The Second Lead Foil of Alcoy

There are several lead foils of Alcoy (Valencia, Spain). Some are inscribed in the East Iberian Script, some in the Ionian Script. The most famous is a double-sided text inscribed in the Ionian Script that is amongst the longest and most complete of all the lead foil texts. Most, if not all, of the Alcoy texts are rolls of donors of grave goods.

There is a fragmentary lead foil text inscribed in the Ionian Script that I will call the Second Lead Foil of Alcoy. The text is not complete, but enough survives to make some sense of it. The Ionian Script has the advantage over the East Iberian Script that it has no syllabic signs and it distinguishes /d/ and /t/ and /g/ and /k/, but it does not distinguish /b/ and /p/ and /m/ and /n/.

My transcription is as follows:

iriseret Ilaeri Isaigudu Leis[…]ai leik(e)ta beri leiria salir iride[…] Setaber(e)n […]ar mai[…]

Ilaeri and Isaigudu are rather clearly bipartite anthroponyms. Leis- appears to be the first half of a bipartite anthroponym, the second part of which is missing. Setabe seems to be the modern Jativa, a town not too far to the north of Alcoy.

iriseret is not encountered elsewhere in the corpus of texts, at least not as far as I know. It is possible that -eret corresponds to Basque -erat “towards” (in Northern dialects).

If so, what is iris-? Five Basque words are worthy of consideration:

(R) iriz-tu “to become overripe (of a fruit)”. Hardly likely. While growing old and dying might be seen to be analogous to a fruit becoming overripe, the person in question was already dead when this text was written and his body was waiting to be cremated and the ashes buried beneath a tumulus.

(B, G) iritzi, (B) eritxi “to judge, give an opinion”. Unlikely. Judgment Day is a Christian concept. There is evidence that Iberians believed in reincarnation: are dake “again, he departs” and seldar ban berbein ari eukiar gatu “once again this tumulus is containing us”.

(G) iritsi, iritxi “to arrive”. This is more probable. The deceased could be thought to be about to arrive in the next world. The purpose of donating the grave goods was to facilitate his passage.

The above three Basque words are verbs but -erat is a noun suffix. Let us therefore consider the following two Basque nouns:

(AN-Lekunberri) eritzi “communal land”. I am unaware of the precise meaning of “communal land” in Euskal Herria. In England, “common land” was unenclosed land over which local people had rights, such as the right to graze animals and kill deer and rabbits that strayed there. Much of it was enclosed before the modern era and only fragments survive. In the Iberian context, iris might have referred to outlying open land that was accessible to the people and could be used for burying the ashes of the dead. Hence “towards the common land”. It might also have been the belief that the dead, or at least the worthy dead, went to a pastoral paradise analogous to the Elysion pedion of the Ancient Greeks (no doubt based around what those who had undergone the near-death experience had observed).

(B-Bergara) irizi “fence that surrounds a whole field”. The burials at Alcoy could have taken place in an enclosed section of open land set aside for that purpose.

The name of the deceased is often omitted completely from rolls of donors of grave goods. In this case, it seems likely that iriseret relates to Ilaeri, son of Isaigudu. He is the one who is heading towards the communal land, or wherever it is. Ilaeri Isaigudu might be two separate people, but the context suggests that they are a single person.

Iberian ila “moon” (Basque ila-bete “month”) and eri (Basque (h)erri “people, community, village”) are rarely encountered as Iberian anthroponymic compound elements.

Iberian isai (Basque izai “fir tree, poplar”) and gudu (Basque gudu “war”) are more frequent. Both are present (recorded in the East Iberian Script) on the lead foils of Orleyl: Binisai “true/fir tree” and Guduboike “war/?/sun”.

Leis- (Basque leize “chasm”) is the first part of a bipartite anthroponym whose second element is missing. -ai “family” (Basque aiko “lineage”) is usually connected to the preceding anthroponym by the genitive singular suffix, -en, the final /n/ of which is generally elided in the East Iberian Script. The family of Leis- is probably one of the donors.

leiketa is a little bit tricky. There is Basque lehiaketa “competition”, composed of le(h)ia “persistence, diligence” and the noun suffix, -keta. The original meaning of Basque le(h)ia is hard to pinpoint. The medial /h/ in Northern dialects is probably secondary, which is why it is missing in Iberian. From the context I would suggest that Iberian leiketa means “workforce”, “employees”, “supporters”. beri (lenis medial /r/) is almost identical to Basque bere “his”. So leiketa berican reasonably be taken to mean “his workforce, employees, supporters”.

leiria is probably much the same word as leiketa. Here, Iberian lei is suffixed with -eria, which probably corresponds to the Basque noun suffix, -eria, though Basque exhibits lenis /r/, Iberian fortis /r/. beri might refer to leiria rather than leiketa, or it could refer to both nouns.

salir iride- replaces the much more usual phrase, salir kidei “coins to the members”. It refers to the donors giving money to the members of the funerary society (which appears to operate according to the modern English law of unincorporated associations!) in lieu of donating grave goods. Iberian sali “coin” corresponds to Basque sari “reward, prize” and sal-du “to sell”. The No 2 S-sign is nearly always used, but in this case exceptionally the No 1 S-sign is used. The final /r/ is the truncated form of the partitive suffix that is normally employed in the texts. The First Lead Foil of Alcoy presents this suffix in its (nearly) complete form: salir(i)g. Why salir iride instead of salir kidei? Well firstly, iride is incomplete. The likely final /i/ (creating the dative plural) is missing. In Basque, kide “member” can appear as -ide in compounds, such as senide “family member”. That might also have been the case in Iberian. ir- is likely to be Iberian iri, which from the context in which it is normally used probably means “joy” or “merriment”. As such, it is likely to correspond to Basque irri “nasty smile, joke” (after 2,000 years, the meaning has drifted somewhat). As a compound, iridei is likely to mean “to the members (who are also friends and share a common cause)”.

Setabe is probably the modern Jativa. On a coin issue it is recorded as Saitabi (in the East Iberian Script). In the Ionian Script, the genitive suffix is written -r(e)n. In the East Iberian Script, it is usually written -e or occasionally -en.

ar mai is comprised of the masculine suffix, -ar (in Basque, the final /r/ is fortis, in Iberian it is lenis). In the First Lead Foil of Alcoy this has been disagglutinated and placed before the anthroponym that it marks. mai is an emphatic, and is cognate with Basque na(h)i “desire” and mai-te “love” (“great desire”). At the very end of the second side of the First Bronze Plate of Alcoy is written ar mai Saxarisker, where Saxarisker is presumably the name of the officer of the funerary society who is asking the Libitinarius to place the grave goods in the tomb. On the Second Lead Foil of Alcoy the anthroponym that follows ar mai is missing.

So, a translation of the entire text might be something like the following:

“Towards the communal land (or the enclosure) (where the ashes of the dead are buried) (comes) Ilaeri (son of) Isaigudu. The family of Leis[…], his workforce and his household (are about to donate) coins to the members (in lieu of grave goods). (Signed by) Mr X of Jativa.”