Debating Anatolian Hieroglyphic in Victorian England: A Fresh Look at an Old Question

The 1870s mark the beginning in England of studies of the monuments of Syria and Anatolia with inscriptions in what is now called Luwian or Anatolian Hieroglyphic. Here we see the first attempts at deciphering the inscriptions, involving among others the pioneering English Assyriologist George Smith (1840-1876) and the English philologist Rev. Archibald Henry Sayce (1845-1933). The debate develops within learned societies, the British Museum and various clubs, in a mixture of cooperation and rivalry between individual scholars. Research currently under way based on correspondence and other unpublished archival records mainly kept in Oxford and London, the preliminary results of which I present here, aims to elucidate lesser-known details of the events and to provide a fuller picture of the practices and methods of scholars of the Victorian period.