The Tartessos Inscription (~500BC), most significant Carite archaeological find

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Iasper
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The Tartessos Inscription (~500BC), most significant Carite archaeological find

Post by Iasper »

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The Tartessos Inscription (~500BC), most significant Carite archaeological find
Situation
The Tartessos inscription is a short sample of ancient Carite poetry written in the old Ionic Greek alphabet. It is one of the longer samples of continuous old Carite text, preserving three mostly complete lines and fragments of a fourth. The inscription was etched into the vessel before firing, and then cleaned up and painted over when the vase was complete. Stylistically, the vessel (more specifically, a form of oenochoe, a Greek wine-jug) belongs to the late geometric period by its simplistic decorations, similar to vessels from the eighth to sixth centuries. As it was meant for trade and was not a decorative piece, the vessel itself is very crudely decorated. The fourth line seems to have wrapped around the arms of the jug, and was lost with the loss of the jug arms themselves. It was found in an archaeological dig-site near Seville in 1911, relatively far from the Carite homelands, in what was once the Tartessian Gulf, further showing its purpose as a trade container. It represents one of the most important finds in Carite history.
Text
The original inscription was, as stated above, written in the old Ionic Greek alphabet, lacking spaces and other, from our modern point of view, punctuation and macrons. For easier reference, the text as seen on the tablet can be represented with more familiar glyphs, where the square brackets indicate partially missing letters, as follows:
ΦΕΡΓΥΝΟΣΑΝΤΙΕ[Λ]ΕΝΑΣΜΕΥΕΣ
ΤΥΓΔΡΑ[ΣΡ]ΟΒ[ΩΙΥ]Β[Ε]ΛΕΥΙΙΣ[ΥΙ]
ΠΑΕΣΟΣΚ[ΡΙΖ]ΟΜΔΕΜΒΟΤΙΣΑΡΙΠΡΟΝ[ΟΣ]
ΚΕΝΕΣΙΤ
Even for readers not well acquainted with the Greek alphabet, this should instantly come across as more understandable. Due to how little was known about early Carite in the early 20th century, the first pieces discovered were widely believed to be another Greek inscription, especially considering the location where the artifact was found. However, once the puzzle started taking shape, it was clear this would prove to be the first major discovery of an early Carite attestation for one simple reason: the very first word.

ΦΕΡΓΥΝΟΣ, perhaps easier to read as Φεργυνος (Fergunos) and better known as Firgunu from the Monarchic Sagas, was a prominent deity of the Carite pantheon. While he was presumably a conflation of multiple deities by the time of the medieval era, being the god of thunder, smiths, law and justice, it is likely he was simply the inherited Indo-European thunder god whose name was often reconstructed as *Perkʷunos. This makes this deity the equivalent of gods such as the Lithuanian Perkūnas. The Early Proto-Carite name for Firgunu is the regular continuation of this reconstructed (albeit sometimes controversial) form, featuring several typically Carite sound changes. While the assimilation from *p...kʷ to *kʷ...kʷ was also shared with Italo-Celtic, *kʷ > f is a uniquely Carite change.

With the first word figured out, the rest of the first line proved to be relatively easy to figure out using other inscriptions similarly dated to 500 BC and comparative linguistics. The often put forward interpretation is as follows:
Φεργυνος αντι Ελενᾱς μεῠες
Fergunos anti Elenās mewes
Αντι (anti) is the clear reflex of PIE *h₂énti and as such mirrors Latin ante and Greek ἀντί (antí). While the meaning is not entirely clear, it is regarded to have meant "because of" or "for" in this particular context. The last word, μεῠες (mewes), is clearly the tonic form of the genitive of the first person singular pronoun, better known as "my". The usage of the tonic form here is worth mentioning as it is not grammatically required here and was thus possibly chosen for pragmatic reasons. Finally, the remaining word was not easily identifiable but, given the context, is hypothesised to be the genitive of *Ελενᾱ (*Elenā), which would be a given name loaned from Greek Ἑλένη (Helénē) featuring the typically Ionic psilosis.

The next line is widely considered to be as follows:
τυγδρᾱς ροβωῐ υβελε ῠῑ ισῠῑ
tugdrās robōi ubele wī iswī
Τυγδρᾱς (tugdrās) was the Early Proto-Carite word for daughter (as the similarity of the two words also shows) and takes the genitive, much like the given name on the previous line. The -ωῐ (-ōi) suffix of the next word is clearly a dative and is as such connected to the preposition αντι we saw in the first line. The meaning of ροβωῐ (robōi) is unclear, as it is the only time we find this word attested any no reflexes further down the line can be found or reconstructed. While the hypothesised meaning will be discussed further, this means that we can translate the first section from the preposition to this dative as "because of the ? of my daughter Elenā". Υβελε (ubele) is clearly a vocative of a cognate of Proto-Germanic *ubilaz (whence English evil) and presumably carried the same meaning, functioning as the interjection "oh evil one!". The next interjection, ῠῑ (), can be compared and equated to exclamations such as Latin vae and its English meaning "woe". The last word, ισῠι (iswi) could have had both a long and a short final vowel, which means vocative, locative and instrumental singulars are all possibilities. The word, which means "arrow", is usually reconstructed as an instrumental for two reasons. The first is the fact that a vocative would be slightly out of place here (and we had a previous vocative interjection in υβελε) and a locative for "arrow" is quite far-fetched given the context. The second is that, in terms of metre, a longum would be expected (more on that in the next chapter).

