University of Haifa

Faculty Member, Department Of Biblical Studies

Thesis Title: Writing and Scribal Tradition in Late Bronze Age Anatolia: A Study of Scribes and Schools in 13th Century BC Ḫattuša

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I wrote my dissertation as part of the DFG research group "Notational Iconicity" (Schriftbildlichkeit)on the Hittite scribes of the 13th century BC.

The archives of the Hittite capital Ḫattuša, uncovered near Boğazköy (150 km east of Ankara), have yielded thousands of cuneiform clay tablets. Many of them were copied over a period of several generations, and include festival and ritual scenarios, instruction texts, mythology, historical prose, political documents, omens, laws, hymns, prayers, and lexical lists. During the last century of the Empire period (ca. 1265 BC to ca. 1185 BC) the scribes of these documents began to frequently attach a personal annotation. In the frame of my project I traced the annotations of more than 60 scribes on around 130 manuscripts. The titles and affiliations in these annotations enabled me, for the most part, to relate the production of specific manuscripts to a certain scribal office (scriptorium), family, or school. My analysis of these documents is performed on three levels: (1) a reconstruction of the scribal institutions; (2) a classification and criticism of the textual genres; (3) a study of the notational and iconic aspects of the Hittite cuneiform script, consisting of a synchronic comparison of writing habits (palaeography and orthography) of the interrelated scribes, and the distinctive features of their scribal school.

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