The first evidence of Hittite writing came from the royal archive in Akhetaten (Amarna), the capital of the Egyptian pharaoh, Akhenaten.
Most of the cuneiform tablets discovered there in 1887 were in Akkadian, the diplomatic language of ancient West Asia; but two were addressed to a king in the land of 'Arzawa'.
When the Boghazkoy archive was discovered, nineteen years later, the majority of the archives were found to have been written in this same language. It was evidently the official language of the Hittite Empire.
This royal archive contained cuneiform texts in eight different languages and while this may be an indication of the varied peoples who made up the Hittite Empire, it seems that only two, Hittite and Akkadian, were used for official texts.
Around the same time, unknown hieroglyphics, or picture writing, had been found on many monumental inscriptions and identified as another form of Hittite writing, Hittite Hieroglyphic.
