Dear Luisma,
The Sinarcas Funerary Stele (from Sinarcas, Valencia) is
carved in stone and is written in the North Iberian alphabet. It is
displayed in the Archaeological Museum, Valencia.
Its importance lies in its ability to show us how Iberian
grammar and syntax work.
The text follows the standard formula used in Iberian alphabet
funerary inscriptions: (1) the name of the deceased, (2) eban-en
"in here", (3) a message and (4) the name of the
person who erected the monument.
An unusual feature is the heading, which appears to be wholly or
largely abbreviated.
Superficially, it reads thus:
M(?)SKEBABASSBA
Which, of course, is gibberish. Or at least most of it is
gibberish.
The first part could be *musker "lizard", the
final -r having been assimilated into the following b-.
(The m-sign is both syallbic and multi-aspect, so we
cannot be certain of the incorporated posterior vowel, of
course.) musker is the Basque word for "lizard",
but did it also exist in Iberian? It almost certainly did. For we
know that the ancient name of Tudela, Navarra, was Mouscaria, and
the town is still known as Muzkaria in Basque.
Maybe Musker was a deity, worshipped in and around
Sinarcas, and also Tudela, several hundred miles to the north.
I set out the main text below. I have coloured the two personal
names red, the m(a)i
"mantra" orange, other nouns
purple, and verb forms blue.
Where a b/p, d/t or g/k sign is used, I
have chosen the alternative which is present in the Basque cognate.
BAISE(R)-TAS ILDU(R)-TAS EBA(N-E)N
M(A)I SELDAR
BAN M(A)I BER-BEIN ARI
EDUKI-A(R) M(A)I G-A-TU
EKAS-KO LOI
TE G-ARI EDUKI-AR SELDAR
BAN M(A)I BASI-BAL
GAR-M(A)BAR M(A)I
Literal translation:
Baisertas Ildurtas in here. Inscription. This tomb.
Inscription. Once again is containing. Inscription. It has us.
Charcoal body and. Is containing us. This tomb. Inscription.
Basibal Garmabar. Inscription.
Loose translation:
Here lies Baisertas Ildurtas. Once again, this tomb contains
us. It contains our charcoal bodies. Erected by Basibal
Garmabar.
Personal names
Baisertas "subject/citizen/according
to"
baiser may be cognate with Basque (Bizkaian) bezer-o
"customer, client, patient" and bezer-a "milkwoman".
das/tas is unexplained. Perhaps it is similar to Basque -tas
"according to".
Ildurtas "highways/according
to"
ildu-r seems to be cognate with Basque ildo
"furrow, rut, road, etc". The primary meaning may have
been "highway". The addition of plural -r perhaps
changes the meaning to "crossroads".
Basibal "golden
forest"
bas- seems to be cognate with Basque baso
"forest".
bal may mean "gold". bal-ke/bal-ki is
literally "piece of gold".
Garmabar "brightly
coloured flame"
gar seems to be cognate with Basque gar
"flame". Compare Gargoris (*gar-gorri
"red flame"), one of the kings of Tartessos.
m(a)bar is likely to be the same as Basque nabar
"multi-coloured, brightly coloured". It appears that
initial m- and initial n- were almost
interchangeable in the Levant region.
eban-en
eban or eban-en is found in many funerary
inscriptions, and always comes immediately after the name of the
deceased.
eban seems to mean "here" and eban-en
"in here".
eban appears to be cognate with Basque (h)emen/(h)eben
"here". -en is the locative marker, and is
cognate with Basque -an.
Basque funerary inscriptions use the phrase datza hemen
"he lies here", which means much the same as eban/ebanen.
Note how the Basque second syllable -e- becomes -a-
in Iberian. This shift is also reflected in the following word
pairs: umar and umel-/umer- "adult,
mature", epar and eper "partridge"
and ispal and ezpel "box tree".
The m(a)i mantra
This seems to be cognate with Basque ma(ha)i
"table". Here, it may have a secondary meaning of
"tablet" or "inscription". Note how Latin tabula
"block or plank used for inscription" has come to mean
"table" in English.
As in very many funerary inscriptions, mai is
littered across the text almost as a "mantra".
In the case of mai, the m-sign incorporates a
posterior a. A variant of mai is nai. The
a is displayed here, because the n-sign is
non-syllabic.
mai and nai are, of course, a further example of
the interchangeability of initial m- and initial n- in
the Levant dialect.
Other nouns
seldar
appears to be cognate with Basque zaldar/saldar
"boil, carbuncle". Except that the Iberian word most
probably means "grave, tomb". This shift in meaning
should be compared with Latin tumulus "burial
mound", whose literal meaning is "little swelling".
The ashes of the deceased were placed in urns which were buried in
the ground. The back-filling left a small hump which had the
appearance of a boil or carbuncle.
Note the absence of an ergative marker attached to seldar.
The ergative marker is missing entirely from all the dialects
of the Iberian alphabet inscriptions.
ekas may
be cognate with Basque ikatz "charcoal, coal". -ko
is a noun marker meaning "of, pertaining to", which
appears to be as ubiquitous in Iberian as it is in Basque.
loi appears
to be identical in form and meaning to Basque loi
"body". Compare Sumerian lu, the noun classier
for men.
Note how the first person plural is sufficient to denote the
plurality of loi.
Verb forms
There are two verbs.
(1) eduki,
which appears to be cognate with Basque eduki/euki/iduki
"to have, possess, contain".
(2) The Iberian cognate of Basque ukan "to
have", which is used here as a transitive verb auxiliary, and
takes the form gatu.
This may be equivalent to Basque gaitu "it has
us". If so, it is acting as an auxiliary to eduki.
Also present is the continuity particle ari,
which seems to be identical in form and meaning to Basque ari.
Most Vasconists treat Basque ari as an independent verb.
But is it? Might it not be an invariable particle, similar in
function to Turkish -yor-?
The -ar suffix added to the verb stem eduki
seems to turn the infinitive into a gerund for use with
auxiliaries. If so, its function is similar to Basque -ten-/tzen.
You will recall egi-ar and iradi-ar from
the Liria Vase.
ari eduki-ar gatu therefore means "it is
possessing/containing us".
And seldar ban eduki-ar gatu: this tomb is containing us.
gatu seems to have a dual function here. It also governs
the second eduki-ar.
gatu ekas-ko loi te g-ari eduki-ar seldar ban: and this
tomb is containing our charcoal bodies.
Curiously, the second, but not the first, ari is marked
by an anterior g- to indicate the first person plural.
ban
This is cognate with Basque bat "one", which is
ban- in many compounds.
It may be used as an indefinite article or a demonstrative.
ber-bein
This compound would appear to incorporate cognates of Basque ber-,
the repetition prefix, and be(h)in "once".
The whole may mean "once again".
If so, this would tend to indicate a belief in reincarnation.
te
This is the copulative, and is cognate with Basque eta
"and".
In the Sinarcas Funerary Stele we see complete grammatical
sentences written in a form which is intelligible through
comparison with Basque. Therein lies its importance.
Yours sincerely,