page_title: Bedřich Hrozný
section_title: Deciphering of the Hittite language
hierarchical_section_title: Bedřich Hrozný / Deciphering of the Hittite language
caption_attribution_description: Čeština: Obrázek ukazuje první chetitskou větu rozluštěnou Bedřichem Hrozným.
context_page_description: Bedřich Hrozný was a Czech orientalist and linguist. He contributed to the decipherment of the ancient Hittite language, identified it as an Indo-European language and laid the groundwork for the development of Hittitology.
context_section_description: To solve the mystery about the Hittite language, Bedřich Hrozný used two sentences that appeared in a text that reads: nu NINDA-an ezzatteni watar-ma ekutteni. It was known at that time that the ideogram for NINDA meant bread in Sumerian. Hrozný thought that the suffix -an was perhaps the Hittite accusative. Then, he assumed that the second word, ed-/-ezza, had something to do with the bread and assumed that it could be the verb to eat. The comparison with the Latin edo, the English eat and the German essen led to the assumption that NINDA-an ezzatteni means "you will eat bread". In the second sentence, Hrozný was struck by the word watar that has similarities to the English water and German Wasser. The last word of the second sentence, ekutteni, had the stem eku-, which seemed to resemble the Latin aqua (water). So, he translated the second sentence as "you will drink water". Hrozny soon realized that the Hittites were speaking an Indo-European language, making it much easier to decipher and read their cuneiform tablets.  Using these insights, Hrozný continued his work and was able to publish the Hittite grammar in 1917.
caption: nu NINDA-an ēzzateni, wādar-ma ekuteni
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