PORTUGAL - Experts trying to decipher ancient language - HISTORY

Writing system



Excepting the Greco-Iberian alphabet, and to a lesser extent this script, paleohispanic scripts shared a distinctive typology: They behaved as a syllabary for the stop consonants and as an alphabet for the rest of consonants and vowels.

This unique writing system has been called a semi-syllabary.

There is no agreement about how the paleohispanic semi-syllabaries originated; some researchers conclude that their origin is linked only to the Phoenician alphabet, while others believe the Greek alphabet had also participated.

In the southwestern script, although the letter used to write a stop consonant was determined by the following vowel, as in a full semi-syllabary, the following vowel was also written, as in an alphabet.

Some scholars treat Tartessian as a redundant semi-syllabary, others treat it as a redundant alphabet.

The southwestern script is very similar to the southeastern Iberian script, both considering the shape of the signs
or his value. The main difference is that southeastern Iberian script doesn’t show the vocalic redundancy of the syllabic signs. This characteristic was discovered by Ulrich Schmoll and allows the classification of a great part of the southwestern signs in vowels, consonants and syllabic signs.

Unlike the northeastern Iberian script, the decipherment of the southeastern Iberian script and the southwestern script is not still closed, because there are a significant group of signs without consensus value.






Inscriptions



This script is almost exclusively used in near a hundred large stones (steles), probably with funerary purpose.

Almost always the direction of the writing is right to left, but also boustrophedon or spiral. The fact
that almost all the southwestern inscriptions had been found out of archaeological context does not permit fixing a precise chronology, but it seems clear that it was used in the 5th century BC.

However it is usual to date them from the 7th century BC and consider that the southwestern script
is the most ancient paleohispanic script.

A total of 75 southwest script stelae are known.

Of these, 16 can be seen in the Southwest Script Museum (Museu da Escrita do Sudoeste, in Portuguese), in Almodôvar (Portugal), where a recently discovered stele with a total of 86 characters (the longest inscription found so far) will also be on display.