Hittite language

Hittite
𒌷𒉌𒅆𒇷 nešili
Region	Anatolia
Era	attested 17th to 12th centuries BC
Language family	Indo-European Anatolian Hittite
Writing system	Hittite cuneiform
Language codes
ISO 639-2	hit
ISO 639-3	Variously: hit – Hittite oht – Old Hittite htx – Middle Hittite nei – New Hittite
Linguist List	hit Hittite
	oht Old Hittite
	htx Middle Hittite
	nei New Hittite
Glottolog	hitt1242

This article contains cuneiform script. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of cuneiform script.

Hittite (natively: 𒌷𒉌𒅆𒇷, romanized: nešili, lit. 'the language of Neša',^[1] or nešumnili lit. 'the language of the people of Neša'), also known as Nesite (Nešite/Neshite, Nessite), is an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken by the Hittites, a people of Bronze Age Anatolia who created an empire centred on Hattusa, as well as parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia.^[2] The language, now long extinct, is attested in cuneiform, in records dating from the 17th^[3] (Anitta text) to the 13th centuries BC, with isolated Hittite loanwords and numerous personal names appearing in an Old Assyrian context from as early as the 20th century BC, making it the earliest attested use of the Indo-European languages.

By the Late Bronze Age, Hittite had started losing ground to its close relative Luwian. It appears that Luwian was the most widely spoken language in the Hittite capital, Hattusa, in the 13th century BC.^[4] After the collapse of the Hittite New Kingdom during the more general Late Bronze Age collapse, Luwian emerged in the Early Iron Age as the main language of the so-called Syro-Hittite states, in southwestern Anatolia and northern Syria.