Recent decades have seen a growing realisation that texts emanating from the Hittite capital Hattusa can play an important role in the study of the early history of the Aegean. Thus most scholars have come to agree that the kingdom of Ahhiyawa, which is mentioned several times as an important western rival of the Hittite Empire, is to be identified with Mycenaean Greece or a part thereof. The Great Kings of Hattusa maintained diplomatic correspondence with the rulers of Ahhiyawa, and the Hittite fragment KUB 26.91 is likely to belong to (a copy of) a letter sent by the King of Ahhiyawa to the Hittite court. In addition, the rituals and myths recorded in the Hittite language have proved to be a valuable source for understanding the formation of Greek religious tradition. The study of the oriental motives in Hesiod's Theogony is the most famous but by no means the only example of this trend. A recent witness to the fruitful dialogue between Hellenists and Hittitologists is Anatolian Interfaces: Hittites, Greeks, and their Neighbours edited by B.J. Collins, M. Bachvarova and I. Rutherford (2008).
Despite this situation, it has been difficult for Classicists to learn themselves how to work with primary Hittite sources. The way the knowledge of Hittite cuneiform is transmitted in our times is still vaguely reminiscent of the situation in the Hittite Empire. In the Late Bronze Age cuneiform literacy in central Anatolia never spread beyond the public domain and remained the privilege of civil servants working for the king and high state dignitaries. This explains why the use of cuneiform in Anatolia was quickly discontinued after the disintegration of the Hittite Empire and the abandonment of its capital, Hattusa, in the early twelfth century b.c. Nowadays the only institution in the United Kingdom where students are systematically trained to read Hittite texts is SOAS, London. Furthermore, there has been no manual suitable for the independent study of Hittite in its original script. Even the study of Hittite in transliteration is sometimes presented as an esoteric enterprise: thus the exercise book accompanying A Grammar of the Hittite Language by H. Hoffner and H.C. Melchert (2008) is introduced in the following terms: ‘[W]e have designed the tutorial primarily for classroom use with an instructor who knows the language. Although some readers may be able to use the tutorial for self-instruction, we cannot give assurance that such a method will produce satisfactory results’.
This background constitutes a sufficient reason why one should warmly welcome this manual, which provides the first self-contained introduction to the basics of both the Hittite language and writing system. V.d.H. does not call it ‘Teach yourself Hittite’, and indeed emphasises that in most cases the manual will be used in a class setting. But those who wish to teach themselves Hittite can in principle rely upon it as an introductory source, without resorting to additional grammars or dictionaries of sign lists, since the new fragments are explicitly introduced on a lesson-by-lesson basis. This handbook represents a particularly efficient tool for small study groups, even at those campuses that do not have access to extensive Hittitological literature. This gives hope that it will help to expand the knowledge of the Hittite language at Classics departments throughout the English-speaking world, and perhaps will eventually prompt some of them to introduce Hittite in their educational curricula.
The volume arose from V.d.H.'s teaching, first at the University of Amsterdam and then at the University of Chicago. As the only titular Professor of Hittitology in the USA and an editor of the Chicago Hittite Dictionary, V.d.H. has the appropriate academic credentials for his manual to be regarded as authoritative. What is no less important, it was tried on several generations of students. Teaching practice shows that after completing it in a class setting students are ready to proceed to supervised readings of original texts in cuneiform, even though most of them would occasionally resort to consulting published transliterations while preparing their reading assignments. The manual is definitely sufficient for teaching specialists in adjacent fields (i.e. Classicists, comparative philologists, or Biblical scholars) how to work with the transliterated and translated editions of Hittite texts.
A particularly commendable feature is the extensive introduction, which acquaints readers with the nature of the Hittite corpus, primary and secondary Hittitological sources, and the structural peculiarities of the cuneiform script. The main body of the book consists of ten lessons; each begins with notes of grammar and is followed by exercises in reading Hittite transliterated sentences, which are supplied with glossaries. Lessons 2 to 6 feature separate exercises in reading the cuneiform accompanied by the appropriate sign lists. The final part of each lesson consists of a passage from the Annals of the Hittite king Mursili II in hand copy and transliteration. In the first half of the book students are invited to identify the select signs and forms in these passages, but by Lesson 6 they are expected to be able to read them with the help of the additional notes provided. The manual concludes with grammatical tables, grammatical index, cumulative sign-list and cumulative glossary.
Inevitably, a handbook of such scope contains some controversial or inaccurate statements, even though they are few and far between. The first page of the introduction, containing the list of the Anatolian languages (the closest relatives of Hittite) and their writing systems, mentions Cuneiform Luwian, attested in the cuneiform script, and Hieroglyphic Luwian, attested in the hieroglyphic script (p. 1). To me this is a tautology, since the writing system is the main factor that defines the difference between ‘Cuneiform Luwian’ and ‘Hieroglyphic Luwian’. I have tried to demonstrate in Chapter 1 of Sociolinguistics of the Luwian Language (2010) that the actual dialectal distinctions within Luwian cut across the difference in writing systems, and so it would be better to state simply that both of them were used for recording the same language, Luwian. On p. 16, it is correctly observed that the separate instrumental case disappeared in New Hittite being taken over by the ablative, but the table on p. 17 does not reflect this change in transition from Old to New Hittite. The discussion of Sumerograms on p. 29 could more accurately distinguish between the notions of ‘Sumerian’ and ‘Sumerographic’. Thus GU4 LUGAL can be translated as ‘the ox of the king’ in the simplified form of Sumerian spelling in use by the Hittites, but its genuine Sumerian equivalent would be gu lugal-a, where the suffix -a marks the genitive case.
The points addressed above concern marginal issues, which generally do not interfere with the main pedagogical purpose of the book. V.d.H. deserves praise for creating an efficient teaching tool, which has the potential to open Hittitology to specialists in adjacent fields, including Classics.
