The Greco-Iberian

alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

is a direct adaptation of an Ionic variant of a

Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...

to the specifics of the

Iberian language The Iberian language is the language of an indigenous western European people identified by Ancient Greece, Greek and ancient Rome, Roman sources who lived in the eastern and southeastern regions of the Iberian Peninsula in the pre-Migration Era ...

, thus this script is an alphabet and lacks the distinctive characteristic 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 ...

that present signs with syllabic value, for the

occlusive In phonetics, an occlusive, sometimes known as a stop, is a consonant sound produced by occluding (i.e. blocking) airflow in the vocal tract, but not necessarily in the nasal tract. The duration of the block is the ''occlusion'' of the consonan ...

s and signs with monophonemic value for the rest of

consonants In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

and

vowels A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

Location of findings

The inscriptions that use the Greco-Iberian alphabet had been found mainly in

Alicante Alicante (, , ; ; ; officially: ''/'' ) is a city and municipalities of Spain, municipality in the Valencian Community, Spain. It is the capital of the province of Alicante and a historic Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean port. The population ...

and

Murcia Murcia ( , , ) is a city in south-eastern Spain, the Capital (political), capital and most populous city of the autonomous community of the Region of Murcia, and the Ranked lists of Spanish municipalities#By population, seventh largest city i ...

and the direction of the writing is left to right, or sinistroverse. The number of known Greco-Iberian inscriptions is small: fewer than two dozen

ceramic A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcela ...

inscriptions and a dozen

lead Lead () is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Pb (from Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a Heavy metal (elements), heavy metal that is density, denser than most common materials. Lead is Mohs scale, soft and Ductility, malleabl ...

plaques, among them the lead plaque from La Serreta ( Alcoy,

) and the lead plaque from El Cigarralejo (Mula,

). The archaeological context of the Greco-Iberian inscriptions seems to concentrate in the 4th century BC, but the paleographic characteristics of the model indicate that the adaptation may date from the 5th century BC.

Typology

The Greco-Iberian alphabet contains 16 signs identical to Greek signs, except for the sign corresponding to the second

rhotic consonant In phonetics, rhotic consonants, or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthography, orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek alphabet, Greek letter Rho (letter), rho (Ρ and ρ), including R, , i ...

: five

, three

voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refe ...

s ( labial, dental and

velar Velar may refer to: * Velar consonant Velar consonants are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (also known as the "velum"). Since the velar region ...

), but only two

voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ...

occlusives (dental and velar), two

sibilants Sibilants (from 'hissing') are fricative and affricate consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English word ...

, two rhotics, one

lateral Lateral is a geometric term of location which may also refer to: Biology and healthcare * Lateral (anatomy), a term of location meaning "towards the side" * Lateral cricoarytenoid muscle, an intrinsic muscle of the larynx * Lateral release ( ...

, and only one

nasal Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination: * With reference to the human nose: ** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery * ...

sign. To represent the second rhotic , rho gets an additional stroke. Eta is used instead of

epsilon Epsilon (, ; uppercase , lowercase or ; ) is the fifth letter of the Greek alphabet, corresponding phonetically to a mid front unrounded vowel or . In the system of Greek numerals it also has the value five. It was derived from the Phoenic ...

to represent /e/. The only letter not found in the modern variant of the Greek alphabet is

sampi Sampi (modern: ϡ; ancient shapes: , ) is an Archaic Greek alphabets, archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. It was used as an addition to the classical 24-letter alphabet in some eastern Ionic Greek, Ionic dialects of ancient Greek in the 6th a ...

. The letter forms are

petroglyph A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...

ic since the writing surface (ceramic, stone, lead) affords angular glyphs with straight lines.

Notes

Bibliography

* Gómez-Moreno, Manuel (1922): «De Epigrafia ibérica: el plomo de Alcoy», ''Revista de filología española'' 9, pp. 341–366. * Hoz, Javier de (1987): «La escritura greco-ibérica», ''Veleia'' 2–3, pp. 285–298. * Hoz, Javier de (1998): «Epigrafía griega de occidente y escritura greco-ibérica», ''Los griegos en España'', pp. 180–196. * Rodríguez Ramos, Jesús (2005): «Introducció a l’estudi de les inscripcions ibèriques», ''Revista de la Fundació Privada Catalana per l’Arqueologia ibèrica'', 1, pp. 13–144. * Untermann, Jürgen (1990): '' Monumenta Linguarum Hispanicarum. III Die iberischen Inschriften aus Spanien'', Wiesbaden. * Velaza, Javier (1996): ''Epigrafía y lengua ibéricas'', Barcelona.

External links

The Greek-Iberian writing- Jesús Rodríguez Ramos
{{DEFAULTSORT:Greco-Iberian Alphabet Iberian writing Greek alphabet Culture of Spain

Location of findings

Typology

See also

Notes

Bibliography

External links