ST-6

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Inscription
Transliteration:	sạ?al.̣esta.nu.aleφakaḷẹ
Original script:	?A19 dA19 d?A19 dA19 dA19 d
Object:	ST rock (stone) (Inscriptions: ST-1, ST-2, ST-3, ST-4, ST-5, ST-6, ST-7, ST-8, ST-9)
Position:	right-hand side"right-hand side" is not in the list (front, back, top, bottom, inside, outside, neck, shoulder, foot, handle, ...) of allowed values for the "position" property., upper area"upper area" is not in the list (front, back, top, bottom, inside, outside, neck, shoulder, foot, handle, ...) of allowed values for the "position" property.
Orientation:	90°
Frame:	(straight, top and bottom, straight)
Script:	North Italic script (Alphabet of Steinberg"Alphabet of Steinberg" is not in the list (Venetic alphabet, Magrè alphabet, Sanzeno alphabet, Lugano alphabet, ?) of allowed values for the "alphabet" property.)
Direction of writing:	dextroverse
Letter height:	55 cm <br /> – 9 cm
Number of letters:	19
Number of characters:	20 – 21
Number of lines:	1
Craftsmanship:	engraved
Current condition:	damaged
Date of inscription:
Date derived from:
Language:	Raetic
Meaning:	unknown
Alternative sigla:	IR 111 LIR STN-6
Sources:	Schumacher 2004: 192, 231 f.

Images

Inscription ST-6.

Commentary

First published in Vetter 1957.

Pictures in Vetter 1957: Taf. VI (photo = Mayr 1960: Abb. 3), Joppich 1971: 43 (drawing), Zavaroni 2004: Fig. 8 and 9 (photos/drawings), Schumacher 2004: Taf. 21 (drawing) and Mandl 2011: Abb. 1 (photo).

Length about 68 cm, running vertically upwards from the beginning of ST-3. Being situated rather high up on the rock wall, the inscription is almost free of distracting recent graffiti. Applying the inscription must have been a difficult undertaking: The writer must have stood on a ladder or similar implement; this may be the reason for the letters getting ever smaller towards the top. (So, however, does the cartouche, which leads to the question of whether the lines enclosing many of the rock inscriptions were drawn first as reference lines, or added afterwards for decoration.) Vetter assumed that the inscription was applied after ST-3 and was written dextroversely so as to avoid a possible collision. (See Mandl 2011: 28, 48, 53 about the geological constraints in where to apply a petroglyph.) A line has been added to separate the two inscriptions.

After , the remains of what is probably , though two bars seem to be crossing inside the chevron (Vetter suggested a writer's mistake due to the ususual writing direction) and the latter is not rounded. Then a lacuna, in which Vetter saw the upper part of a letter and read k; this cannot be verified on any photographs. Zavaroni reads an ak-ligature. After the lacuna, only minimally damaged, another A19 d, then a letter which has been read by Vetter, but may also be . Above the bar after this letter, a small scratch which may be read as a separator , but may be unintentional. If intentional, it was probably added as an afterthought, as and stand closely together, and the other separators in the inscription are drawn in the centre of the line. A19 d?A19 d seems quite clear. The reading of as l is based on the identification of the sequence as the common suffix group -nu-ale. This character variant occurs in a handful of Northern Venetic inscriptions from the province Belluno (Cadore and the Monte Pore). The group of scratches between the separators has been identified by Zavaroni (pp. 49, 56 ff.) as a ligature nu, with turned upside-down and against writing direction to share the straight hasta of .

A sequence ending in the morpheme syntagma -nu-ale marking a patronymic in the pertinentive, also encountered in the other Steinberg inscriptions (except ST-8), can now be isolated. For the separation of the suffixes with a punctuation mark compare ST-4 and ST-5. ST-5 and ST-6 share some orthographical characteristics: four-stroke with angles opening in writing direction, with the bar rather low on the hasta, with the bars not converging, anomalous shape of the letter for l (though the ST-5-version sports a longer and rounded bar), the ligature, and the separation of the suffixes with small central scratches . Both inscriptions have been applied in difficult places, and the letters are of equivalent height. (ST-5, however, lacks a cartouche.) Also, the structure of the texts is roughly similar: The patronymic appears in the middle, with a suspiciously short sequence (incl. potential separator) which does not seem to encode an individual name before it, and followed by another sequence of comparable length. This suggest that the two inscriptions were written by either the same person or two persons with a common writing tradition, maybe travelling together.

Further references: Mayr 1960: 309 f., Pisani 1964: 137 bis, Prosdocimi 1971: 38 incl. Joppich 1971: 43, Tibiletti Bruno 1978: 232, Sydow 1989: 68 ff., Schürr 2001: 215 f.

Bibliography

Gleirscher 1991	Paul Gleirscher, Die Räter, Chur: Rätisches Museum 1991.
IR	Alberto Mancini, "Iscrizioni retiche", Studi Etruschi 43 (1975), 249–306.
Joppich 1971	Julius Joppich, "Anhang. Tonabdruck und Korrektur zur Lesung der Felsinschriften nach Emil Vetter", in: Wolfgang Meid, Hermann M. Ölberg, Hans Schmeja (Eds), Studien zur Namenkunde und Sprachgeographie. Festschrift für Karl Finsterwalder zum 70. Geburtstag [= Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft 16], Innsbruck: 1971, 41–44.
LIR	Alberto Mancini, Le Iscrizioni Retiche [= Quaderni del dipartimento di linguistica, Università degli studi di Firenze Studi 8–9], Padova: Unipress 2009–10. (2 volumes)
Mandl 2011	Franz Mandl, Felsbilder. Österreich – Bayern: Nördliche Kalkalpen [= Anisa – Verein für alpine Forschung 4], Haus im Ennstal: 2011.
Mayr 1958b	Karl M. Mayr, "-", review of: Emil Vetter, "Die vorrömischen Felsinschriften von Steinberg in Nordtirol", Anzeiger der phil.-hist. Klasse der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Jg. 1957, Nr. 24 (1957), 384–398, Der Schlern 32 (1958), 303–304.