 I would like to start by thanking the Lubean Studies, not only for organising this session, but also for supporting my research, because part of what I'm presenting here has been made possible because of the Lubean Studies Foundation. I would like to address the use of writing in Western Anatolia. In the late Bronze Age there were two main writing systems in use in Anatolia. The Anatolian hieroglyphs were used for Lubean and Indian-European languages that were closely related to Hittites. And this was an indigenous writing system. The date of its origins are debated, I will come back to that later on, but it was in use till around 700 BC, so well into the Iron Age. And from the late Bronze Age period it has come down to us on seals and seal impressions and some monumental rock inscriptions. The other script that was in use in the Hittite period was the Cuneiform script that was important from Mesopotamia via Syria, where it was already in use from the beginning, or the end of the fourth millennium. And the Cuneiform has been attested during the period of the Hittite Empire, so from around 1615 till 1180 BC, and it has come down to us on thousands of clay tablets. And the Cuneiform, well, was among others used for Hittite, and it is assumed that Hittite was the language of the palace elite and that Lubean was spoken by a wider part of the population. Well, if you look at the geographic distribution of these two writing systems, you see that the squares, they are the Cuneiform sources, they are centered in central Anatolia around the Hittite capital, Ghatusha, and in northern Syria. And of course, Cuneiform was also used much more to the south. And the Anatolian hieroglyphs have also been attested in this area, and they have also been attested in western Anatolia all the way up to the western coast. But we see that unlike in central Anatolia and western Anatolia, we only have incidental hieroglyphic inscriptions, but no archival records, and this is also why our knowledge of this area in this period is so limited. Well, there have been, well, there are several options to explain the fact that the written sources from western Anatolia are so scarce compared to central Anatolia and also compared to the Aegean and the rest of the ancient Near East. It could be that there was no substantial writing tradition and that the few inscriptions that we have in Anatolian hieroglyphs are to be seen as evidence of influence from the Hittite state. So that was, they were imposed from central Anatolia to western Anatolia. Or it could be the case that actually they did make use of writing but unparishable materials that have not come down to us. Well, I would like to argue today that there's actually quite some evidence to support this letter view and that the Anatolian hieroglyphs were indeed used in western Anatolia but mainly written on wood that has not come down to us. And in fact that western Anatolia was the birthplace of this writing system. But it was first turned to the use of wood. We know from references in Cuneiform text from central Anatolia, from Gatusha, that apart from clay the Hittites also made use of metal and of wood. They refer to wooden documents and they also had a special category of scribes, the so-called scribes on wood. Well, these wooden documents have not survived and there's quite some debate what script was used on these last documents where they inscribed with Cuneiform or with Anatolian hieroglyphs. Well, I'm not going to address that whole debate here but actually quite recently some new textual evidence has emerged that seems to confirm the idea that the scribes on wood wrote in Anatolian hieroglyphs on these wooden documents. And in all likelihood these wooden documents that have not come down to us were used for private documents and economic text and daily administrative records, basically all the texts that have not come down to us from Hittite Anatolia. And this absence is really quite remarkable because we do have all these kinds of texts from all other regions in the ancient Near East. Well, we also have some evidence that wood was used as a writing material in western Anatolia as well. And the most clear piece of evidence for this is a passage from a letter written by a Hittite king, probably Tutgalia IV, to the king of Mira, a kingdom in the west of Anatolia. And among others he addresses the situation of the king of Velousha, it was a king called Walmu. And Velousha was already mentioned by Alwen is to be identified with ancient Troy, so located in the northwest of Anatolia. And this king, Walmu has been disposed and the Hittite king wants to reinstall him again as the king of Velousha. And he mentions to the king of Mira that there are documents that he should look at them, documents that confirm that Walmu is the legitimate king of Velousha. And he explicitly mentions that these documents are wooden tablets. So this shows that in western Anatolia there were wooden documents circulating in the Late Bronze Age. Well, there are some more indications that these Anatolian hierarchies were used on a wider scale in western Anatolia, because most of the inscriptions that have come down to us are formal monumental inscriptions. But we also have, albeit few, a few examples of private use of hieroglyphs, and they consist of more informal inscriptions that are not of an official nature, which would imply that this script was used on a more widely basis than just for royal propaganda issued from Gatusa. As shown by Rossislav Oresko, the use of the signs of the hieroglyphs in western Anatolia is different from the hieroglyphs we find at central Anatolia, both at the cart to the way the signs are used and also with regard to their shapes. And this also seems to point to a independent tradition in western Anatolia that which was unrelated, well related, but separately from the one in central Anatolia. Well, and lastly, there's also the argument of common sense. We know that western Anatolia was a highly developed region and it was in constant connection with all kinds of people who made frequent use of writing to the west. We have the Aegean where several writing systems were used and central Anatolia to the east and well, and the rest of the ancient Near East as well. So it would be logical that they themselves also would make use of a writing system. Well, if you then turn to the oranges of the Anatolian hieroglyphs, that's quite a hotly debated topic because both the date and the location is debated. If you look at our evidence, we have the first attestations of hieroglyphic signs emerging at the end of the third and beginning of the second millennium on seals and seal impressions. But the difficulty is that we're not sure if these are just ornamental symbols or already are part of a writing system. And the first really undeniable phonetic writings of Anatolian hieroglyphs date to the 15th century BC because that's the first time we really have more elaborate inscriptions before the time. We mainly have very short inscriptions or signs on seals. But there are in fact quite some