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The Paleohispanic scripts are the writing systems created in the
Iberian peninsula The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, def ...
before the
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...
became the main script. Most of them are unusual in that they are semi-syllabic rather than purely
alphabetic An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...
, despite having supposedly developed, in part, from the
Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet (more specifically, an abjad) known in modern times from the Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. The name comes from the Phoenician civilization. The Phoenician al ...
. Paleohispanic scripts are known to have been used from the 5th century BC — possibly from the 7th century, in the opinion of some researchers — until the end of the 1st century BC or the beginning of the 1st century CE, and were the main scripts used to write the
Paleohispanic languages The paleo-Hispanic languages were the languages of the Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula, excluding languages of foreign colonies, such as Greek in Emporion and Phoenician in Qart Hadast. After the Roman conquest of Hispania the Pale ...
. Some researchers conclude that their origin may lie solely with the Phoenician alphabet, while others believe the
Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as ...
may also have had a role.


Scripts

The Paleohispanic scripts are classified into three major groups: southern, northern, and Greco-Iberian, with differences both in the shapes of the glyphs and in their values. Inscriptions in the southern scripts have been found mainly in the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula. They represent only 5% of the inscriptions found, and mostly read from right to left (like the Phoenician alphabet). They are: * the
Espanca script The Espanca script (from Castro Verde, Baixo Alentejo, Portugal) is the first signary (alphabetical sequence) known of the Paleohispanic scripts. It is inscribed on a piece of slate, 48×28×2 cm. This alphabet consists of 27 letters written ...
(known from a single tablet, and the earliest attestation of an alphabetical order among the Paleohispanic scripts); * the Tartessian or
Southwest script The Southwest Script or Southwestern Script, also known as Tartessian or South Lusitanian, is a Paleohispanic script used to write an unknown language usually identified as Tartessian. Southwest inscriptions have been found mainly in the sou ...
, also known as ''South Lusitanian''; * the
Southeastern Iberian script The southeastern Iberian script, also known as Meridional Iberian, was one of the means of written expression of the Iberian language, which was written mainly in the northeastern Iberian script and residually by the Greco-Iberian alphabet. Ab ...
, also known as ''Meridional''. Inscriptions in the northern scripts have been found mainly in the northeast of the
Iberian Peninsula The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, def ...
. They represent 95% of the inscriptions found, and mostly read from left to right (like the Greek alphabet). They are: * the
Northeastern Iberian script The northeastern Iberian script, also known as Levantine Iberian or Iberian, was the main means of written expression of the Iberian language. The language is also expressed by the southeastern Iberian script and the Greco-Iberian alphabet ...
, also known as ''Levantine''; ** Dual variant ** Non-dual variant * the
Celtiberian script The Celtiberian script is a Paleohispanic script that was the main writing system of the Celtiberian language, an extinct Continental Celtic language, which was also occasionally written using the Latin alphabet. This script is a direct adapt ...
**Western variant **Eastern variant. The Greco-Iberian alphabet was a direct adaptation of the Ionic variety of the
Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as ...
, and only found in a small region on the
Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on ...
coast in the modern provinces of
Alicante Alicante ( ca-valencia, Alacant) is a city and municipality in the Valencian Community, Spain. It is the capital of the province of Alicante and a historic Mediterranean port. The population of the city was 337,482 , the second-largest in ...
and
Murcia Murcia (, , ) is a city in south-eastern Spain, the capital and most populous city of the autonomous community of the Region of Murcia, and the seventh largest city in the country. It has a population of 460,349 inhabitants in 2021 (about one ...
.


