Oxford University’s Anatolian Languages and Linguistics Summer School (June 17-22)

Over the past week, I had the incredible opportunity to attend the Anatolian Languages and Linguistics Summer School at Oxford University in (obviously) Oxford, England. Held at one of the world’s most prestigious academic institutions and the undisputed oldest university in the English-speaking world, the summer school brought together scholars and students from around the globe, all eager to delve into the world of ancient Anatolian languages. This blog records some of my reflections on the experience.

Ancient Anatolia Day (June 17)

The summer school was preceded by an Ancient Anatolia Day at Wolfson College on Monday, June 17 (available on YouTube here). I attended taster sessions (crash courses) on “Anatolian Alphabets” by Fiona Phillips (Oxford) and “Hieroglyphic Luwian” by Annick Payne (Venice) followed by a roundtable discussion on Türkmen-Karahöyük which featured Petra Goedebuure (Chicago), Theo van den Hout (Chicago), Marco Santini (Oxford), and Mark Weeden (UCL). Following the roundtable was a conversation between Ignasi Adiego (Barcelona) and Ilya Yakubovich (Marburg) called “In the Workshop of the Decipherer” (Adiego is famous for his contributions to the decipherment of the Carian alphabet in the 1990s. See especially his book The Carian Language [Brill, 2007] here). H. Craig Melchert (UCLA) provided some personal reflections on the history and state of the field in his talk called “Fifty Years in Anatolian Studies” followed by a presentation by Rita Francia (Rome) and Francesco Landucci (Archeologia Sonora Sperimentale) on Hittite in music called Ehu Ishamai (for a taster, see here).

The Summer School (June 18-22)

The summer school then commenced on Tuesday, June 18 and preceded for five days. It included four modules: “Writing Systems in Ancient Anatolia” by Annick Payne; “The Hittites: Texts and Contexts” by Theo van den Hout; “Lydian Language and Linguistics” by Ilya Yakubovich; and “Anatolian Historical Linguistics” by H. Craig Melchert, each presenting for 1.5 hrs daily plus tea breaks, lunch, and social events in the evenings. While all the modules were excellent in their own way, the most approachable for me (as somebody who doesn’t formally study Indo-European linguistics) were the first two modules. Ironically, however, my favorite was Prof. Yakubovich’s course on Lydian linguistics. I appreciated his in-depth knowledge of the subject matter, helpful handouts, and passion for the digital humanities (for example, he has contributed to the important eDiAna project, a philological-etymological dictionary of the minor Anatolian languages). I especially appreciated his discussion of a Lydian-Aramaic bilingual text (LW 1, freely available on eDiAna) from Sardis dating to ca. 400 BCE (Lydian portion below).

New Colleagues and Friends

While the lectures were great, the company was even better. Truly the best part of the summer school was meeting esteemed scholars, developing relationships with colleagues, and making friends. Without listing them individually, I’m especially grateful to have met new colleagues and friends from the Universities of Oxford, Copenhagen, Sydney, Zürich, Rome, Ca’ Foscari in Venice, HUJ, UCLA, UMichigan, and KCL. (I’ll take this opportunity to single out a new friend from Copenhagen for his many enlightening conversations and especially for instilling within me an interest in Indo-European linguistics and Greco-Latin literature.) Almost daily, a group of us spent our evenings frequenting the local establishments for the pint or two which was nearly as educational and rewarding as the classes themselves (unfortunately excluding the famous Eagle and Child pub which had closed during the COVID-19 pandemic).

Two Final Reflections

Finally, although I could talk about various impressionable experiences while in Oxford, including visits to Blackwell’s Bookshop, the Ashmolean Museum, and the beautiful Keble College (specifically its chapel to see ‘The Light of the World’, an 1853 painting by William Holman Hunt), I’ll single out just two memories which I’ll not soon forget: First, the fine folks of the summer school headed up two quiz/trivia nights at the Wolfson College Cellar Bar, which were thoroughly enjoyable. Despite not being the team’s strongest asset, I made at least one contribution for which I’m proud: the bonus question, worth 5 of the 45 points, was a linguistic challenge of the mind. The prompt included 10 sentences in a fictional language with instructions to construct one additional sentence from its English translation. While the basic features of the language were easily deduced (vocabulary, nominal case, verbal initial syntax, etc.), the trick to getting it right was applying a concept similar to animacy hierarchy in Navajo (a language which I don’t know) in order to get correct the word order of the subject and direct objects. My model for what eventually led to the breakthrough was a recent treatment of the Sumerian conjugation prefixes by Christopher Woods which suggests that the use of mu-, ì-, and ba– in Sumerian verbal chains are also connected to the overall animacy of the constituent clause. Ultimately, we were the only one of six teams to get full credit for the question, which ultimately served to secure third place for the overall trivia night. The second memory with which I’ll conclude was the final night of the school: I was privileged to sit with Craig Melchert along with a handful of other students for about two hours at the Lamb & Flag pub before convening at the Wolfson College Bar for the final social event of the program. During this conversation with Prof. Melchert, he brought to my attention that he taught one of my Hopkins professors which establishes me as (in his words) his academic grandchild. I also took the opportunity to ask several questions about his time at Harvard, in the Air Force, various highlights of his career, and specifically about one particular tantalizingly titled article of his called “‘Exceptions’ to Exceptionless Sound Laws” (Lingua 35, 1975).

Conclusion

Thus, the first week of the summer is in the books. I fly out from London to Leipzig tomorrow for a summer school on artificial intelligence and big data followed by other courses in Antwerp, Venice, Leiden, and Copenhagen, as well as a conference in Amsterdam. While I’m sure to enjoy these experiences as well, Oxford has set a high bar that won’t be easily surpassed.

Postscript

I want to share my sincere gratitude to Michele Bianconi, a Department Lecturer in Classical Philology and Linguistics at Oxford, for his tireless efforts in making the first Anatolian Summer School such a wonderful success.

About The Author

Matthew Saunders

Matthew Saunders is a PhD student in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He researches the languages and literatures of the ancient Near East, especially Aramaic Studies, Ugaritic Studies, and Comparative Semitics.

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