Syro-Hittite Multilingualism: Languages and Narratives at Monumental Sites from the Northern Levant and Southern Anatolia between the end of the Late Bronze and the Early Iron Age

Abstract

The fall of the Hittite Empire marked the end of the Late Bronze Age social, political, and cultural order in the Syro-Anatolian region The following period was characterised by strong political upheavals, demographic shifts, long-distance migrations, and socio-economic transformations. After a ‘dark age’ of about two centuries, the region was fragmented among ‘Syro-Hittite’ polities. Their culture merged together elements from different pasts, identities, and traditions, crafting new narratives that served local ruling dynasties. These were expressed with large-scale urbanistic and monumental programs, accompanied by reliefs as well as inscriptions in multiple languages (Aramaic, Sam’alian, Phoenician, Luwian, Akkadian), at times concurrently, in bi- or tri-lingual texts. What were the reasons to redact multilingual monumental texts? To whom and for whom did these monuments speak? For what narratives did they stand? In what memory could they partake? What are the cultural and social dynamics underlying this multilingualism? Are these context-specific instances or do they belong to a common phenomenon? In an attempt to answer such questions, this thesis aims at contextualising the phenomenon both within the broader region and as part of the cultural developments following the decline of the Bronze Age world order. Different theoretical tools will be adopted to parse through the limited archaeological and epigraphic evidence, including group identity, cultural memory, monumentality, text materiality.