The Espanca script (from

Castro Verde Castro Verde (), officially the Municipality of Castro Verde (), is a List of municipalities of Portugal, municipality of the Alentejo, Alentejo region of Portugal (in the historic district of Beja District, Beja). The population in 2011 was 7,276 ...

, Baixo

Alentejo Alentejo ( , , ) is a geographical, historical, and cultural region of south–central and southern Portugal. In Portuguese, its name means "beyond the Tagus" (). Alentejo includes the regions of Alto Alentejo Province, Alto Alentejo and Bai ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...

) 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 dominant script. They derive from the Phoenician alphabet, with the exception of the Greco-Iberian alphabet, which is ...

. It is inscribed on a piece of

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic ro ...

, 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, 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 for the Iberian language, which was primarily written in the northeastern Iberian script and, to a lesser extent, by the Greco-Iberia ...

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

Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BC. It was one of the first alphabets, attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions fo ...

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 ( "Castellet-in-Luberon; Occitan: ''Lo Castelet''), known simply as Castellet until 2018,Tos Pelat signary TOS may refer to: General * Terms of service * The original series of a particular media, in contrast to a spin-off Chemistry * Tosyl, a chemical group * Gy's sampling theory (abbreviation) Entertainment * '' Star Trek: The Original Ser ...

, the Ger signary and the

Bolvir signary Bolvir () is a village in the province of Girona and autonomous community of Catalonia Catalonia is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationalities and regions of Spain, nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy of Cataloni ...

. Each of them has a particular sequence of signs and none of them match the sequence of signs of the Espanca signary. Recently, an inscription made on one side of an

ostrakon An ostracon (Greek: ''ostrakon'', plural ''ostraka'') is a piece of pottery, usually broken off from a vase or other earthenware vessel. In an archaeological or epigraphical context, ''ostraca'' refer to sherds or even small pieces of stone ...

from the site in Villasviejas del Tamuja (

Botija, Cáceres Botija is a municipality located in the province of Cáceres, Extremadura, Spain. According to the 2013 census ( INE), the municipality has a population of 193 inhabitants.Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula This is a list of the pre- Roman people of the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania, i.e., modern Portugal, Spain and Andorra). Some closely fit the concept of a people, ethnic group or tribe. Others are confederations or even unions of tribe ...

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