Hieroglyphic Luwian in the context of Luwic languages

The Anatolian languages are an extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Anatolia. The best known Anatolian language is Hittite, which is considered the earliest-attested Indo-European language.

Undiscovered until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Anatolian languages are often believed to be the earliest branch to have split from the Proto Indo-European family. Once discovered, the presence of laryngeal consonants ḫ and ḫḫ in Hittite and Luwian provided support for the laryngeal theory of Proto-Indo-European linguistics. While Hittite attestation ends after the Bronze Age, hieroglyphic Luwian survived until the conquest of the Neo-Hittite kingdoms by the Semitic Assyrian Empire, and alphabetic inscriptions in Anatolian languages are fragmentarily attested until the early first millennium AD, eventually succumbing to the Hellenization of Anatolia as a result of Greek colonisation.

Kummuh was an Iron Age Neo-Hittite kingdom located on the west bank of the Upper Euphrates within the eastern loop of the river between Melid and Carchemish. Assyrian sources refer to both the land and its capital city by the same name. The city is identified with the classical-period Samosata (modern-day Samsat Höyük), which has now been flooded under the waters of a newly built dam. Urartian sources refer to it as Kummaha. The name is also attested in at least one local royal inscription dating to the 8th century BCE. Other places that are mentioned in historical sources as lying within Kummuh are lands of Kištan and Halpi, and cities of Wita, Halpa, Parala, Sukiti and Sarita(?). Kummuh bordered the kingdoms of Melid to the north, Gurgum to the west and Carchemish to the south, while to the east it faced Assyria and later Urartu.

Several indigenous rock inscriptions have been found in the region, all written in Hieroglyphic Luwian, attesting to the continuity of Hittite traditions. In his annals, the Assyrian king Sargon II referred to the Kummuh ruler as 'Hittite', and several rulers of Kummuh bore the same names as famous Hittite kings of the 2nd millennium BCE: Hattušili(?), Šuppiluliuma, and Muwattalli (in Assyrian sources Qatazilu, Ušpilulume, and Muttallu, respectively).

Gurgum was a Neo-Hittite state in Anatolia, known from the 10th to the 7th century BC. Its name is given as Gurgum in Assyrian sources, while its native name seems to have been Kurkuma for the reason that the capital of Gurgum—Marqas in Assyrian sources (today Maraş)—was named "the Kurkumaean city" (ku+ra/i-ku-ma-wa/i-ni-i-sà(URBS)) in local Hieroglyphic Luwian inscriptions.