Irulegiko Eskua eta Signario Baskonikoa Txanponetan, Euskal Txanpongintzaren Historia

November 14, 2022 was a historic day for Basque speakers, as well as for anyone who loves the Basque language. On that day, the Aranzadi Zientzia Taldea, the Aranguren Town Council, the Government of Navarre and linguistic experts announced the discovery of a bronze hand and the writing found on it at the Irulegi site (a site located in the municipality of Aranguren, Navarre).

In this manuscript, dated to the 1st century BC, during the wars of Sertorius (82-72 BC), the oldest written trace in ancient Basque, or according to the name used by experts, in Vasconic, is said to have been found.

As a Basque speaker, when I read the news, my heart started beating fast. I wanted to know more details and that word sorioneku kept bubbling in my head. I was at work and had a call with a client, but my mind was elsewhere.

Aerial photo of the excavation site in Irulegi (Municipality of Aranguren) – The Basque town is visible in the distance – Photography by the Aranzadi Science Group

As mentioned, the presented writing is about 2,100 years old and although the Romans were already penetrating the present-day Navarre at that time, it is not written in the Latin alphabet. At first glance, the writing would appear to be written in the northeastern Iberian signario. However, the expert Javiez Velaza immediately pointed out a peculiarity of this writing. Among the Vascones, the Iberian signario was apparently adapted to represent the phonetic differences of a language that was not Iberian. Among these adaptations, it is said that it included the creation of a few new unknown symbols and the phonetic transformation of a few other old Iberian symbols. Therefore, we seem to be talking about the so-called Vascon signario and it is necessary to reject the idea that the Vascones were illiterate.

Summary of Iberian writing symbols, work of the denarios.org page – This summary presents the classification and presumed or abbreviated meaning of most of the symbols that appeared on the Iberian Peninsula.

After reading all these conclusions, I was surprised; I had heard such things before, in a single episode, when there was no trace of the hand of Irulegi. And that episode was the lecture given by the expert Francisco Beltrán Lloris at the Museum of Navarre in honor of Museum Day 2021. In that lecture, Mr. Beltrán Lloris talked about the coins of ancient Navarre.

Image of the bronze hand of Ireleg – Photo by Aranzadi Zientzia Taldea

After many years of study, excavations and the work of many people, this Irulegi manuscript is said to be the oldest and most undeniable reflection of the Basque signario and a Basque ancestor. It is grateful to show here, once again, the textual image presented by the Irulegi writing.

Text showing the image of the bronze hand in Ireleg – Photo by Aranzadi Zientzia Taldea

Throughout that day, here and there, I read a little more, and one of the most distinctive features of this Vascon signario was a slash that does not appear in any other writing, a slash that we would consider the capital letter T in the modern Latin alphabet.

Those of us who are interested in coinage know of this T izki on ancient coins. And this izki can be found in two mints that do not have a specific geographical location. These two mints are usually classified among the Vascon mints, but as mentioned, although we believe that they were Vascon, we do not have a specific location in the Vascon territories.

The supposed names of these two mints, since we are not certain of the phoneme that this T represented, would be ONTiKeS, OMTiKeS, ORTiKeS and UNANbaATe, UMANbaATe or URANbaATe.

And the following two coins from each of these two mints would be the ones below, where I have highlighted this T izki, which is said to be a characteristic of the Vascon signario, in a red circle.

ONTiKeS Bronze unit bearing the name of the mint – 11.31 g. 23.5 mm – JESÚS VICO, SA, AUCTION 158, LOT 365

Obverse: Star-crowned head with necklace, facing right. Plough on front face, dolphin on back

Ifrentzua: Knight with a lance, with a triskelion on top and ONTiKeS writing on the underside of the horse

UNANBAAT Bronze unit bearing the name of the mint – 12.80 g. 25.6 mm – JESÚS VICO, SA, AUCTION 160, LOT 186

Obverse: Star-crowned head with necklace, facing right. Face on front ETaON in Iberian script

Ifrentzua: The Knight of the Flock and UNANBAAT writing – Tea The last phoneme is also special.

A few months ago, before the discovery of the Irulegi hand, in search of traces of Basque I was interested in paleo-Hispanic coins. In that introduction, after examining some of the text images found on coins from Iberian territories, I examined the supporting texts that appear on coins from mints located in the middle and upper Ebro valley. Before today's article, I would recommend reviewing that blog post, as it offers a good first general summary.

I didn't have time for more in that introduction, although there was still something to say about the signario and many others. In this sense, I highly recommend the talk by the expert Francisco Beltrán Llopis (the link to the video of this talk can be found in the Bibliography section); below I will largely discuss what this expert said in that talk.

Mr. Beltrán Llopis stated that the middle and upper Ebro valley was the limit of the spread of Paleo-Hispanic writing. We do not have any evidence of this westward from the territories of the Vascones (in present-day Bizkaia, Araba and Gipuzkoa). discovery of Paleohispanic writings.

In the territories of the Basques themselves, very few Paleo-Hispanic writings have been found to date. The mosaic of Andelos, the bronze of Aranguren, the Olite Stone… in addition to these, the largest number of writings can be found on the coins themselves. And what these coins tell us about the writing of the people of that time is absolutely interesting. We began to talk about the Vascon signario after the discovery of Irulegi, but in this signario, and as the coins show us, we can find a complete diversity. This should bring to mind the idea of being in front of the first and subsequent steps in the consolidation of writing.

Let's take the Arsaos mint for example, and see how many variations there are in the mint's inscription. The location of the Arsaos mint is unknown, but coin finds and a Roman inscription would place it between the present-day town of Sangüeza and Sofuentes in Zaragoza.

The “standard” or usual writing of the Arsaos mint can be found on this “denarius”. At first glance, this inverted R would seem to be unusual in Iberian signarium. In fact, we do not know whether this inverted R represented the R phoneme, but it would be quite likely, since the sequence “ARS” is also repeated in Barskunes, Sesars or Arsakos. Remember, anyone can compare this inverted R with the signs used to represent the two different variants of the R phoneme in the Irulegi hand.

ARSAOS silver unit or denarius bearing the name of the mint – 3.51 gr. – TAULER & FAU AUCTIONS, AUCTION 44, LOT 6019