Karatepe, the Key to the Hittite Hieroglyphs

Abstract

I. Scholars who attempted the decipherment of the Hittite hieroglyphics began their task with only slender hopes. They had, it is true, before their eyes the successes of their predecessors in solving the secrets both of the Egyptian hieroglyphics and of the Assyrian cuneiform scripts. But these successes had been made possible because in each case a ready key had, been at hand in the shape of a bilingual. Until six years ago no bilingual equal to the Rosetta stone or the Behistun texts had been found for Hittite hieroglyphics and, except for the doubtful help accorded by the inscriptions on a seal or two, to which we shall return, the decipherers had to rely upon their own unaided intuition. It is one thing to elucidate the meaning of an unknown language when it is written in an already known script, such as the Etruscan: or when it is a more or less known language written in a mysterious character, such as turned out to be the case with the Assyrian (for the decipherers were much aided by the discovery that it was a Semitic language akin to Hebrew). But when neither the script nor the language nor their authors are known, when it is known neither what the signs are likely to mean nor what sounds they represent nor who spoke them, the task is indeed a hard one. The degree of success which was achieved in spite of all is sufficiently remarkable to deserve a brief description, since it is a feat which it was always said would prove impossible.