You are invited to the joint lecture Back to the beginning: The origins of the Anatolian hieroglyphs from a historical, philological and linguistic perspective by Alwin Kloekhorst (Leiden University) and Willemijn Waal (Leiden University) organized by NIT and TEBE on 22 September 2026 at 18:00 at the Anamed Auditorium. 

Ancient Anatolia was home to an indigenous hieroglyphic writing system that was in use during the 2nd and 1st millennium BCE, primarily to write the Luwian language. This lecture will readdress the hotly debated topic of the origins and use of the Anatolian hieroglyphs in Anatolia. It will discuss newly discovered archaeological, philological and linguistic evidence, on the basis of which it has now become likely that (a) this writing system was used more widely than thus has generally been assumed, and (b) that it predates the introduction of the cuneiform script into Anatolia. Moreover, we will discuss several arguments that indicate that the Anatolian hieroglyphic script was already in use during the Old Assyrian period, and that its roots may go back even further in time.

Alwin Kloekhorst is Professor of Anatolian Linguistics at Leiden University. His research focuses of the Indo-European languages of Ancient Anatolia and the position of this Anatolian branch within the Indo-European language family at large. He further works on (Old) Hittite history. Alwin has just completed a manuscript of a historical and comparative grammar of Hittite and currently serves as Director of Studies at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics.

Willemijn Waal is Associate Professor at Leiden University. She specializes in the materiality of writing in the ancient world, with a focus on Hittite Anatolia and the Aegean. She is currently the principal investigator of the project ‘From Aleph to Alpha: The spread and development of alphabetic writing across the Mediterranean’.