E Epigraphy: The and, since the language belongs to a Celtic branch Palaeohispanic Languages of Indo-European, it can be studied with the tools and techniques of comparative linguistics. Iberian Alejandro G. Sinner1 and Javier Velaza Frías2 stands somewhere between these two extremes. 1Department of Greek and Roman Studies, As a language, it is non-Indo-European and typo- University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada logically agglutinative (for Indo-European and 2Faculty of Philology, Universitat de Barcelona, non-Indo-European languages in Hispania, see Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain Villar 2000). Our knowledge of Iberian has increased substantially in recent years, but the language still remains largely undeciphered. To Introduction all this should be added the fact that, for an exten- sive part of the Iberian Peninsula, there is no other At least four writing systems, in addition to the evidence than the place- and personal-name ele- Phoenician, Greek, and Latin ones, were used ments recorded in indirect sources. Described in between the fifth century BCE and the first cen- this way, the situation might appear disappointing. tury CE to write the indigenous languages of the Yet, in the last few decades, there have been Iberian Peninsula (collectively known as the modest but unquestionable advances that enable Palaeohispanic languages): Tartessian, Iberian, us to understand somewhat better the uses to Celtiberian, and Lusitanian. In total over 3000 which writing was put among the different peo- inscriptions are preserved in what is certainly the ples inhabiting the pre-Roman Iberian Peninsula. largest corpus of epigraphic expression in the The study and understanding of these lan- western Mediterranean world with the exception guages is essential to achieve a better appreciation of the Italian peninsula. of the social, economic, and cultural history of Our knowledge of these languages remains Hispania and the ancient western Mediterranean. unequal. In some cases, as with Tartessian, the They are also key to our comprehension of colo- writing system is not yet decoded, which makes nial Phoenician and Greek literacy, which lies at it impossible to determine the linguistic family to the root of the spread of these languages, and also which it belongs. In other cases, our knowledge of of the diffusion of Roman literacy, which played the writing system is much greater – as with an important role in the final expansion of what Celtiberian – or even total, as in the case of Lusi- are known as the Palaeohispanic languages. tanian, a language that uses the Latin alphabet, # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018 C. Smith (ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_3222-1 2 Epigraphy: The Palaeohispanic Languages Definition Historical Background Strictly speaking, the Palaeohispanic languages Even though the field of Palaeohispanic studies is were those spoken between the fifth century a discipline that has developed relatively recently, BCE and the first century CE in what today are it nevertheless can trace its origins and roots back the territories of Spain and Portugal. In the widest to the Renaissance. Two main lines of research sense, however, Phoenician and Greek should have contributed to creating the modern field of also be included among the Palaeohispanic lan- Palaeohispanic studies. On the one hand, human- guages, as they were spoken by colonists born in ists and numismatists have long been concerned Hispania between the ninth and sixth centuries with and interested in collecting and cataloguing BCE. Therefore, no fewer than six varieties of ancient coins. In Spain, however, some of these epichoric signaries and several adaptations of the coins were written in an incomprehensible script Greek and Latin alphabets make up the complex and swiftly provoked great interest (for the coins mosaic of scripts and languages recorded in the using Palaeohispanic languages, see Ripollès and Iberian Peninsula. In standard usage, however, the Sinner 2019). As a consequence, a line of research term is only applied to the languages that were not that aimed to decipher these coin legends started spoken outside Hispania, an area in southern to develop. On the other hand, classicists inter- France that extends from the River Hérault toward ested in the study of Greek and Latin texts as well the west – culturally inseparable from Spain in as Latin epigraphy aimed to achieve a greater Antiquity and where the northeastern Iberian understanding of and to reconstruct the ancient script is predominant – being included for practi- history of Hispania. To do so, they retrieved sub- cal and historical reasons as part of this definition. stantial amounts of information concerning differ- It is important to bear in mind that there is no ent peoples and cultures, including in many cases absolute correspondence between the native onomastics and linguistic information Palaeohispanic languages and the scripts that (De Hoz 2019 with bibliography). these languages used over