Duenos Inscription

The Duenos inscription is one of the earliest known Old Latin texts, variously dated from the 7th to the 5th century BC. It is inscribed on the sides of a kernos, in this case a trio of small globular vases adjoined by three clay struts. It was found by Heinrich Dressel in 1880 on the Quirinal Hill in Rome. The kernos belongs to the Staatliche Museen in Berlin (inventory no. 30894,3).

The inscription is written right to left in three units, without spaces to separate words. It is difficult to translate, as some letters are hard to distinguish, particularly since they cannot always be deduced by context. The absence of spaces causes additional difficulty in assigning the letters to the respective words.

There have been many proposed translations advanced by scholars since the discovery of the kernos; Arthur E. Gordon in 1983 estimated their number as "over fifty, no two in full agreement". Due to the lack of a large body of archaic Latin, and the method by which Romans abbreviated their inscriptions, scholars have not been able to produce a singular translation that has been accepted by historians as accurate. However thanks to Gordon's work the reading of the text can be now considered certain.

Below is the transcription and one of many possible interpretations:

Line 1:

Line 2:

Line 3:

An interpretation set out by Warmington and Eichner, renders the complete translation as follows, though not with certainty:

Duenos is an older form of the Latin word bonus, meaning "good", just as bellum ("war") is from Old Latin duellum. Some scholars posit Duenos as a proper name, instead of merely an adjective.

The Praenestine fibula is thought by some to be the earliest surviving evidence of the Latin language dating to the 7th century BC, but has been alleged by Margherita Guarducci to have been a well-informed hoax; however, the evidence is only circumstantial and there are no clear indications pointing to a forgery. Although these claims have been disproven, as a new analysis performed in 2011 declared it to be genuine "beyond any reasonable doubt".

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