As a peer-reviewed, living archive of cuneiform manuscripts in transliteration, TLHdig is a collaborative, low-threshold research tool that enables researchers to add transliterations of yet unpublished cuneiform texts to a comprehensive digital corpus in an easy manner, without providing a definitive text edition. Thus the epigraphical and philological quality of the data contained in TLHdig is uneven and under constant development.
TLHdig was first established with funding of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft within the project Thesaurus Linguarum Hethaeorum digitalis (TLHdig): A dynamic and multiply interconnected online repository for transliterated and richly annotated cuneiform manuscripts from Hittite tablet collections (DFG no. 437298794; 2020–24).
The following people worked on the DFG project: University of Mainz: Fabio Bastici, Doris Prechel (PI), Letizia Savino. University of Marburg: Birgit Christiansen, Paul Herdt, Elisabeth Rieken (PI), David Sasseville, Turna Somel. University of Würzburg: Herbert Baier, Kevin Chadbourne, Björn Eyselein, Gerfrid G. W. Müller (PI), Daniel Schwemer (PI).
TLHdig is hosted in the Hethitologie-Portal Mainz (HPM), which is maintained by the HFR project with funding of the research programme of the German Union of Academies.
TLHdig is built on numerous sources that can only be summarily documented here. The stock of its individual transliterations, which form part of TLHdig since its launch in 2023, is therefore not assigned to individual authors. For those who prepared the texts for their immediate inclusion in TLHdig, see the list of Content Editors. Any addition to TLHdig after its first launch is logged by date and author.
The Hethitologie-Archiv at the Mainz Academy
The main corner stone of TLHdig was the lexical archive of Hittite texts in the Hethitologie-Archiv at the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature, a centre of Hittitological research since 1961. It was established and to a large part created over many years by Heinrich Otten.
During Otten’s and his successor Erich Neu’s tenure, Christel Rüster worked tirelessly on the lexical archive, as did for periods of time Silvin Košak, Stefano de Martino, Cord Kühne, Jana Součková, and Giulia Torri. Erich Neu’s and Christel Rüster’s Hethitisches Zeichenlexikon (1989) laid the foundation for the transliteration standards that underpin TLHdig.
When Gernot Wilhelm led the Mainz archive, work on the digitization of the archive's resources started. Gerfrid G.W. Müller led endeavours to digitize the existing file cards in various formats. Jared L. Miller and Francesco Fuscagni added further (then digital) transliterations, as did various authors of KBo volumes, including Carlo Corti, Francesco Fuscagni, Detlev Groddek, Jürgen Lorenz, Jared L. Miller, Doris Prechel, Elisabeth Rieken, Daniel Schwemer, Gabriella Stivala, Giulia Torri, and Theo van den Hout.
TLHdig could not have been realized without Silvin Košak’s Konkordanz and the development of HPM as a digital platform for Hittitology, first initiated and implemented by Gernot Wilhelm and Gerfrid G. W. Müller.
