worzburg in Germany and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Metin Alparslan from the Department of Hittitology at Istanbul University.

“All texts under the responsibility of the German excavation team have been published,” Schacher said.

Prof. Dr. Schachner said, “Professor Daniel Schwemer, head of the Chair of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Germany, is working on the cuneiform finds from the excavation. He converted it from cuneiform to the Latin alphabet. Then linguistics experts Professor Elisabet Rieken and Assoc. Prof. Ilya Yakubovitich from the University of Marburg analyzed and deciphered the texts. It was a team effort.”

Professor Schachner said that there was no new alphabet in the Kalašma tablets, emphasizing that the cuneiform system, well known to the Hittites and taken from Mesopotamia, was used for writing.

The discovery of another language in the Boğazköy-Hattusha archives is not entirely unexpected, as Daniel Schwemer explains: “The Hittites were uniquely interested in recording rituals in foreign languages.”

Such ritual texts, written by scribes of the Hittite king reflect various Anatolian, Syrian, and Mesopotamian traditions and linguistic milieus. The rituals provide valuable glimpses into the little known linguistic landscapes of Late Bronze Age Anatolia, where not just Hittite was spoken. Thus cuneiform texts from Boğazköy-Hattusha include passages in Luwian and Palaic, two other Anatolian-Indo-European languages closely related to Hittite, as well as Hattic, a non-Indo-European language. Now the language of Kalasma added to these.

Professor Schachner said: “The content of the tablets does not actually convey very important information, but thanks to these texts we learn that Anatolia was a multilingual and multicultural region in 2000 BC. People knew and used at least a few of these languages. The Hittite view of the gods of another region is also confirmed by this text, because they included the gods of the conquered region into their system and worshipped them. In this way, they tried to bind those regions to themselves. These texts were written in this language so that they could pay their respects to the god they brought from Kalašma in a language they could understand. According to Hittite logic, that god would not understand the Hittite language.”

The work ‘Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazköi (Cuneiform Texts from Boghazköi)’, written by Prof. Dr. Schwemer on the decipherment of 174 tablets, is now available digitally. The final publication of the texts will take place in the coming days. Starting in November, the Kalašma texts will be published.

Related Articles

Bronze Age Wedge Tomb Discovered on the Dingle Peninsula maybe Even Older

22 April 2021

22 April 2021

A wedge tomb recently discovered on the Dingle Peninsula of Ireland was described by archaeologists as “quite unusual”. Wedge tombs...

Archaeologists have unearthed two early Aksumite Churches in Africa

11 December 2022

11 December 2022

New discoveries in the port city of Adulis on Eritrea’s Red Sea coast show that two ancient churches discovered more...

Exceptional Iron Age Artifacts Discovered at Celtic Necropolis in France

18 April 2025

18 April 2025

An archaeological excavation in Creuzier-le-Neuf, a small town located six miles north of Vichy, has unveiled a remarkable Celtic necropolis,...

Falaj al Misfah: Working for a thousand years

26 September 2021

26 September 2021

The village of Al Misfah Abriyeen is known for its lush oasis, magnificent orchards, and year-round water source, the ‘aflaj.’...

New studies confirm that there was indeed a shipyard at Lothal, the commercial center of the Harappan civilization and world’s oldest port

6 September 2024

6 September 2024

Since the discovery of Harappan sites at Lothal, located about 30 kilometers inland from the coast of the Gulf of...

A Rare Late Neolithic Period Seal found in Domuztepe Mound

25 August 2022

25 August 2022

A rare Late Neolithic Seal was discovered during the 2022 excavations of the Domuztepe Mound (Domuztepe Höyük), located on the...

Persian plateau unveiled as crucial hub for early human migration out of Africa, study suggests

29 March 2024

29 March 2024

60,000 to 70,000 years ago, our species Homo sapiens walked out of Africa and began to find new homes around...

New Discoveries Made in World’s Oldest Ancient Shipyard

11 June 2024

11 June 2024

Associate Professor Hakan Öniz, who discovered the world’s largest and oldest shipyard dating back to the Bronze Age in 2015...

2000-year-old Ancient Greek ‘graduate school yearbook’ carved in stone found

5 June 2022

5 June 2022

Historians have discovered that an ancient Greek inscription on a marble slab in the collection of the National Museums of...

A statue of God Apollo was found during sewerage works in Afyon city in western Turkey

30 May 2021

30 May 2021

A statue thought to belong to God Apollo was found during sewerage works in Afyon city in western Turkey. During...

Copious Copper Supplies Made Cyprus a Trading Center in the Bronze Age

23 March 2023

23 March 2023

Cyprus was a surprisingly busy trading hub during the early period of international trade in the Mediterranean region. Its awe-inspiring...

Obsidian Research in Alberta Uncovers Evidence of Extensive Long-Distance Trade Among Indigenous Peoples Before European Contact

31 March 2025

31 March 2025

Recent research into obsidian artifacts in Alberta, a province located in western Canada, has unveiled significant evidence of long-distance trade...

An unexpected shipwreck was unearthed at the Tallinn construction site

18 April 2022

18 April 2022

During the construction of the office building on Lootsi Street in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital on the Baltic Sea, a shipwreck...

DNA Analysis Reveals Identifies the Genetic Makeup of Piceni the Most Fascinating Civilizations of Pre-Roman Italy

24 November 2024

24 November 2024

A study conducted by an international team coordinated by Sapienza University of Rome and the Italian National Research Council (CNR)...

Well-preserved Ming Dynasty tomb unearthed in China’s Shanxi Province

17 March 2024

17 March 2024

Archaeologists from the Shanxi Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology have unearthed a well-preserved tomb from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)...