BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW 67
STRATA ANSWERS
Who Did It? (from p. 14)
Answer: Bedřich Hrozný
Bedřich Hrozný (1879–1952) deciphered
the language of the Hittites in 1915 as a
result of his work on clay tablets from
the royal archives of ancient Hattuša
(modern Boğazkale, Turkey)—the
Hittites’ one-time capital.*
The now-extinct Hittite language
flourished between c. 1700 and 1200
B.C.E. and was spoken by the Hittites,
who migrated into Asia Minor by the
19th century B.C.E. When the Hit-
tites began expanding into the south-
ern Levant in the mid-14th century, it
caused regional conflicts, including a
struggle with the biggest power of the
day—Egypt under Ramesses II. The end
of the Hittite Empire shortly after 1200
was abrupt—likely a result of the general
turmoil in the eastern Mediterranean
caused by the “Sea Peoples.”
The Hittite language belongs to the
Anatolian branch of the Indo-European
language family, which encompasses
almost all the languages of Europe,
including English. Older than Sanskrit
and Greek, it is in fact the earliest
attested Indo-European language. Hittite
has survived on thousands of clay tablets.
Although the script of these tablets is the
Mesopotamian cuneiform that scholars
had been able to read since the mid-19th
century, their language was not decoded
until Hrozný came along.
Bedřich Hrozný was born on May 6,
1879, in Lysá nad Labem, a small town in
the Central Bohemian Region of what is
today Czechia (the Czech Republic). Son
of a Protestant pastor, he was expected
to follow in his father’s footsteps. He
even started a degree in theology but
instantly switched to ancient Near
Eastern languages, which he studied in
Vienna, Berlin, and London. In 1905,
Hrozný was appointed the first lecturer
in cuneiform studies at the University of
Vienna. In researching cuneiform texts
from Asia Minor, he became familiar
with clay tablets recently excavated in
what was later recognized as ancient
Hattuša. Inscribed by unknown people
in an unknown language, those texts
became a door to a lost civilization
when Hrozný cracked their code in 1915,
despite his conscription in World War I.
“Now you will eat bread and drink
water.” Containing the word uātar
(“water”), this was the first sentence
Hrozný deciphered—three millennia
after the once-mighty Anatolian empire
vanished.
After the establishment of the inde-
pendent Czechoslovakia in late 1918,
Hrozný moved from Vienna to Prague,
where he chaired Charles University’s
newly founded Department of Cunei-
form Studies. He became the university
president shortly before World War
II and was appointed to the newly
established Czechoslovak Academy of
Sciences in 1952.
Alongside his philological work,
Hrozný carried out archaeological exca-
vations, including of the ancient city
of Kanesh (modern Kültepe, Turkey),
where he discovered private archives of
cuneiform tablets inscribed in Akkadian.
Hrozný died on December 12, 1952,
and is buried in his hometown, Lysá
nad Labem, where you can also visit his
recently renovated museum.Thanks to the efforts of Bedřich
Hrozný—whose name incidentally trans-
lates as Frederick Terrible—the Hittites
got their voice back, and their ancient
language has become essential in recon-
structing the common parent of the
Indo-European language family.Do You Remember? (from p. 13)
Answer: (A) Deir el-Balah, Gaza StripThese anthropoid sarcophagi (coffins with
human features carved on them) appeared
in the May/June 1998 issue of Biblical
Archaeology Review.* The late Philistine
expert Trude Dothan uncovered several of
these intriguing ceramic coffins from the
cemetery at Deir el-Balah—about 10 miles
southwest of Gaza. Nearly 50 others came
from the market.** They average 4 feet in
height. Strong Egyptian influences can be
clearly seen from the stylized representa-
tions of the faces, hands, arms, and the occa-
sional beard of Osiris—the Egyptian god of
the dead.
The sarcophagi date to the Late
Bronze Age (c. 14th–13th centuries
B.C.E.), a period when Canaanite city-
states served as vassals to the Egyptian
pharaohs. In the decades following the
expulsion of the Semitic Hyksos (pha-
raohs of the 15th Dynasty who ruled dur-
ing Egypt’s Second Intermediate period)
from Egypt, the pharaohs of the 18th
Dynasty subjugated the lands of their
former oppressors, the Hyksos, and cre-
ated an empire (the beginning of Egypt’s
New Kingdom) that would last through-
out the course of the Late Bronze Age.
Deir el-Balah served as an administrative
center for Egyptian officials in Canaan.
From priceless discoveries such as
these, one can clearly see that Egyptian
influence reached beyond the realm
of politics. Similar sarcophagi have
been found at sites throughout Canaan,
including Beth Shean, Lachish, and Tell
Farah South.*See Trevor Bryce, “The Last Days of Hattusa,” Archae-
ology Odyssey, January/February 2005; “The Hittites:
Between Tradition and History,” bar, March/April 2016.
*Carolyn R. Higginbotham, “The Egyptianizing of
Canaan,” bar, May/June 1998.
**Hershel Shanks, “The Verdict on Advertisements for
Near Eastern Antiquities—Dubitante,” bar, November/
December 1984; Trude Dothan, “Cultural Crossroads,”
bar, September/October 1998.Bedřich Hrozný in Kanesh in the 1920s© ARCHIVE OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, PRAGUE