Where did one speak luwili? Geographic and linguistic diversity of Luwian cuneiform texts

Abstract

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to assess complications in Luwian dialectal geography in the second millennium BCE, which became apparent in the course of the ongoing work on the edition of Luwian cuneiform texts. On the one hand, a number of Luwian incantations embedded into the ritual traditions of Puriyanni and Kuwattalla (CTH 758-763) and traditionally assigned to the dialect of Kizzuwadna in the southwest of Asia Minor can now be linked to the Lower Land in the central and central-western part of Asia Minor. The increasing Kizzuwadna features of the Kuwattalla tradition, including the Hurrian loanwords in the respective texts, likely reflect its secondary evolution at the court of Hattusa. On the other hand, a large group of Luwian conjurations that is booked under CTH 764-766 can now be linked to the town of Taurisa situated to the northeast of Hattusa. Their language shows dialectal peculiarities, while their formulaic repertoire finds non-trivial parallels in Hattic and Palaic texts. The concluding part of the paper addresses the relevance of these new empirical findings for the dialectal classification of the Luwian language.