ALMODOVAR, Portugal — When archaeologists on a dig in southern Portugal last year flipped over a heavy chunk of slate and saw writing not used for more than 2,500 years, they were elated.
The enigmatic pattern of inscribed symbols curled symmetrically around the upper part of the rough-edged, yellowish stone tablet and coiled into the middle in a decorative style typical of an extinct Iberian language called Southwest Script.
“We didn’t break into applause, but almost,” said Amilcar Guerra, a University of Lisbon lecturer overseeing the excavation. “It’s an extraordinary thing.”
For more than two centuries, scientists have tried to decipher Southwest Script, thought to be the peninsula’s oldest written tongue and, along with Etruscan from modern-day Italy, one of Europe’s first. The stone tablet features 86 characters and provides the longest-running text of the Iron Age language ever found. It’s one of about 90 known examples of the inscriptions.
Some of the letters look like squiggles. Others are like crossed sticks. One resembles the number four, and another recalls a bow tie. They were carefully scored into the slate. The text is always a running script, with unseparated words that usually read from right to left.
Last year’s find has helped, but it wasn’t the breakthrough scientists had hoped for, Guerra says. If all the Southwest Script found so far were transcribed onto paper, it would still barely fill a single sheet. Without an equivalent of the Rosetta Stone, which helped unlock the secrets of hieroglyphic writing, efforts to reconstruct the ancient language are doomed to slow progress. “We have to be patient — and hopeful,” Guerra says.
