The Zalpa/Zalpuwa-type of Anatolian toponyms and the geography of Hattian
Thursday 30 May 2024, 5pm
Outreach Room, Faculty of Classics, 66 St. Giles' Oxford OX1 3LU
Speaker: Dr Zsolt Simon (University of Barcelona)
Although the double name Zalpa / Zalpuwa is long known, no satisfying explanation exists. In the first part of the talk, I will argue that a regular explanation can be provided with the help of Hattian morphology. Since similar double toponyms have been noted in the literature but never analysed thoroughly, in the second half of the talk I discuss the methodological and philological problems of identifying analogical cases and provide an exhaustive list. Finally, the geographic and prehistoric implications of this toponym type will be addressed as they provide further evidence for a larger Hattian speaking territory than previously assumed.
Zsolt Simon (Budapest, 1981; PhD 2013 Eötvös Loránd University Budapest) is Ramón y Cajal research fellow at the Institut Universitari del Pròxim Orient Antic of the University of Barcelona. He has written extensively on the Anatolian languages, on the Neo-Hittite states, and on the loan contacts of the ancient Indo-European languages. He is a co-author of the Digital Philological-Etymological Dictionary of the Minor Ancient Anatolian Corpus Languages. He was junior research fellow at the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations of the Koç University (Istanbul), a TÜBITAK research fellow at the same university, and a research associate of the Institut für Assyriologie und Hethitologie of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. He is a co-editor of the Hungarian Assyriological Review.
