Palaeohispanic writing systems: classification, origin, and development

Abstract

Palaeohispanic languages were essentially written by means of different epichoric writing systems, which, in view of some of their common characteristic features, are believed to have belonged to the same family. Nevertheless, as will be summarized in the following sections, the stemma to represent their interrelationship is still under debate, as is the phonetic value of some of the characters. On the other hand, in certain more residual cases, the Latin and even the Greek alphabet were also directly adopted: Latin is actually the only writing system used in the few extant Lusitanian inscriptions; it is also found in a limited number of Celtiberian texts and in a few Iberian inscriptions. Even rarer is the use of Greek, restricted to only three Iberian graffiti. However, a local variant of the Greek alphabet, labelled as Graeco- Iberian, was more widely used to write the Iberian language. There are also some mint names in the province of Cádiz on coins dating to the 2nd and 1st century BCE that in the former communis opinio used to be considered to have been written in a local script, the Libyo-Phoenician alphabet, although more recent studies consider this just a local variant of the Punic alphabet...