Uncommon · Literature

Tabula Bantina

A bronze tablet and one of the major sources for ancient Oscan discovered near Banzi (known as "Bantia" in antiquity)

The Tabula Bantina (Latin for "Tablet from Bantia") is a bronze tablet and one of the major sources for ancient Oscan, an extinct Indo-European language closely related to Latin. It was discovered in 1790 near Banzi (known as "Bantia" in antiquity), in the Italian region of Basilicata.

It now may be found in the Naples Archaeological Museum. Another piece of this broken bronze tablet, Fragment Adamesteano, shows a hole that a nail went through that affixed the tablet to a wall. The patterns of writing around this hole on each side helped to determine that the Latin side was the original, and that the other side of the already inscribed tablet was then put to use for the Oscan inscription. It was discovered by Mario Torelli in 1967, and it appears to be the bottom part of the original piece. It now resides in the Venosa National Archaeological Museum. The tablet was found in 1790 on the hill Monte Montrone, in the territory of Oppido Lucano (province of Potenza), among the finds from an ancient tomb. It consists of a sheet of bronze in three larger pieces and some smaller fragments. It likely dates between 150 and 100 BCE and is inscribed on both sides.

Text: Wikipédia, CC BY-SA 4.0. · Image: Johannes Zvetaieff (Public domain) ·