Held Warren H., Schmalstieg William R., Gertz Janet E. Beginning Hittite

Slavica Publishers, 1988. — 238 p.Since both Professor Warren Held and I had taught upper level undergraduate and lower level graduate courses in Hittite from time to time it appeared to us that it would be useful to have a single introductory text-book which would contain elementary grammatical notions of the Hittite language and a few reading selections which would give the student some first-hand experience with Hittite texts. To my great sorrow my close friend and colleague Professor Held passed away in the spring of 1986 leaving behind the effort which he had expended on the book. He alone had completed the sign list and had transcribed all of the cuneiform signs which are to be found in this book. In spite of this tragic loss it was possible to complete the book by enlisting a third co-author, Janet Gertz who had completed her doctorate in linguistics at Yale Univer- sity with a dissertation on Hittite, The Nominative- Accusative Neuter Plural in Anatolian. Dr. Gertz made many valuable corrections and changes in the original text and expanded it somewhat.
The purpose of this book then is to satisfy the perceived lack of an elementary text-book of Hittite, a text-book that is so elementary that it can also be used by the student for self instruction without the aid of any teacher.
The reading selections are accompanied by a Latin transcription of the Hittite text and an inter-linear English translation. Following each reading selection is a colloquial English translation of the Hittite texts.
The glossaries are carefully prepared giving the form of each word as it actually occurs in the text plus a gram- matical description. Immediately following the grammati- cal description one finds references to paragraphs with further grammatical explanation and to paragraphs in the grammar in which the word occurs in the form cited. Fol- lowing this are references to the reading passages in which the word occurs. The student can then find all the relevant information about any word in the text by check- ing the references in the glossary. The glossary also contains words found only in the grammatical explanation, but not in the reading passages. Thus the glossary func- tions also as a kind of index to the grammar itself.
Those students wishing to continue their study of Hittite can use the grammars and chrestomathies of Sturtevant and/or Friedrich.