Names on Seals, Names in Texts. Who Were These People?

摘要

The chapter reviews some of the criteria for successfully reading names on hieroglyphic seals from Hattusa and for distinguishing between Hittite and Luwian names among these. As quickly becomes apparent through a review of published Hieroglyphic seal-impressions from Hattusa, there are many more Luwian names than there are Hittite ones, the Hittite names sometimes being associated with the semantics of prestige. This distribution fits the model of Hittite being a language belonging to a receding ruling class, while the majority of the population identifies with Luwian nomenclature.