The third line, which is the longest, presumably went as follows:
παεσος κριζομ δεμβοτῑς Αριπρονος
paesos krizom dembotīs Aripronos
The first word, παεσος (paesos) is a clear genitive of the cognate of Greek φάος (pháos), meaning "light". Combined with the previous word, we can put forward "with an arrow of light", which is widely believed to be a poetic metaphor for a thunderbolt; this would also fit the context regarding the prominence of the god of thunder. Κριζομ (krizom) is a perfect cognate of Proto-Celtic *kridyom and means "heart". As a neuter noun, it could be both a nominative and an accusative. The next word is an old construction meaning "master of the house" that was fossilised into a compound in Early Proto-Carite, much like its Greek equivalent δεσπότης (despótēs). It presumably also had a wider connotation of "lord" or "master". The length on the suffix is reconstructed in order for the word to be in the genitive case, which matches the next word, another given name. Like Ελενᾱ, the source of the name Αριπρω (Ariprō) is Greek, more specifically Ἀρίφρων (Aríphrōn). As such, we can put forward the meaning "the heart of lord Ariprō".

The last line is, despite only featuring a single word, ironically the hardest to decipher. As such, we temporarily stick with the unresolved ΚΕΝΕΣΙΤ (KENESIT). The reason for this difficulty is easy: we are unable to posit any good etymology for this word, which is otherwise unattested and does not seem to be reflected in any words in later attestations. While many theories have been put forward over the years, perhaps something as simple as a scribal error may be at fault here. If we reconstruct the word as κενσῑτ (kensīt), without the middle vowel, we are able to reconstruct a verb that we have a plausible etymology for, of which we can find a descendant in later Carite, and that has a semantically fitting meaning in context. More specifically, we would be dealing with the future form of the verb κεντω (kentō) which is related to Greek κεντέω (kentéō) and means "to sting" or "to goad".

With all the fragments translated, we can put together the sentence and reconstruct the original meaning. It is more than likely our first word, the god of thunder, acts as a subject in the sentence. As such, we can posit the following rather literal interpretation:
Fergunos, because of the ? of my daughter Elenā, oh evil one, woe, will sting with an arrow of light the heart of lord Ariprō.
Two issues remain, the most pressing being the meaning of ροβωῐ. While still contested, a popular interpretation is that it is an old verbal noun of the Proto-Indo-European root *h₁rep- or, in any case, related to Latin rapiō and Greek ἐρέπτομαι (eréptomai). In this case, we would be dealing with a noun meaning "snatching", "grabbing", "plucking" or something of the sorts. It is not unthinkable that this was a euphemism for sexual assault and that this fragment was in fact a curse. If this is the case, it is likely the future tense still carried a possible connotation of the old optative from which it descended. As such, we can reconstruct the following, slightly more liberal translation:
May Fergunos strike the heart of lord Ariprō, oh evil one, woe, with an arrow of light for the rape of my daughter Elenā.
Metre
Ancient Indo-European poetry was generally written with a specific metre in mind, and the Tartessos inscription is no exception. At least the first two lines appear to be not dissimilar to the Glyconic:
Φερ-γυ-νο-ς_αν-τι Ε-λε-νᾱς με-ῠες
τυγ-δρᾱς ρο-βωῐ υ-βε-λε ῠῑ ι-σῠῑ
We may reconstruct this metre as LXS LSS SLSL, where X is either long or short. As is the case in most other early Indo-European poetry, syllables are long on at least one of the two following conditions:
* The nucleus is a long vowel or a diphthong;
* The syllable has a coda.

However, this may occasionally be less straightforward than written through the theft of codas as onsets of the next syllable, as is the case for the transition from Φεργυνος to αντι.

While we may not compare it to anything to prove our point, we can analyse the third line as follows:
πα-ε-σος κρι-ζομ δεμ-βοτ-ῑς Α-ρι-προ-νος
This would imply a SSLS LLS LSS SL structure, although the first unit could also be SSSS if the final /s/ of παεσος is considered to be part of the next word (πα-ε-σο-ς_κρι-ζομ).
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qwed117
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Re: The Tartessos Inscription (~500BC), most significant Carite archaeological find

Post by qwed117 »

Not gonna lie, I was absolutely confused at first because Tartessian and Carian are two very different, two very distant languages, until I realized that this was neither of two [:P] . Impressive work on an IE conlang, the presentation is unique
Spoiler:
My minicity is [http://zyphrazia.myminicity.com/xml]Zyphrazia and [http://novland.myminicity.com/xml]Novland.

Minicity has fallen :(
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VaptuantaDoi
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Re: The Tartessos Inscription (~500BC), most significant Carite archaeological find

Post by VaptuantaDoi »

qwed117 wrote: 06 Jan 2022 03:28 Not gonna lie, I was absolutely confused at first because Tartessian and Carian are two very different, two very distant languages, until I realized that this was neither of two [:P] . Impressive work on an IE conlang, the presentation is unique
[+1] both to the confusion and being impressed [:P] Once I got it, I really like this way of showcasing a language.
Iasper
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Re: The Tartessos Inscription (~500BC), most significant Carite archaeological find

Post by Iasper »

Thank you! :)
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