Pyrgi Tablets

Pyrgi Tablets
The Pyrgi Tablets, sheets of gold with a bilingual treatise in Etruscan and Phoenician
Material	Gold
Created	c. 500 BC
Discovered	1964 Lazio, Italy
Present location	Rome, Lazio, Italy
Language	Etruscan and Phoenician

The Pyrgi Tablets (dated c. 500 BC) are three golden plates inscribed with a bilingual Phoenician–Etruscan dedicatory text. They are the oldest historical source documents from pre-Roman Italy and are rare examples of texts in these languages. They were discovered in 1964 during a series of excavations at the site of ancient Pyrgi, on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy in Latium (Lazio). The text records the foundation of a temple and its dedication to the Phoenician goddess Astarte, who is identified with the Etruscan supreme goddess Uni in the Etruscan text. The temple's construction is attributed to Thefarie Velianas, ruler of the nearby city of Caere.^[1]

Two of the tablets are inscribed in the Etruscan language, the third in Phoenician.^[2] 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 (Hist. 3,22) 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 (509 BC).^[3]

The Phoenician inscriptions are known as KAI 277. The tablets are now held at the National Etruscan Museum, Villa Giulia, Rome.

Pallottino has claimed that the existence of this bilingual suggests an attempt by Carthage to support or impose a ruler (Tiberius Velianas) over Caere at a time when Etruscan sea power was waning and to be sure that this region, with strong cultural ties to Greek settlements to the south, stayed in the Etrusco-Carthaginian confederacy.^[4] The exact nature of the rule of Tiberius Velianas has been the subject of much discussion. The Phoenician root MLK refers to sole power, often associated with a king. But the Etruscan text does not use the Etruscan word for 'king', lauχum, instead presenting the term for 'magistrate', zilac (perhaps modified by a word that may mean 'great'). This suggests that Tiberius Velianas may have been a tyrant of the kind found in some Greek cities of the time. Building a temple, claiming to have been addressed by a god, and creating or strengthening his connections with foreign powers may all have been ways that he sought to solidify and legitimate his own power.^[5]

Another area that the Pyrgi Tablets seem to throw light on is that Carthage was indeed involved in central Italy at this point in history. Such involvement was suggested by mentions by Polybius of a treaty between Rome and Carthage at about the same time period (circa 500 BC), and by Herodotus's accounts of Carthaginian involvement in the Battle of Alalia. But these isolated accounts did not have any contemporaneous texts from the area to support them until these tablets were unearthed and interpreted.^[6] Schmidtz originally claimed that the language pointed more toward an eastern Mediterranean form of Phoenician rather than to Punic/Carthaginian. But he has more recently reversed this view, and he even sees the possibility that the Carthaginians are directly referred to in the text.^[7]

The text is also important for our understanding of religion in central Italy around the year 500 BC. Specifically, it suggests that the commemoration of the death of Adonis was an important rite in Central Italy at least at this time (around 500 BC), that is if, as is generally assumed, the Phoenician phrase bym qbr ʼlm "on the day of the burial of the divinity" refers to this rite. This claim would be further strengthened if Schmidtz's recent claim can be accepted that the Phoenician phrase bmt n' bbt means "at the death of (the) Handsome (one) [=Adonis]."^[8] Together with evidence of the rite of Adonai in the Liber Linteus in the 7th column, there is a strong likelihood that the ritual was practiced in (at least) the southern part of Etruria from at least circa 500 BC through the second century BC (depending on one's dating of the Liber Linteus). Adonis himself does not seem to be directly mentioned in any of the extant language of either text.^[9]