The Espanca script (from

Castro Verde Castro Verde () is a town and a municipality of the Alentejo region of Portugal (in the historic district of Beja). The population in 2011 was 7,276, in an area of 569.44 km2. Castro Verde is situated in the Baixo Alentejo subregion, within ...

, Baixo Alentejo,

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

) is the first signary (alphabetical sequence) known of the

Paleohispanic scripts The Paleohispanic scripts are the writing systems created in the Iberian peninsula before the Latin alphabet became the main script. Most of them are unusual in that they are semi-syllabic rather than purely alphabetic, despite having su ...

. It is inscribed on a piece of slate, 48×28×2 cm. This alphabet consists of 27 letters written double. The 27 letters in the outer line are written in a better hand than those of the inner line, from which it has been inferred that the slate was a teaching exercise in which a master wrote the alphabet and a student copied it. The signary does not exactly match any of the known

paleohispanic scripts The Paleohispanic scripts are the writing systems created in the Iberian peninsula before the Latin alphabet became the main script. Most of them are unusual in that they are semi-syllabic rather than purely alphabetic, despite having su ...

, but it is clearly related to the southwestern Tartessian script and to 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 ...

. The first 13 letters match letters of the 22-letter

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 a ...

in both shape and relative order: (A B C D I K L M N Ξ O S T). The remaining letters include the other Phoenician letters, slightly out of order: (U E Θ H P Ϻ Q R Z), supplemented by five letters seemingly original to the Paleohispanic scripts. The Espanca signary is no longer the only known paleohispanic signary; in recent years, four more northeastern Iberian signaries have been published: the

Castellet de Bernabé signary Castellet-en-Luberon (before 2018: ''Castellet'')Décret n° 2018-956
5 November 20 ...

, the Tos Pelat signary, the Ger signary and the

Bolvir signary Bolvir is a village in the province of Girona and autonomous community of Catalonia Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a '' nationality'' by its ...

. Each of them has a particular sequence of signs and none of them match the sequence of signs of the Espanca signary. Recently, it has been identified as a southern paleohispanic abecedary an inscription made on one side of an ostrakon from the site of Villasviejas del Tamuja ( Botija, Caceres), because it fits with the seven signs of the central sequence of the Espanca abecedary.

Notes

Bibliography

* Adiego, Ignasi Javier (1993): «Algunas reflexiones sobre el alfabeto de Espanca y las primitivas escrituras hispánicas», ''Studia Palaeohispanica et Indogermánica J. Untermann ab Amicis Hispanicis Oblata'', pp. 11–22. * Correa, José Antonio (1993): «El signario de Espanca (Castro Verde) y la escritura tartessia», ''Lengua y Cultura en la Hispania Prerromana'', pp. 521–562. * Ferrer i Jane Joan (2013)
«Els sistemes duals de les escriptures ibèriques»
''Palaeohispanica'' 13, pp. 451-479. * Ferrer i Jané, Joan (e.p.)
«El abecedario paleohispánico meridional del ostrakon de Villasviejas del Tamuja (Botija, Cáceres)»
''en F. Hernández Hernández y A. M. Martín Bravo (eds.) Las Necrópolis de El Romazal y el Conjunto Arqueológico de Villasviejas del Tamuja (Cáceres)''. * Hoz, Javier De (1996): «El origen de las escrituras paleohispánicas quince años después», ''La Hispania prerromana'', pp. 171–206. * Untermann, Jürgen. (1996): «La escritura tartesia entre griegos y fenicios, y lo que nos enseña el alfabeto de Espanca», ''Arqueología Hoje'' 2. * Velaza, Javier (2012)
«Inscripciones paleohispánicas con signarios: formas y funciones»
''E.L.E.A.'' 12, pp. 151-165.

External links

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20081006160601/http://www.arqueotavira.com/Mapas/Iberia/Populi.htm Detailed map of the Pre-Roman Peoples of Iberia (around 200 BCE)* Alfabeto de Espanca – Wikipedia Portuguese {{list of writing systems Palaeohispanic writing Undeciphered writing systems

See also

Notes

Bibliography

External links