indications that the Anatolian hieroglyphs were already used as a writing system before the 15th century. And the most important piece of evidence for this stems from the old Assyrian period in the beginning of the second millennium. Assyrian merchants settled in Anatolia and the most important location was Karnashnesha right there. And in Karnashnesha we have several vessels with hieroglyphic inscriptions on them. And it is generally agreed that they must represent personal names because we also have vessels with a cuneiform, also mentioning the name of the owner of the vessel. And quite recently, Massio Poetto has confirmed that at least one of these hieroglyphic inscriptions representing a name should be partly read phonetically. So that would mean that already in the beginning of the second millennium, we see that these Anatolian hieroglyphs are being used as a writing system. Well, if we then move on to the debate of where these Anatolian hieroglyphs were created, there are basically two main views. Ilya Jakobovic strongly argues for an origin in central Anatolia and many things it was created in a Hittite-Lubian-speaking environment. Whereas, for example, David Hawkins and Rostitof Orescu argue for Western Anatolia as the birthplace of this script. And they think it was created in a mainly-Lubian-speaking environment. Well, if you look at the distribution of the attestations you see the locations marked in red represent the material from the late Bronze Age, so that's in Western Anatolia and in Central Anatolia. And those in black represent the inscriptions from the Iron Age. And the question is, do we see here a movement from West to East so that it started in the West and then slowly moved to the East and then to the Southeast? Or was it created in Central Anatolia and from there spread to the West and to the Southeast? Well, there are some indications that it seems more logical that we are looking here at a movement from the West to the East. And an important factor here is the nature of the Anatolian hieroglyphic script, which is really quite different from the Cuneiform script, which makes it plausible that it has been created in an environment that was not familiar with the Cuneiform writing system. Well, if you look at the Anatolian hieroglyphs and the Cuneiform, on the one hand, they do have some similarities. For example, they both are a logosyllabic writing system so a sign can represent a syllable or a logogram. And they both make use of determinatives, albeit in a different manner. But there are also quite some substantial differences. For example, the writing direction, Cuneiform is written from left to right, whereas the Anatolian hieroglyphs are written in a bistro for them matter, so left to right, right to left. The Anatolian hieroglyphs only have a consonant vocal syllabic structure, whereas the Cuneiform also has vocal consonant signs. Also the formal characteristics of the scripts are quite different. Anatolian hieroglyphs are very pictorial and playful in nature and the Cuneiform script is much more strict and abstract. Also their usage is different. The Cuneiform is very closely tied to clay, whereas the Anatolian hieroglyphs have not been attested on clay or are hardly and were used on other materials such as rock and in the later Iron Age metals such as lead. And they are very closely connected to stamp seals. And for the rest, the Anatolian hieroglyphs make use of the so-called acrophonic principle which the Cuneiform doesn't. And the Cuneiform script has a more elaborate vowel system with four possibly five vowels, whereas the Anatolian hieroglyphs only have three vowels. So in some respect, the Cuneiform is better equipped to represent a language than the Anatolian hieroglyphs, but none of these features have been taken over in the Anatolian hieroglyphic script, which leads one to assume that the Cuneiform script was not known to them. And these differences between the Anatolian hieroglyphs and the Cuneiform script are all the more interesting because the Anatolian hieroglyphs do resemble the EG in writing systems. As you probably all know, at the beginning of the second millennium, several writing systems emerged in the Aegean. The Arganis script in Crete, the Crete and hieroglyphs also in Crete, Linear A and the later spin of Linear B and also from a later period, the Feistel script from Crete. Well, with the exception of Linear B, all these scripts have not been deciphered, so our knowledge is limited. But we can say something about our formal characteristics, especially with the, because Linear B has been deciphered. Well, and if we compare the Aegean scripts, and then I've mainly focused on the Crete and hieroglyphs and the Anatolian hieroglyphic script, well, there are some differences. For one, we cannot really see a very obvious direct sign correspondence. The scripts appear very similar if you look at them, but it's difficult to see a one-on-one relation. But this is largely due to the fact that, well, the Crete and hieroglyphs have not been deciphered. And the texts we have from Crete and hieroglyphs date to a much earlier period from the beginning of the 2nd millennium, whereas our Anatolian texts, so not just small inscriptions but larger texts, date from the 50th century and later. So we have a problem in our knowledge and a time gap. If we look at Linear B and A, it seems that the use of determinatives is different in the Anatolian hieroglyphs than in these Aegean scripts. But there are also some interesting similarities. Well, first of all, we have a match with respect to the date. Both of these writing system emerged at the end of the third beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. They have the same structure, so only consonant vocal signs and they make use of logograms. They have a very strong link with stem seals. This especially applies to the Crete and hieroglyphs and the Anatolian hieroglyphs. And they have, well, they have a high level of iconicity. It's a very clearly, very pictorial writing system. And they all seem to have a loose writing order and to make use of the acrophonic principle that at least applies to Linear A and B and the Anatolian hieroglyphs. But these are quite common characteristics of early writing systems. So if you take this all together, in my opinion, it would make more sense to assume that these Anatolian hieroglyphs were created in Western Anatolia at the end of the 3rd beginning of the 2nd millennium in very close connection to these Indian scripts. I think that it's preferable than assuming that they were created, isolated in central Anatolia at a later stage. And that this script was first primarily written on wooden documents, well, that have not come down to us. And that this script spread from Western Anatolia to the East. And it was ultimately also adopted by the Hittite Empire for mainly propagandistic inscriptions. The main script for the Hittite Empire was Cuneiform, but if the king wanted to address a larger audience, he resorted to the vernacular script, namely the Anatolian hieroglyphs. Thank you.