The principal focus of the project was analysis of two epigraphic corpora, the Phrygian and the Lydian one. For the eastern part of the Phrygian zone, also Luwian inscriptions of Cappadocia played an important part. Given the historical and sociolinguistic approach of the project, the main attention was directed to exploring historical and cultural context of a given text, and to revealing elements bearing on the question of cultural and linguistic contact. In addition to philological and historical analysis of published texts, an important aspect of the work was epigraphical study of inscriptions ‘in the field’, that is in museums and excavation depots. As a member of Sardis Excavation project, during summer campaigns 2022 and 2023 I systematically collated Lydian inscriptions preserved in the Sardis depot, and in the museums of Izmir, Ödemiş and Hierapolis. During one of the visits of the Izmir museum, I discovered a new Lydian inscription whose analysis has become the basis of a monograph dedicated to the Lydian language and culture during the Achaemenid period (in preparation). On the other hand, in collaboration with the Gordion project, I worked on the Phrygian graffiti found during excavations at Gordion. By a happy coincidence, in 2022 there has been discovered at Gordion a highly significant new Phrygian stone inscription with whose publication I have been charged.
Realisation of the project has lead to a more nuanced understanding of many aspects of culture of the Phrygians and the Lydians, as well as to a more precise ethnolinguistics map of the 1st millennium Anatolia. Especially interesting results were obtained concerning the population and language Mysia whose exact ethnolinguistics identity remained hitherto quite uncertain. The discovery of the new inscription at Gordion combined with other epigraphic evidence, has allowed the ‘Mysian language’ to be defined as a dialect of Phrygian featuring some Lydian influence. Moreover, the analysis of toponymy of Lydia and the neighbouring regions revealed a significant Mysian presence in Lydia possibly as early as 700-600 BC. This brought one more piece of evidence for the mixed character of Lydian population. Inter alia, this has important consequences for the question of definition of the nature of the Lydian language. Although it might originally have been an Anatolian language, as it is usually perceived, Lydian has a number of unique and highly peculiar linguistic features strikingly different from those found in Luwian or Hittite. The mixed character of the Lydian population, which possibly goes as far back as the 2nd millennium BC, allows one to explain this unusual character of the Lydian language as a result of intensive influence of a non-Anatolian language. A different aspect of the work concerned the toponymy of Mysia and the problem of the relationship between the Thracians and the Mysians. Although the material is scarce, it seems that the Thracians migrated to north-western Anatolia already in the first half of the 1st millennium BC, intermixing with the Phygian-Mysian population of the region. Another important direction was early Phrygian culture. in this domain, I elaborated the question of formation of the Phrygian alphabet, and continued to explore the problem of Phrygian-Luwian contact.
The results of the project were disseminated in numerous international conferences and workshops, both in France and in other countries (Italy, Switzerland, Spain), as well as in a row of seminars given for general audience.