time, since the latter From the sixteenth century onward, when originated in the Iberian Peninsula itself although Antonio Agustín first identified some in response to external stimuli. syllabograms, but especially during the eighteenth Today, when we speak of Palaeohispanic stud- and nineteenth centuries, when numismatists ies, most scholars understand or refer to the study catalogued, translated, and tried to assign values of the languages and writing systems used in to those incomprehensible signs, a greater under- ancient Hispania prior to the generalization of standing of the script was increasingly sought. Latin. Therefore, this is a well-established aca- During this long process, both pioneering scien- demic field in which several disciplines play a tific ideas that had never been applied to the sub- fundamental role; the subject deals with a com- ject before – such as the importance of a Celtic plex range of cultural contexts covering an exten- stratum in the linguistic panorama of Hispania – sive geographical area as well as a huge and also highly speculative theories, in many chronological scope, almost a millennium of his- cases unfounded, such as the Vasco-Iberian the- tory. Despite that, the academic field of ory, a belief in the linguistic unity of ancient pre- Palaeohispanic studies is a recent one, and it is Roman Spain, where a language that was the convenient to have some idea of its development ancestor of modern-day Basque was thought to as a discipline if we aim to understand what have been spoken, were developed; these were Palaeohispanic studies really are. extremely influential both inside and outside Spain. Epigraphy: The Palaeohispanic Languages 3 It was not until 1920 that there was a noticeable cultures (for a linguistic history of the Iberian change in the situation thanks to the contributions Peninsula in antiquity, see De Hoz 2010, 2011). of Gómez-Moreno. He first conceived and fully Both groups introduced certain uses of writing developed the idea of a semi-syllabic script in through their colonial settlements, uses that which the representation of stop consonants was served as a stimulus and in many cases as models always accompanied by a vowel (<da>, <de>, for the native populations. Bearing this in mind, it <di>, <do>, <du>, etc.). This was a ground- is not surprising that the first manifestations of breaking thesis and led to the relationship long writing in the Iberian Peninsula occurred precisely desired by Spanish numismatists between the coin around those places where Greeks and Phoeni- legends written in Iberian script and their equiva- cians had a more stable presence. As early as the lent Latin forms being established. For most late eighth century BCE (or perhaps the early scholars, Gómez-Moreno’s work marked the seventh century BCE), the impact of Greek and beginning of modern Palaeohispanic studies Phoenician culture can be demonstrated in south- since, after his decipherment of the alphabet, it ern Andalusia by the finding of scratched graffiti was possible to distinguish more than one lan- on pottery vessels in both languages (Zamora guage (Iberian and Celtiberian) in the epigraphic 2019 with bibliography). Actually, it is the coex- corpus. istence of these two scripts that seems to have Initially the field of Palaeohispanic studies was created a suitable background for the birth of the a regional field of limited impact outside the Ibe- first epichoric script to be recorded in Iberia. The rian Peninsula. It was only thanks to A. Tovar’s scarcity of recorded examples, however, does not linguistic works and J. Untermann’s epigraphic affect its significance, which lies in the fact that all corpus (1975–2001) that Palaeohispanic studies the other Palaeohispanic scripts that were used in truly started to flourish. Unfortunately, Untermann’s the Iberian Peninsula were derived from this ini- death prevented the publication of his Supplementa, tial script (Ferrer and Moncunill 2019). Most of its including all the recently appeared inscriptions. All signs are morphologically similar to those of the these data are now collected, including those in Phoenician alphabet. In addition to that, in the two MLH, in the Hesperia database (BDHesp), which inscriptions reproducing a complete or incomplete is an ongoing project and certainly one of the future signary (Espanca and Villasviejas del Tamuja), pillars for Palaeohispanic studies. the order of the first signs coincides exactly with those of the Phoenician alphabet, thus proving that the latter was the model used for the elabora- Key Issues/Current Debates tion of the first Palaeohispanic writing system. In all probability, this early writing system was not In the field of Palaeohispanic studies, there are conceived to scratch the few modest graffiti on currently many unresolved debates, and positions pottery sherds that have come down to us; its main are sometimes remarkably disparate. For this rea- use should be related to the intense trading activity son, in the following lines we have tried to be that is well documented in this region.