The Pyrgi Tablets, found in a 1964 excavation of a sanctuary of that town in Italy (current Santa Severa), a port of the southern Etruscan town of Caere, are three golden leaves that record a dedication made around 500 BC by Thefarie Velianas, king of Caere, to the Phoenician goddess ?Ashtaret'.
These writings are important not only in providing a bilingual text that allows researchers to use knowledge of the Phoenician language to read Etruscan, but they also provide evidence of Phoenician/Punic influence in the Western Mediterranean. This document helps provide a context for 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 L. Iunius Brutus and L. Tarquinius Collatinus (505 BC).
For Ashtaret raised him with her hand to reign for three years in the month of Churvar, in the day of the burying of the divinity.
W-?nt lm? lm b-bty ?nt km kkbm l.
And the years of the statue of the divinity in the temple [shall be] as many years as the stars above.
The Phoenician text has long been known to be a Semitic language (related to such languages as Hebrew, Canaanite, Ugaritic, Arabic and Akkadian); hence there was no need for it to be "deciphered." And while the inscription can certainly be read, certain passages are philologically uncertain on account of perceived complications of syntax and the vocabulary employed in the inscription, and as such they have become the source of debate among both Semitists and Classicists.[1]
When Tiberius Velianas had built the statue of the sanctuary [in] the month of Masan, Uni was pleased.
Vacal tmia-l avil?va-l am-uc-e pulum?va snuia-?.
The votives of the temple yearly have been as numerous as the stars.
Etruscan vocabulary
*acna(s), to bring forth (<acna?-ver-s> '[he] would be brought forth')
[perhaps <-u>, passive + <-er->, purposive, common in the LLZ, had combined to form a passive optative in <-ver-> 'would be']
Note <Hu?ur ma? acnanas, arce.> "Having brought forth (ie: given birth to) five children, [she] raised [them]" (TLE 887)
*al?, to bury (<al?-as-e> 'buried')
*am, to be (<am-uc-e> 'has been, had been')
<An zila? amce mecl Rasnal.> "He had been a chief of the Etruscan people." (ET Ta 7.59)
Astre, Phoenician goddess of fertility, associated with Uni (<astre-s> 'of Astre') [Phoenician <??trt> < *?A?tare?]
*atran, reign, rulership
avil, year (<avil?va-l> 'of the years, yearly')
ca, this (<ca> 'this', <ica-c> 'and this')
ci, three
*cluvenia, aedicula (<cluvenia-s> 'of the aedicula')
?urvar, month [Phoenician <krr> *Kurar]
*en, to last, endure (<en-iac-a> 'shall endure')
<?acnicleri cil?l, ?pureri, me?lumeric, ena?.> "By way of these sacred objects of the sanctuary, by the city and by the people, [it] endures" (LLZ, col 9, lines 12-13)
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