Typology

Excepting the Greco-Iberian alphabet, and to a lesser extent the Tartessian (southwestern) script, Paleohispanic scripts shared a distinctive
typology Typology is the study of types or the systematic classification of the types of something according to their common characteristics. Typology is the act of finding, counting and classification facts with the help of eyes, other senses and logic. Ty ...
: they behaved as a
syllabary In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) moras which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (option ...
for
plosive In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lip ...
s and as an
alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...
for the rest of consonants. This unique
writing system A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable fo ...
has been called a ''
semi-syllabary A semi-syllabary is a writing system that behaves partly as an alphabet and partly as a syllabary. The main group of semi-syllabic writing are the Paleohispanic scripts of ancient Spain, a group of semi-syllabaries that transform redundant plosiv ...
''.Ferrer, J., Moncunill, N., Velaza, J., & Anderson, D. (2017)
''Proposal to encode the Palaeohispanic script''
In the syllabic portions of the scripts, each plosive sign stood for a different combination of consonant and vowel, so that the written form of ''ga'' displayed no resemblance to ''ge'', and ''bi'' looked quite different from ''bo''. In addition, the original format did not distinguish voiced from unvoiced plosives, so that ''ga'' stood for both /ga/ and /ka/, and ''da'' stood for both /da/ and /ta/. On the other hand, the continuants (
fricative A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in ...
s like /s/ and
sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels ar ...
s like /l/, /m/, trills, and vowels) were written with simple alphabetic letters, as in Phoenician and
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
. Over the past few decades, many researchers have come to think one variant of the
northeastern Iberian script The northeastern Iberian script, also known as Levantine Iberian or Iberian, was the main means of written expression of the Iberian language. The language is also expressed by the southeastern Iberian script and the Greco-Iberian alphabet ...
, the older one according to the archaeological contexts, distinguished voicing in the plosives by adding a stroke to the glyphs for the alveolar (/d/~/t/) and
velar Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (known also as the velum). Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive a ...
(/g/~/k/) syllables, creating distinct glyphs for unvoiced /t/ and /k/, and restricting the original glyphs to voiced /d/ and /g/. (This is the so-called dual signary model: see
northeastern Iberian script The northeastern Iberian script, also known as Levantine Iberian or Iberian, was the main means of written expression of the Iberian language. The language is also expressed by the southeastern Iberian script and the Greco-Iberian alphabet ...
.) If correct, this innovation would parallel the creation of the Latin letter G by the addition of a stroke to C, which had previously stood for both /k/ and /g/.


Tartessian

Tartessian script is intermediate between a pure alphabet and the Paleohispanic semi-syllabaries. Though the letter for a plosive was determined by the following vowel, as in a semi-syllabary, the following vowel was also written, as in an alphabet (as seen in Tartessian). This redundant typology re-emerged in a few late (2nd and 1st century BCE) texts of northeastern Iberian and Celtiberian scripts, where vowels were once again written after plosives. Some scholars treat Tartessian as a redundant semi-syllabary, with essentially syllabic glyphs followed by the letter for the corresponding vowel; others treat it as a redundant alphabet, with the choice of an essentially consonantal character decided by the following vowel.''Hoz, Javier de (2005)] This is analogous to
Old Persian cuneiform Old Persian cuneiform is a semi-alphabetic cuneiform script that was the primary script for Old Persian. Texts written in this cuneiform have been found in Iran ( Persepolis, Susa, Hamadan, Kharg Island), Armenia, Romania ( Gherla), Turkey ( Va ...
, where vowels are most often written overtly but where consonants/syllables are decided by the vowel about half the time, and, to a very limited extent, to the
Etruscan alphabet The Etruscan alphabet was the alphabet used by the Etruscans, an ancient civilization of central and northern Italy, to write their language, from about 700 BC to sometime around 100 AD. The Etruscan alphabet derives from the Euboean alphab ...
, where most syllables based the consonant /k/ share neither consonant nor vowel letter: Only the combinations CE, CI, KA, and QU were permitted. (This Etruscan convention is preserved in the English, not only in ''qu'' for ''queen,'' but also the letter names ''cee, kay, cue/qu''.)


