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How did Akkadian bilingual texts help scholars interpret Hittite cuneiform?

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Sumerian cuneiform tablet — cuneiform An account of barley distribution, probably from Uruk, Mesopotamia, c. 3100–2900 bce; in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

The interpretation of Hittite cuneiform was significantly aided by the discovery of bilingual parallel texts in which Akkadian versions served as a vital key for scholars.12

Because Akkadian was the established lingua franca of the Middle East during the 2nd millennium BCE, it was already well-understood by researchers. When scholars encountered Hittite tablets, these bilingual inscriptions allowed them to compare the known Akkadian text with the unknown Hittite language, providing a reliable framework to analyze the latter's linguistic structure.3412

This process was further supported by the nature of the cuneiform script itself, which utilized partial ideographic elements that revealed meanings independent of specific linguistic factors. Once the Indo-European affinities of the Hittite language were recognized, these combined methods—bilingual clues, ideograms, and comparative linguistic analysis—enabled the successful interpretation of the Hittite texts.12