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Corpus inscriptionum Veneticarum Sloveniae (CIVES) is an electronic database of inscriptions in the Venetic alphabet discovered in the territory of modern Slovenia, which in geographical terms approximately corresponds to the south-eastern Alpine region. Apart from these, the database also contains pre-Roman inscriptions from the same region produced in other varieties of the North Italic script. The database is expected to grow with the addition of any potential new finds to the extant corpus. The corpus was designed and set up in the framework of the student project for sustainable development (call RSF C.III.1: Vključevanje lokalnih, regionalnih in globalnih izzivov trajnostnega razvoja, interdisciplinarnosti in STEAM pristopov v študijski proces) funded by the University of Ljubljana (February–April 2024) and led by Dr. Luka Repanšek. The contributors are:
- Asst. Prof. Dr. Luka Repanšek (mentor), Dep. of Comparative and General Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana
- Klara Eva Draškovič (BA student), Dep. of Comparative and General Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana
- Patricija Kreševec (MA student), Dep. of Comparative and General Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana
- Luka Markošek (BA student), Dep. of Comparative and General Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana
- Matic Velikonja (MA student), Dep. of Comparative and General Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana
The database is based on the MediaWiki open-source application and was designed by Gašper Čulk, Lovro Napotnik and Klemen Slatnar (Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana) under the mentorship of Asst. Dr. Marko Poženel (Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana) and Mr. Miroslav Romih (Amebis d.o.o).
Acknowledgements
We wish to express gratitude to Dr. Boštjan Laharnar (National Museum of Slovenia) and Dr. Georg Tiefengraber (Naturhistorisches Museum Wien) for their invaluable help with renewed autopsy of Is 1, Is 2, Is 3 and the inscription from Vintarjevec, and to Ms. Ida Murgelj for providing high-quality drawings for the database.
Pre-Roman Inscriptions in the South-Eastern Alpine Region: An Overview
Written culture in the south-eastern Alpine region traces its beginnings to the 4th century BC. All pre-Roman inscriptions carry the mark of the so-called North Italic epigraphic tradition. Ca. 50 pre-Roman inscriptions have been unearthed so far. 27 of these came to light in different parts of modern-day Slovenia (of these, one is lost and another lost but luckily preserved in transcription): ten of them in north-western Slovenia (one only reported but now lost), eight in the littoral, three in central Slovenia and six in north-eastern Slovenia.
The group of 27 inscriptions form two clusters: a) inscriptions in the Venetic alphabet, which represent the majority of the data, and b) non-Venetic inscriptions. The latter group consists of inscriptions in alphabets that clearly form part of the Northern Italic epigraphic tradition but differ from the purely Venetic script or are not unambiguously recognizable as being Venetic in nature.
The 18 Venetic inscriptions form two major clusters. The first is found in the upper Posočje (Isonzo) region and spans the area between the Soča (Isonzo)-knee and the upper Idrijca valley. The oldest inscriptions date to the 4th c. BC, while the youngest fall into the last decades of the 2nd c. and 1st c. BC. The recent layer of these inscriptions is typologically connected to the so-called Gailtal cluster (i.e. Gurina, Würmlach/Bumlje) to the north and the East Carnic group of inscriptions to the west (such as the inscriptions from Verzegnis and Zuglio Carnico).
The second major cluster is formed by the south-western group of inscriptions in Northern Istria and Slovenian Karst up to Knežak in the East and up to Štanjel in the North. These too date to the late 5th or early 4th c. BC, while the youngest inscriptions fall into the 2nd and 1st c. BC. An outlier is represented by the now lost inscription from a cult site at Mala gora above Moste. Another Venetic rock (?) inscription was reported a few decades ago to have been found near Jesenice. If that is correct, it would probably be shown to form a coherent cluster with the Mala gora inscription. The majority of the eight inscriptions in the Isonzo cluster are autochthonous, given that they display systematically recurring local innovations and peculiarities that are not shared by any other version of the Venetic alphabet. These inscriptions therefore undoubtedly represent the oldest autochthonous written documents in the south-eastern Alpine region.
As far as the south-western group is concerned, however, they correspond epigraphically to the standard type of the Venetic alphabet as used in central, non-peripheral areas. There is no reason to doubt that at least some of them might be autochthonous (Ts 1, for example) rather than imported (as seems to be the case for *Ts 4).
The remaining 9 pre-Roman inscriptions not produced in the Venetic alphabet, on the other hand, are heterogeneous and do not form any significant clusters. The two inscriptions found in central Slovenia that have been applied to helmets are Etruscan and Rhaetic, while the inscription from Vintarjevec is less unambiguous, though it is clear that the alphabet is North Italic in nature. All these inscriptions are relatively old, dating back to the 5th/4th, maybe 3rd c. BC at the latest.
Equally heterogeneous are the two Negau helmets from Ženjak near Negova in north-eastern Slovenia. The Negau B helmet carries the oldest Germanic inscription found to-date and belongs to the late 5th or early 4th c. BC (possibly 250 BC at the very latest, though the later date is not in fact supported by the archaeological data nor does it seem likely on epigraphical grounds). The inscription lacks syllabic punctuation altogether and uses the Etruscan three-bar heta in the sound value /h/ as well as the Etruscan prototype of the tau for the sound value /t/, which speaks in favour of the fact that the inscription must be fairly early and seems to belong to a separate epigraphical horizon than the inscriptions in the Venetic alphabet. The so-called Negau A helmet carries four different inscriptions, applied in two different techniques. The linguistically indubitably Gaulish inscription dubni banuabi very clearly does not belong to the Venetic writing tradition, which is obvious from the differing shape of the phi and the use of dzeta to represent a sound /d/ in such an early inscription. The remaining three seem to be specifically Rhaetic. The third epigraphic document from the north-eastern group is the youngest pre-Roman inscription found in the south-eastern Alpine region and at the same time also the most peculiar. Its language is almost undoubtedly Gaulish, while the alphabet is clearly North Italic in nature, but the way that the North Etruscan alphabet is used in this case finds no parallel in the entire corpus of inscriptions in the North Italic alphabet. Features like the use of Latinate B in the sound value /b/ could be seen as corroborating its lateness, but the use of theta in the value /d/ is basically unparalleled. The Ptuj/Pettau inscription thus represents a sole survival of an entirely independent epigraphic tradition. The same has been claimed for the two inscriptions on the (equally relatively late) plate from Magdalensberg in Carinthia, often said to feature the so-called “Norican script”, but that is not necessarily so. All its features make it quite possibly epigraphically Venetic or at least there exists no reason why that would be in any way ambiguous.
(L. Repanšek)