Origins

The Paleohispanic semi-syllabaries clearly derive ultimately from an
alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...
or alphabets circulating in the
Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on ...
, but it is not known whether that was the
Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet (more specifically, an abjad) known in modern times from the Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. The name comes from the Phoenician civilization. The Phoenician al ...
alone, or if archaic varieties of the
Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as ...
also played a role. The only known full Paleohispanic signary, on the undated Espanca tablet (not completely readable, but clearly related to the southwestern and southeastern scripts), follows the Phoenician/Greek order for the first 13 of its 27 letters: Α Β Γ Δ Ι Κ Λ Μ Ν Ξ Π? Τ. The fact that southern paleohispanic /e/ appears to derive from the Phoenician letter ‘ayin, which gave rise to Greek Ο, while southern iberian /o/ derives from another letter or was perhaps invented,Ramos, ''A Palæo-Hispanic Alphabet: Espanca's Stele''
suggests that the development of vowels in Paleohispanic semi-syllabaries was independent of the Greek innovation. However, the order of what appears to be /u/ directly after Τ, rather than at the place of , has suggested to some researchers a Greek influence. (In addition, the letter for /e/ in northeast Iberian resembles Greek Ε rather than the southeast Iberian letter.) The two
sibilants Sibilants are fricative consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words ''sip'', ''zip'', ''ship'', and ...
, S and S', are attested, but there is one sign too few to account for a full 15-sign syllabary and all four of the letters M, M', R, and R' (not all of which can be positively identified with letters from the tablet), suggesting that one of ems or ars shown in the charts to the right is only a graphic variant. The obvious question about the origin and evolution of these scripts is how a purely alphabetic script was changed into, or perhaps unconsciously reinterpreted as, a partial syllabary. It may be instructive to consider an unrelated development in the evolution of the
Etruscan alphabet The Etruscan alphabet was the alphabet used by the Etruscans, an ancient civilization of central and northern Italy, to write their language, from about 700 BC to sometime around 100 AD. The Etruscan alphabet derives from the Euboean alphab ...
from Greek: Greek had three letters, Γ, Κ, and , whose sounds were not distinguished in Etruscan. Nonetheless, all three were borrowed, becoming the letters C, K, and Q. All were pronounced /k/, but they were restricted to appear before different vowels — CE, CI, KA, and QU, respectively, — so that the consonants carried almost as much weight in distinguishing these syllables as the vowels did. (This may have been an attempt to overtly indicate the vowel-dependent
allophony In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
of Etruscan /k/ with the extra Greek letters that were available.) When the Etruscan alphabet was later adapted to
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
, the letter C stood for both /k/ and /g/, as Etruscan had had no /g/ sound to maintain the original sound value of Greek Г. (Later a stroke was added to C, creating the new Latin letter G.). Something similar may have happened in the evolution of Paleohispanic scripts. If writing passed from the Phoenicians through the Tartessians, and the
Tartessian language The Tartessian language is the extinct Paleo-Hispanic language of inscriptions in the Southwestern script found in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula, mainly in the south of Portugal (Algarve and southern Alentejo), and the southwest of Sp ...
did not have /g/ or /d/, that would explain the absence of a distinction between /g/ and /k/, /d/ and /t/ in the southeastern Iberian and later northeast Iberian scripts, despite it being clear that these were distinct sounds in the
Iberian language The Iberian language was the language of an indigenous western European people identified by Greek and Roman sources who lived in the eastern and southeastern regions of the Iberian Peninsula in the pre- Migration Era (before about 375 AD). The ...
, as is clearly attested in the Greco-Iberian alphabet and later use of the Latin alphabet. In Tartessian script, vowels were always written after the plosives, but they were redundant — or at nearly so — and thus it seems they were dropped when the script passed to the
Iberians The Iberians ( la, Hibērī, from el, Ἴβηρες, ''Iberes'') were an ancient people settled in the eastern and southern coasts of the Iberian peninsula, at least from the 6th century BC. They are described in Greek and Roman sources (amon ...
. Among the
velar consonant Velars are consonants place of articulation, articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (known also as the Soft palate, velum). Since the velar region of the roof of ...
s, ''ka/ga'' of southeastern Iberian and the southwestern script derives from Phoenician/Greek Γ, ''ke/ge'' from Κ, and ''ki/gi'' from , while ''ko/go'' (perhaps coincidentally) resembles Greek Χ (pronounced ). Phoenician/Greek labial letter Β was the source of southwestern ''be'', southeastern ''ba''; the use of Π is uncertain but may have been the source of ''bi.'' (If Greek was used as a secondary source, Greek Φ () would also have been available.) For the alveolars, Δ was the source of ''tu/du,'' Τ of ''ta/da,'' and Θ of ''ti/di.'' Image:Signari d'Espanca.jpg, Espanca signary ( Castro Verde). Image:I tarteso.jpg, Tartessian or
Southwest script The Southwest Script or Southwestern Script, also known as Tartessian or South Lusitanian, is a Paleohispanic script used to write an unknown language usually identified as Tartessian. Southwest inscriptions have been found mainly in the sou ...
. Fonte Velha (Bensafrim,
Lagos Lagos (Nigerian English: ; ) is the largest city in Nigeria and the second most populous city in Africa, with a population of 15.4 million as of 2015 within the city proper. Lagos was the national capital of Nigeria until December 1991 fo ...
). Image:Plom I de La Bastida (Cara A).jpg,
Southeastern Iberian script The southeastern Iberian script, also known as Meridional Iberian, was one of the means of written expression of the Iberian language, which was written mainly in the northeastern Iberian script and residually by the Greco-Iberian alphabet. Ab ...
. Lead plaque from La Bastida de les Alcuses ( Moixent).
Image:Plom I de La Serreta (Cara B).jpg, Greco-Iberian alphabet. Lead plaque from la Serreta (
Alcoi Alcoy ( ca-valencia, Alcoi) is an industrial and university city, region and municipality located in the Valencian Community, Spain. The Serpis river crosses the municipal boundary of Alcoy. The local authority reported a population of 61,135 res ...
). Image:Bronce ibero.jpg,
Northeastern Iberian script The northeastern Iberian script, also known as Levantine Iberian or Iberian, was the main means of written expression of the Iberian language. The language is also expressed by the southeastern Iberian script and the Greco-Iberian alphabet ...
. Lead plaque from Ullastret. Image:Bronce luzaga.jpg,
Celtiberian script The Celtiberian script is a Paleohispanic script that was the main writing system of the Celtiberian language, an extinct Continental Celtic language, which was also occasionally written using the Latin alphabet. This script is a direct adapt ...
. Luzaga plaque ( Guadalajara, Spain).


