Tartessian language in the context of "Tartessos"

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⭐ Core Definition: Tartessian language

Tartessian is an extinct Paleo-Hispanic language found in the Southwestern inscriptions of the Iberian Peninsula, mainly located in the historical Tartessos, the south of Portugal (Algarve and southern Alentejo), and the southwest of Spain (south of Extremadura and western Andalusia). There are 95 such inscriptions; the longest has 82 readable signs. Around one third of them were found in Early Iron Age necropolises or other Iron Age burial sites associated with rich complex burials. It is usual to date them to the 7th century BC and to consider the southwestern script to be the most ancient Paleo-Hispanic script, with characters most closely resembling specific Phoenician letter forms found in inscriptions dated to c. 825 BC. Five of the inscriptions occur on stelae that have been interpreted as Late Bronze Age carved warrior gear from the Central European Urnfield culture.

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👉 Tartessian language in the context of Tartessos

Tartessos (Spanish: Tartesos) is, as defined by archaeological discoveries, a historical civilization settled in the southern Iberian Peninsula from about the late Bronze Age until the 5th century BC. It had a writing system, identified as Tartessian, that includes some 97 inscriptions in a Tartessian language which has been proposed by Teresa Júdice Gamito to be a Celtic language. Tartessos was the first "entity located in southwestern Iberia to be recognised as a kingdom".

In the historical records, Tartessos (Ancient Greek: Ταρτησσός) appears as a semi-mythical or legendary harbor city and the surrounding culture on the south coast of the Iberian Peninsula (in modern Andalusia, Spain), at the mouth of the Guadalquivir. It appears in sources from Greece and the Near East starting during the first millennium BC. Herodotus, for example, describes it as beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Roman authors tend to echo the earlier Greek sources, but from around the end of the millennium there are indications that the name Tartessos had fallen out of use and the city may have been lost to flooding, although several authors attempt to identify it with cities of other names in the area.

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Tartessian language in the context of Turdetani

The Turdetani were an ancient pre-Roman people of the Iberian Peninsula, living in the valley of the Guadalquivir (the river that the Turdetani called by two names: Kertis and Rérkēs (Ῥέρκης) and which was later known to the Romans as Baetis), in what was to become the Roman Province of Hispania Baetica (modern south of Spain). Strabo considers them to have been the successors to the people of Tartessos and to have spoken a language closely related to the Tartessian language.

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Tartessian language in the context of Iberian alphabet

The Iberian scripts are the Paleohispanic scripts that were used to represent the extinct Iberian language. Most of them are typologically unusual in that they are semi-syllabic rather than purely alphabetic. The oldest Iberian inscriptions date to the 4th or possibly the 5th century BCE, and the latest from the end of the 1st century BCE or possibly the beginning of the 1st century CE.

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Tartessian language in the context of Southwestern script

The Southwest Script, also known as Southwestern Script, Tartessian, South Lusitanian, and Conii script, is a Paleohispanic script used to write an unknown language typically identified as Tartessian. Southwest inscriptions have been found primarily in the southwestern quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula, mostly in the south of Portugal (specifically in the Algarve and southern Alentejo), but also in Spain (in southern Extremadura and western Andalusia).

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Tartessian language in the context of Southeastern Iberian script

The southeastern Iberian script, also known as Meridional Iberian, was one of the means of written expression for the Iberian language, which was primarily written in the northeastern Iberian script and, to a lesser extent, by the Greco-Iberian alphabet. In understanding the relationship between the northeastern and southeastern Iberian scripts, some note that they are two distinct scripts with different values assigned to the same signs. However, they share a common origin, and the most widely accepted hypothesis is that the northeastern Iberian script was derived from the southeastern Iberian script.

In fact, the southeastern Iberian script is very similar to the Southwestern script, which is used to represent an unknown language typically referred to as Tartessian, both in terms of the shape of the signs and their values. The main difference is that the southeastern Iberian script does not exhibit the vocalic redundancy found in the syllabic signs of the northeastern Iberian script.

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