The markings on the Hand of Irulegi, a bronze artifact that dates back 2,100 years to the Vascones, a late-Iron Age tribe who existed before Basque culture, have been deciphered by Spanish researchers. The artifact, which was found in Navarre in 2021, contains the earliest known inscription in Basque on it.
“The Hand of Irulegi is undoubtedly the first document written in the Basque language and in a specifically Basque script, as well as being the longest text known to date,” Javier Velaza of the University of Barcelona told El Pais. Past specimens of early Basque text were dated to around the 16th-century.
After four years of digging at the location, Leire Malkorra of the Aranzadi Science Society discovered the Hand of Irulegi last year. The relic has been assigned a date of the early first century by Sweden’s Uppsala University.
Five kilometers from modern-day Pamplona, ancient towns on Mount Ireulegi were destroyed during the Sertorian War, which raged from 80 to 72 B.C.E. and was fought for control of Rome. To seal the sites with fire and unintentionally preserve artifacts like the bronze hand, which probably hung over a door for good luck, Mount Irugeli’s mud brick houses were set on fire.
Since its discovery, Velaza and Joaqun Gorrochategui from the University of the Basque Country have worked together to examine the Hand. The 5.7-inch-long metal alloy artifact has 40 characters spread across four lines, all of which are punctuated.
On June 18th, 2021, a hand-shaped metallic object was found in an archaeological dig near the town of Irulegi, a settlement that was inhabited during the Bronze Age and the end of the Iron Age. pic.twitter.com/NbxHpqEY64
— AlistairDodds 🏴🇵🇲 (@AlsDodds) November 14, 2022
The research group discovered that the symbols are written in an unidentified Vasconic tongue that is similar to euskera, the language that served as the foundation for contemporary Basque. Euskera was previously forbidden by the Spanish tyrant Francisco Franco, but 750,000 people continued to speak it in 2019.
Upon closer inspection, experts discovered the first word on the Hand of Irulegi reads sorioneku, which is extremely similar to the Basque term for a good omen, zorioneko.
Their findings confirm the presence of a Vasconic language at all, whether an earlier variant or an entirely distinct language from euskera. “We were almost convinced that the ancient Vascones were illiterate and didn’t use writing except when it came to minting coins,” Gorrochategui told the Guardian.
Text beyond that first word, they said, doesn’t match any known Basque names or Paleohispanic gods—perhaps unsurprising, given the lack of existing academic knowledge. However, analysts are still studying recognizable chunks of text like “es,” which resembles Basque’s negating adverb “ez,” and another bit, “egin,” which evokes the Basque verb for “to do.”
While the Hand does hold a lost linguistic legacy, the researchers remain circumspect about their discovery. “It’s true that this is an extraordinarily important text,” Velaza told the Guardian, “but I’d urge a bit of caution about using it to extrapolate too many conclusions.”
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