Fred Woudhuizen

Frederik Christiaan Woudhuizen (Zutphen, 13 February 1959 – Heiloo, 28 September 2021)[1] was a Dutch independent scholar who studied ancient Indo-European languages, hieroglyphic Luvian/Luwian, and Mediterranean protohistory.

He has also dealt extensively with the Luwian language and with "Trümmersprachen" (Lycian, Lydian, Sidetic, Carian) and investigated Etruscan and Southwest Iberian.

[10] According to Woudhuizen, the situation on Crete, with regard to languages and scripts, was complicated, as in addition to Semitic, Luwian and Pelasgian were also spoken and written on the island.

[11] The Luwian language turned out to be particularly helpful in deciphering Cretan hieroglyphs, the longest text of which, according to Woudhuizen, is the famous Phaistos Disc.

[12] Woudhuizen's works show that characters, scripts and languages of the 2nd millennium BC were largely derived from one another across the entire Mediterranean region.

[13] Woudhuizen argued that the translation into Latin hinders access to the Luwian language, thus making it unnecessarily difficult to understand.