Dal testo al contesto. La ricostruzione degli archivi e delle biblioteche cuneiformi della capitale ittita Hattusa

In the capital of the Hittite empire, Hattusa, in Turkey, archaeological excavations have brought to light archives and libraries of cuneiform tablets that can be dated to the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. The texts come mainly from three areas of the city: Temple I in the Lower City, two buildings on the Acropolis, and a building known as the 'House on the Slope'. In particular, this paper presents the results of a study of the two buildings on the Acropolis (Building E and Building A), which was conducted using a combination of archaeological and philological data. New information about the find-spots and contexts of the tablets discovered during the first excavations, dating back to 1906-1907, can be deduced from unpublished archival documents preserved in Berlin. This interdisciplinary study has made it possible to clarify both the diverse nature of the two deposits of texts (personal archive of the royal family and palace library) and their chronology.