Also known as Nesite and Neshite, Hittite was an 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. The language, now long extinct, is attested in cuneiform, in records dating from the 16th (Anitta text) to the 13th centuries BCE, with isolated Hittite loanwords and numerous personal names appearing in an Old Assyrian context from as early as the 20th century BCE.
By the Late Bronze Age, Hittite had started losing ground to its close relative Luwian. It appears that in the 13th century BCE, Luwian was the most-widely spoken language in the Hittite capital, Hattusa. After the collapse of the Hittite Empire 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. Hittite is the earliest-attested of the Indo-European languages and is the best-known of the Anatolian languages.
Hittite (Nešili) Region: Anatolia
Era: attested 16th to 13th centuries BCE
Language family: Indo-European (Anatolian)
Writing system: Hittite cuneiform
