Pyrgi Tablets


The Pyrgi Tablets, found in a 1964 excavation of a sanctuary of ancient Pyrgi on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy, are three golden leaves that record a dedication made around 500 BC by Thefarie Velianas, Zilath of Caere, to the Phoenician goddess ʻAštart. 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.
The writings are important in providing both a bilingual text that allows researchers to use knowledge of Phoenician to interpret Etruscan, and evidence of Phoenician or Punic influence in the Western Mediterranean. They may relate to Polybius's report of an ancient and almost unintelligible treaty between the Romans and the Carthaginians, which he dated to the consulships of Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus.
The tablets are now held at the National Etruscan Museum, Villa Giulia, Rome.

Phoenician text

The inscriptions are known as KAI 277; they read:
The Phoenician text has long been known to be in a Semitic, more specifically Canaanite language ; hence there was no need for it to be "deciphered." And while the inscription can certainly be read, certain passages are philologically uncertain on account of perceived complications of syntax and the vocabulary employed in the inscription, and as such they have become the source of debate among both Semiticists and Classicists.
Supplementary to the Pyrgi Tablets are inscriptions on vessels found in the sanctuary at Pyrgi:

Phoenician vocabulary

Etruscan text

ita tmia icac he
rama sva va ti eche
unial astres themia
sa mech thuta thefa
rpie velianas sal
cluvenias turu
ce munistas thuvas
tameresce ilacve
tulerase nac ci avi
l chur var tesiameitale ilacve alšase.
nac atranes zilac al seleitala asnasv ers
itanim heram ve avil eniaca pulumchva.

Etruscan vocabulary