The Hand of Irulegi : The Oldest Written Example of the Ancient Basque Language
SOCIEDAD DE CIENCIAS ARANZADI via El País
Here today with a rare NON-FOOD-RELATED blog post because we have some huge breaking news from Northern Spain. The earliest documented example of written Basque has been discovered, and it predates the previous example by over 1000 years!
In a story by El País, researchers claim to have found the earliest documentation written in Basque, so named "The Hand of Irulegi". This bronze plate was unearthed last June near Pamplona, discovered on the site of an ancient village that was burned to the ground by Pompey's troops. Researchers have been evaluating the inscriptions on it and have just identified them as Basque, making this hand the earliest written example of the language.
This hand, about 14.5 centimeters (5.7 in) long, is the earliest document written in Basque, dating back 2,100 years. Just to put that into perspective, Macchu Picchu is only 600 years old.
This quote from the El País article gives me chills:
"Javier Velaza, a professor of Latin Philology at the University of Barcelona and one of the world’s foremost experts on pre-Roman inscriptions, was astonished when he analyzed the piece last April: it turned out to be the first text in history to be written in the Basque language, Euskera, and its first word could be translated into sorioneku, meaning good fortune or good omen. “The Hand of Irulegi is undoubtedly the first document written in the Basque language and in a specifically Basque script [an alphabet that includes letters and syllables], as well as being the longest text known to date,” says Velaza."
Here's the writing.
SOCIEDAD DE CIENCIAS ARANZADI via El País
The part analysts have been able to make sense of is the first word, sorioneku. This is very close to the modern Basque word for 'lucky”, or more exactly ‘of good fortune', zorioneko. Zori means fortune, on (good), and the suffix 'ko' means of, which can be translated as “of good fortune or good omen.”
The rest is still a bit of a mystery, though researchers believe they have detected some recognizable words such as es (ez in modern Basque), which means no or is used for negation, and a form relatable to the verb egin (to do).
Why is the discovery of the hand of Irulegi important?
Basque is a language isolate, which means it has no demonstrable genetic relation to any other language. Although Aquitainian is its ancestor.
It's a language that was slow to be inscribed. The first book in Basque wasn't published until 1545. A book of poems, Linguæ Vasconum Primitiæ (“First Fruits of the Basque Language”), published in 1545 and written by Bernat Etxepare.
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The earliest previous written proof dated back to the 10th or 11th century in the Emilian Glosses from the San Millán, a text written by a monk in both Castillian Spanish and Basque.
Although, there was a moment in 2006 when we thought we had found pieces dating back to the 3rd century. The archaeologist who "found" these was Eliseo Gil, but he was convicted of fraud for this finding in 2020 and sentenced to 2 years and 3 months in jail. In 2006, news broke of the discovery of ostraca bearing text in Latin and Basque, as well as Christian drawings, during the 2005 and 2006 excavation campaigns at the Iruña-Veleia site in Álava, Spain. In 2008, these pieces were shown to be fakes. The 'Iruña-Veleia case', as it has come to be known, has been the subject of several partial studies, primarily focused on the forgeries.
The finding of this hand proves that the Basques were using their language in that territory in the 1st century BC. The first document undoubtedly written in the Basque language.
Who were the Basques anyway?
The Vascones were a pre-Roman people. They spread mostly along the area that is currently Navarre and into Gipuzkoa, La Rioja, Zaragoza and Huesca. While that area doesn't encompass all of modern day Basque Country, the characteristics of the area are the same: the Pyrenean character, its extension toward the Ebro basin to the south and its outlet to the Cantabrian Sea through the Bidasoa River.
The earliest mention of the Vascones people dates to 1st century AD, in the form of a list of Basque cities based on a map commissioned by Caesar Augustus. Until now, no written texts had ever been found from the Vascones, and definitely no written proof of their language, Proto-Basque, which shares strong linguistic similarities to modern Basque.
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Where was the Hand of Irulegi found?
It was found on the Irulegi archaeological site, located between the Pyrenees and the Ebro valley. According to El Pais, "It was built for defensive purposes and to control the surrounding territory in the Bronze Age, between the 15th and 11th centuries BC and disappeared in the 1st century BC. The settlement has been preserved intact due to the fire set by Pompey’s troops, which caused the collapse of the dwellings, sealing them shut." It was an important settlement, and advanced with its stone plinths, adobe brick walls and interspersed posts to hold up the wooden roofs and the vegetation covering them.
At first, the artifact was thought to be part of a helmet. The sheet of bronze is cut down to represent the shape of a life-sized right hand, and is an alloy of 53.19% tin, 40.87% copper and 2.16% lead.
SOCIEDAD DE CIENCIAS ARANZADI via El País
Epigraphers Javier Velaza and Joaquín Gorrochategui, a professor of Indo-European Linguistics at the University of the Basque Country, were the ones analysing the inscription. It belongs to the family of Paleohispanic semi-syllabaries [such as Iberian or Celtiberian], but it presents some characteristics that do not coincide with the rest ofthe known ancient scripts used in the Iberian Peninsula.
This rules out the theory that the Vascones were a people who lacked a writing system, as had previously been thought, and shows that they knew the writing and had made use of it.
I leave you with another quote from the article that I found incredibly impactful:
“What is beyond doubt,” conclude Velaza and Gorrochategui, “is that the exceptional Irulegi inscription proves that the Basques were using their language in that territory in the 1st century BC. And, taking into account the scarcity of firm testimonies for the establishment of the linguistic map of the area and of the protohistory of the Basque language, its discovery creates an inescapable basis for any debate on the question. The Hand of Irulegi constitutes the first document undoubtedly written in the Basque language.”
If you’re curious about the Basque language and how to learn it, check out my video (featuring Buckley :): https://www.travelcookeat.com/imported-20100608191054/2021/4/3/how-to-learn-basque-video
I wrote a book on Basque cuisine and culture, please check it out if you haven’t!