North Picene language
| North Picene | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Picenum |
| Region | Marche, Italy |
| Era | 1st millennium BCE |
| Picene alphabets | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
|
Linguist list
|
nrp |
| Glottolog | nort1401 |
|
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North Picene is an ancient language, believed to have been spoken in part of central-eastern Italy. The evidence for the language consists of four inscriptions dating from the 1st millennium BC, three of them no more than small broken fragments. It is written in a form of the Old Italic alphabet. While its texts are easily transliterated, none of them have been translated so far. It is not possible to determine whether it is related to any other known language. Despite the use of a similar name, it does not appear that South Picene is closely related to North Picene, if they are related at all. The total number of words in the inscriptions is about 60. It is not even certain that the inscriptions are all in one language.
The forerunner of the term North Picene was devised by Joshua Whatmough in Prae-Italic Dialects of Italy, 1933, a catalogue of Italic texts. Although neither type of text could be read with any confidence he distinguished between six central-east Italic inscriptions and all the rest southern. The northern later lost three and gained one. Before that work all the inscriptions had been lumped together under a variety of names, such as "Sabellic."
The corpus of North Picene inscriptions consists of four engraved items of similar lettering and decoration, one of known archaeological provenance and the others acquired out of context but believed to be of the same location and date. The known site is the excavation at Servici Cemetery in Novilara, a village several kilometres south of Pesaro.
All four items are stelai or fragments of stelai. Italian scholars have adopted the habit of calling them all Novilara Stelai. "The Novilara Stele" usually refers to the largest of the four. To the lettered stelai is added one without lettering but inscribed with the scene of a naval battle. It is kept in Pesaro, where it served as a model for a reconstructed Picene ship.
Novilara has been "excavated" since the mid-19th century. In those days the digging was not scientific, with no concern for stratigraphy. The locations of objects were not recorded. Apart from the fact that an object came from the site with other objects, no other information exists regarding it. Whether it was in situ or not in situ is of little concern. Even the date an object was excavated is now uncertain. Many objects are missing, as the region, the site and the museum have endured a century and a half of history, including war and occupation.
As the North-Picene language is a unique case of such kind of language (it has no known relatives), and the origin of the inscriptions is not well established, showing also epigraphic divergences according to the dating assumed, there are authors considering that such stelai could be forgeries.
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