Frederik Christiaan Woudhuizen (Zutphen, 13 February 1959 – Heiloo, 28 September 2021) was an independent scholar who studied ancient Indo-European languages, hieroglyphic Luvian/Luwian, and Mediterranean protohistory. He was the former editor of Talanta, Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society. Life Fred Woudhuizen graduated from high school in 1977. He finished his history studies in 1985 with an exam in Ancient History and specializing in Prehistory and Early History of the Mediterranean region. His education included Provincial Roman Archeology and the study of Classical languages, including Latin and Greek, as well as Luwian languages, Italian dialects and Mycenaeology. In 2006 he obtained his doctorate from Erasmus University Rotterdam with a Dissertation on The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples. From 1986 to 1989 and 1992 to 1995 Woudhuizen was editor of the Dutch journal Talanta, Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society and from 1990 to 1992 director of the “Henri Frankfort Foundation”. Work Woudhuizen examined in particular the writing systems of the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age of the Mediterranean, including Luwian hieroglyphs, Cretan hieroglyphs, Linear A, Cypro-Minoan and the Byblos Script. He has also dealt extensively with the Luwian language and with "Trümmersprachen" (Lycian, Lydian, Sidetic, Carian) and investigated Etruscan and Southwest Iberian. Woudhuizen applied a methodical principle to his work, which Stefan Hiller describes as a “paleographic-comparative procedure”. A similar approach had been used by Michael Ventris in the deciphering of Linear B. Similar or comparable character forms in related writing systems are used and their known phonetic values are transferred to the script to be deciphered. Woudhuizen described the most difficult part of his deciphering work as “hunting for sound values”. If the character sequence of the writing to be deciphered can be translated into a sequence of phonetic values, the writing becomes legible. In order to make them understandable, word parallels in other languages must be used. Due to the close relationship of the language branches within the Indo-European language family, the meaning of some terms is obvious. Until 2008, Woudhuizen worked for two decades jointly with Jan Best, at that time a lecturer in Ancient History and Prehistory at the University of Amsterdam. Best had deciphered the libation formula in Linear A in 1981: “I have given and my hand has made as an expiatory offering, oh Asherah.” According to his studies, this sentence showed that it is a Semitic language,