Five Additional Letters Identified in Ancient Anatolian Language

ANTALYA, TURKEY—Hürriyet Daily News reports that five additional letters in the Sidetic alphabet have been identified, bringing the total to 31. The letters belong to the lost language once spoken in Side, an ancient port city in Anatolia. Sidetic is related to Anatolia’s Lycian and Carian languages. Feriştah Alanyalı of Anadolu University and her colleagues identified the letters in bilingual inscriptions containing 30 to 40 lines of text that they recently unearthed at the site. “The scarcity of inscriptions and the fact that most consist of only one or two lines make decipherment difficult,” Alanyalı said. Scholars generally agree that the words “Siruawn” and “Siruawan” refer to the city itself. “This interpretation adds a new dimension to discussions about the city’s early history and the origin of its name,” Alanyalı said. “The research is ongoing, but the city’s name most likely still means ‘pomegranate,’” she added. Residents of Side continued to speak their own language for about 200 years after the conquest of Alexander the Great, when Greek became widely spoken in the region. The persistence of Sidetic demonstrates the strength of the city's culture and influence, Alanyalı concluded. For more on ancient languages of Eurasia, go to "The First Indo-European Speakers," one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of 2025.