Hieroglyphic Inscriptions: Archaeologies of Sacred Space

Abstract

The Hittite Empire reveals a dual writing tradition employing two distinct scripts, the international medium of cuneiform, preserved mainly on clay tablets, and a local Anatolian hieroglyphic writing system, attested predominantly on stone for the purpose of monumental display inscriptions. We cannot know how representative the surviving documents and monuments are for the original use of both scripts; much early writing has not survived and extent and content of the lacuna cannot be reconstructed.2 Hieroglyphic display inscriptions are attested from at least the period of Talmi-Tešub of Aleppo, a contemporary of Muwatalli II (ca. 1295–1272 BC) and Hattusili III (ca. 1267–1237 BC);3 if not earlier.4 If Talmi-Tešub’s inscription is the earliest surviving dateable hieroglyphic inscription, it could be argued that one would expect earlier such inscriptions to have existed in the Anatolian centre of the Hittite Empire, in particular in the environment of the capital city Hattusa, before the tradition spread to more peripheral regions. Certainly, the Syrian city of Aleppo is not a contender for the area of origin of this script.5 Anatolian hieroglyphs on stone, dating to the later Hittite Empire (13th century BC), form a small corpus ranging from short epigraphs accompanying glyptic representations to full length inscriptions; material supports include both natural rock surfaces and sculptured stone elements such as building blocks or altar stones. To date, these have been studied mainly with a view to reading and interpreting their content. While it has been considered that they served