Lecture | Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars
Sealing and bookkeeping practices in Hittite Anatolia
- Date
- Friday 29 May 2026
- Time
- Serie
- Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars
- Address
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 2.28
Abstract
The organization of the everyday economic administration in Hittite Anatolia (ca. 1650–1180 BCE) largely escapes our view. In contrast to contemporary cuneiform archives from Syria and Mesopotamia, the Hittite tablet collections have yielded very few daily administrative records such as receipts, debt-notes, tax records, etc. Nevertheless, the available evidence indicates the existence of sophisticated and highly organized systems of record-keeping within the Hittite kingdom, in which written and non-written bookkeeping practices operated in tandem. This paper focuses on the role of sealings within the Hittite administration and advances a new interpretation of the basic meaning of šai-/šiye-, the Hittite verb primarily associated with the act of sealing.