See also

*
Iberian languages Iberian languages is a generic term for the languages currently or formerly spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. Historic languages Pre-Roman languages The following languages were spoken in the Iberian Peninsula before the Roman occupation an ...
*
Iberian Romance languages The Iberian Romance, Ibero-Romance or sometimes Iberian languagesIberian languages is also used as a more inclusive term for all languages spoken on the Iberian Peninsula, which in antiquity included the non-Indo-European Iberian language. are a ...
* Languages of Portugal *
Languages of Spain The languages of Spain ( es, lenguas de España), or Spanish languages ( es, lenguas españolas, link=no), are the languages spoken in Spain. Most languages spoken in Spain belong to the Romance language family, of which Spanish is the only ...
*
Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula This is a list of the pre-Roman people of the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania, i. e., modern Portugal, Spain and Andorra). Some closely fit the concept of a people, ethnic group or tribe. Others are confederations or even unions of t ...


References

{{Reflist


Bibliography

* Correa, José Antonio (2004): «Los semisilabarios ibéricos: algunas cuestiones», ''ELEA'' 4, pp. 75–98. * Correa, José Antonio (2005)
«Del alfabeto fenicio al semisilabario paleohispánico»
''Palaeohispanica'' 5, pp. 137–154. * Ferrer i Jané, Joan (2005
''Novetats sobre el sistema dual de diferenciació gràfica de les oclusives sordes i sonores''
''Palaeohispanica'' 5, pp. 957-982. * Hoz, Javier de (2005): «La recepción de la escritura en Hispania como fenómeno orientalizante», ''Anejos del Archivo Español de Arqueología XXXV'', pp. 363–380. * Rodríguez Ramos, Jesús (2000)
«La lectura de las inscripciones sudlusitano-tartesias»
''Faventia'' 22/1, pp. 21–48. * Rodríguez Ramos, Jesús (2004): ''Análisis de epigrafía íbera'', Vitoria-Gasteiz. * Untermann, Jürgen : Monumenta Linguarum Hispanicarum, Wiesbaden. (1975): I Die Münzlegenden. (1980): ''II Die iberischen Inschriften aus Sudfrankreicht''. (1990): ''III Die iberischen Inschriften aus Spanien''. (1997): ''IV Die tartessischen, keltiberischen und lusitanischen Inschriften''. * Velaza, Javier (2004): «La escritura en la península ibérica antigua», ''La escritura y el libro en la antigüedad'', Madrid, pp. 95–114.


External links


Iberian Epigraphy - Jesús Rodríguez Ramos
Palaeohispanic writing Writing systems Paleohispanic languages Extinct languages of Europe