/r/Anatolians
A subreddit for the cultures that flourished in Asia Minor between the 4th and 1st Millenia BCE inclusive, including those of the Hittites, Luwians, Lycians, Carians, Pisidians, Palaic, and Lydians. Hittite records provide Indo-Europeanists with the earliest documentation of the Indo-European language (from ca. 1600 BCE)!
/r/Anatolians
So I'm really excited about a story I'm working on. Normally I draw a lot from proto indo-european language websites to come up with names and major concepts. I feel pretty okay doing this because no one is speaking it to the point that there are literally not enough words in any online sources for it to finction as a label. I also draw from mythology a lot especially Greek, Roman, Norse, Sumerian, and Egyptian mythology. Again I feel pretty okay doing this. I'm Egyptian, I have a pretty strong knowledge base when it comes to those mythologies, and I don't think anyone is legitimately practicing those religions in the form they were intially practiced in (I'm wiccan a lot of people I know who identify as "norse pagans" have absolutely no idea that actual norse pagans practiced tons of human and animal sacrifice).
But here's the thing. I went down a little rabbit hole and I found myself looking at a proto-hittite dictionary. I ended up learning about the Sun Goddess of Arinna and I just really liked the names. I ended up kind of piecing together a bunch of names and ideas but the story I'm writing is truly nothing like the actual mythology around her. Essentially I took her name from an inscription (Istanu) and the name Arinna (I am considering naming the project "the gods of arinna") and the fact that she's a sun goddes and that's it. The rest of the story has absolutely nothing to do with the hittites and is incredibly contrary to what were likely the values of the hittites.
As an Egyptian it's very frustrating for me to see people take concepts from Egyptian mythology and just mash it into whatever form they want. This is not because I find the practice sacred, but because (1) a lot of the media portrayal of Egypt is only of the ancient world and (2) colonialism really messed the country up. So much of Egyptian history has been destroyed by European (mostly British) colonization. It is very upsetting to me to see people ignore things like an American backed dictatorship that puts people in prison (not a conspiracy this is public information) and just laugh about mummies. Mummies were people. And even though they were incredibly well preserved we have unfortunately few of them because "archeologists" literally just dug them up and sold them as oddities and in some cases ate them.
I'm also very weary of a Dune situation with the fake arabic and the weird white guy as Mohammed on drugs story line. That's almost exactly what I'm doing. I'm taking the aesthetic of something and layering it on to my own ideas. But the reason I dislike that is people are actually practicing Islam and speaking arabic. I try not to use religions that people currently practice but that I have not practiced (again, I don't think neopagans are practicing the religions they say they are practicing). I don’t delve into hinduism or shintoism for example because I'm not attached to those religions but I draw heavily from Christianity because I was raised Christian.
So all this to say, now that you understand my moral reasoning behind my creative choices, is it offensive to y'all (the group closest to the hittites I could find to ask) that I would essentially take a few names and ideas and layer them onto a story that doesn't have anything to do with the culture or mythology of hittites? Are there people in Turkey who would be frustrated by this appropriation? Would it be better to not use specific names of people and places and instead draw from parts of the language in a way similar to how I use proto indo european?
If you read all this thanks!
I often see online projects (mainly as hobbies) for language revivals, but I never see any projects for Anatolian languages. Do they exist? Or did I overlook it?
If you could pick one language to be revived, which one would you pick?
I font the Nesili keyboard layout for mac that allows me to type in hittite cuneiform, unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a similar layout to type in hieroglyphic Luwian, does anyone know of such a thing?
" ... the source of ḫaššu- is best sought via a reconstruction *H_1onsu- (cf. dassu- <*dn̥su-), as in Polomé’s comparison with [Old Norse] áss ‘god’, [Avestan] ahū ‘lord’, [Sanskrit] ásura-, ... "- Hittite Vocabulary by David Michael Weeks