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The Pyrgi Tablets, found in a 1964 excavation of a sanctuary of ancient Pyrgi on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy (today the town of Santa Severa), are three golden leaves that record a dedication made around 500 BC by Thefarie Velianas, king of Caere, to the Phoenician goddess ʻAshtaret. Pyrgi was the port of the southern Etruscan town of Caere. Two of the tablets are inscribed in the Etruscan language, the third in Phoenician. These writings are important not only in providing a bilingual text that allows researchers to use knowledge of the Phoenician language to read Etruscan, but they also provide evidence of Phoenician/Punic influence in the Western Mediterranean. This document helps provide a context for Polybius's report (Hist. 3,22) of an ancient and almost unintelligible treaty between the Romans and the Carthaginians, which he dated to the consulships of L. Iunius Brutus and L. Tarquinius Collatinus (509 BC). The tablets are now held at the National Etruscan Museum, Villa Giulia, Rome. From Wikipedia under the
GNU Free Documentation License  utexas.edu 324px x 500px | 65.30kB [source page] Ficoroni cista Praeneste Palestrina images pyrgi Tablets Classical early 5th c gold lamina tablets with inscriptions in Punic and Etruscan found at Santa Severa Rome Museo Nazionale di Villa Giulia Carratelli G P ed The  maravot.com 909px x 450px | 153.40kB [source page] bbty shnt km hkkbm Translation of the Phoenician text according to Sabatino Moscati To our Lady Ishtar This is the holy place which was made and  users.tpg.com.au 296px x 483px | 23.00kB [source page] these difficulties scholars have studied the Etruscan language in a variety of ways using bilingual inscriptions and glosses as well as linguistic and cultural archaeological methods Gold tablets from Pyrgi c 500 BCE Inscribed in Phoenician left and Etruscan centre and right From Yahoo Image Search: "Pyrgi Tablets" |