Digital Text Edition Projects
TLHdig includes important high-quality data that flow from partner editorial projects on HPM into TLHdig. This includes the following projects and their digital corpora:
- Beschwörungsrituale der Hethiter (Doris Prechel, Susanne Görke, and Francesco Fuscagni, with contributions by Daliah Bawanypeck, Birgit Christiansen, Anna Chrzanowska, Billie Jean Collins, Carlo Corti, Magdalena M. Kapełuś, Sabine Melzer, Claudia Montuori, Alice Mouton, Rita Strauß, Giulia Torri, Sultan Ünal, Valeria Zubieta-Lupo)
- Corpus der hethitischen Festrituale (lead: Elisabeth Rieken, Daniel Schwemer; project team: Michele Cammarosano, Susanne Görke, Silvin Košak, Jürgen Lorenz, Gerfrid G. W. Müller, Charles W. Steitler, as well as Fabio Bastici, James M. Burgin, Jonas Döll, Ulrich Geupel, Adam Kryszeń, Sabine Melzer, Miriam Pflugmacher, Theresa Roth, Turna Somel)
- Gebete der Hethiter (Elisabeth Rieken, Jürgen Lorenz, Alexandra Daues)
- Hittite Divinatory Texts (lead: Birgit Christiansen, Enrique Jiménez, Daniel Schwemer; project team: Birgit Christiansen, Andrea Trameri)
- Hittite Cult Inventories (Michele Cammarosano)
- Hittite Palace Administrative Corpus (James M. Burgin)
- Königserlässe der Hethiter (Massimiliano Marazzi)
- Luwili Project (Alice Mouton, Ilya Yakubovich, Laura Puértolas Rubio)
- Mythen der Hethiter (Elisabeth Rieken, Jürgen Lorenz, Anna Bauer, Susanne Görke)
- Staatsverträge der Hethiter (Gernot Wilhelm, Francesco Fuscagni, Albertine Hagenbuchner, Yasuhiko Sakuma)
Decipherers
Many colleagues deciphered Hittite cuneiform manuscripts and provided a first access to the texts through their hand-copies and/or transliterations. Representing all these scholars, the authors of volumes of the main series KBo, KUB, IBoT, ABoT, CHDS, and HKM are named here.
The masterful achievements of the first epigraphists of Hittitology, Hans Ehelolf, Hans Gustav Güterbock, Heinrich Otten, and Sedat Alp, stand unsurpassed to this day. Standing on the shoulders of these giants of Hittitology, the following colleagues contributed: Rukiye Akdoğan, Alfonso Archi, İsmet Aykut, Kemal Balkan, Howard Berman, Hatice Bozkurt, Carl Georg von Brandenstein, Muazzez Çiğ, Carlo Corti, Mustafa Eren, Hugo Heinrich Figulla, Emil Forrer, Helmut Freydank, Francesco Fuscagni, Albrecht Götze, Detlev Groddek, Harry A. Hoffner, Bedřich Hrozný, Liane Jakob-Rost, Hatice Kızılyay, Horst Klengel, Franz Köcher, Hans Martin Kümmel, Jürgen Lorenz, Jared L. Miller, Erich Neu, Maciej Popko, Doris Prechel, Elisabeth Rieken, Kaspar Klaus Riemschneider, Christel Rüster, Mirjo Salvini, Joachim Schiele, Daniel Schwemer, Oğuz Soysal, Josef Sturm, Giulia Torri, Marie-Claude Trémouille, Theo van den Hout, Arnold Walther, Ernst Friedrich Weidner, Gernot Wilhelm, Başak Yıldız Gülşen.
Transliterations, Print and Digital
An important source of transliterations is the effort Hethitische Texte in Transkription, led by Detlev Groddek and published in volumes of the series DBH; besides Detlev Groddek, contributors include Rukiye Akdoğan, Francesco Barsacchi, José V. García Trabazo, Alwin Kloekhorst, Hanna Roszkowska-Mutschler, Johann Tischler, İlknur Taş, Giulia Torri.
Detlev Groddek and Jürgen Lorenz contributed very significant amounts of their digital transliterations to the Hethitologie-Archiv and TLHdig.
Text Editions
Numerous Hittite text editions have appeared in the series StBoT and THeth, and in many other places. None of them can be detailed here. Nor is it possible to disentangle the complex history of research, including the use of unpublished resources, such as the file cards of the Mainz Hethitologie-Archiv and of the Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CHD), in the creation of these editions.
We would like to refer the user of TLHdig, however, to the text-related bibliographical data contained in Silvin Košak’s Konkordanz der hethitischen Keilschrifttafeln, which supplements the earlier bibliographical data gathered in Emmanuel Laroche’s Catalogue des textes hittites (CTH). Even though TLHdig is not based on a systematic review of all these editorial efforts, many of the insights and discoveries contained in them are reflected in the TLHdig transliterations.
