ST-1

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Inscription
Transliteration:	kastriesieθunnuale
Original script:
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.
Orientation:	90°
Frame:	(none, bottom, none)
Script:	North Italic script
Direction of writing:	sinistroverse
Letter height:	66 cm <br /> – 9 cm
Number of letters:	18
Number of lines:	1
Craftsmanship:	engraved
Current condition:	damaged
Archaeological culture:	La Tène
Date of inscription:	5th–1st centuries BC
Date derived from:
Language:	Raetic
Meaning:	'of/by Kastrie Eθunnu'
Alternative sigla:	IR 106 LIR STN-1
Sources:	Schumacher 2004: 191, 222, 342 ff.

Images

Inscriptions ST-1, ST-2, ST-3.

Commentary

First published in Vetter 1957.

Images in Vetter 1957: Taf. VI (photos = Mayr 1960: Abb. 2 and 3), Prosdocimi 1971: 35 (drawing = Schumacher 1992: Taf. 8,2 = Schmeja 1996: Abb. 3), Joppich 1971: 41 (drawing), Zavaroni 2004: Fig. 1 (drawing), Schumacher 2004: Taf. 18 (drawing) and Mandl 2011: Abb. 1, 130, 131 (photos). Numerous casts have been made of the Steinberg inscriptions; a positive of the most recent one, made by the Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte Innsbruck in 1993, can be seen at the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum (on exhibition) and the Archäologische Staatssammlung München. Drawings of the arrangement of the inscriptions in Vetter 1957: 386, Prosdocimi 1971: 30, Zavaroni 2004: Fig. 15 and Schumacher 2002: 1276 (= Schumacher 2004: Taf 8,1); photos of the wall in Sydow 1989: Abb. 6, Gleirscher 1991: Abb. 3 and Mandl 2011: Abb. 133.

Length about 80 cm, running towards the ground; today the end is about 1.5 m from the ground. Situated on the right-hand side just behind the entrance to the crevice, the leftmost of a group of three; fairly well legible despite erosion. The impression of a line framing the inscription on the left side is due to some scratches belonging to more recent graffiti; the frame line on the right side belongs to ST-2. Our reading follows Schumacher 2004: 344 f. and 351 ff., who assigned the correct values to the letters Lambda and Upsilon (as, independently, did Zavaroni 2004). The first and are inverted in opposition to the rest of this inscription and the associated inscriptions ST-2 and ST-3. The damaged may be rounded, which would be the only attestation of inverted rounded Alpha in the corpus. Zavaroni (p. 50) reads instead of – the lower bar in question is thinner and longer than the upper one and does not seem to be intentional, but see ST-2 and ST-3 as well as Script. The inscription starts off with fairly tall letters; when it reaches a protrusion on the rock, they get considerably smaller. This is probably to avoid a petrograph in the shape of a multiple cross, which appears to be older than the inscription, whose letters had to be arranged around it: The two vertical lines following the two s belong to this group and are not part of the inscription. The final seen by Vetter (p. 388) cannot be confirmed (see Schumacher, who thinks that Vetter fancied seeing the letter because it also appears at the end of ST-2).

The sequence can be segmented into kastrie-si eθunnu-ale. In other words, this a typical two-part Raetic name kastrie eθunnu with both parts bearing the appropriate pertinentive case endings. Note the unusual geminata nn, which is due to a morpheme boundary: eθunnu is a patronymic derived with the suffix -nu from an otherwise unknown name *eθunne. Although the inscription seems to be written in a different hand, it belongs with the two inscriptions ST-2 and ST-3 which are written to its immediate right – either Kastrie was travelling or out working with two sons, or his sons added their names to that of their father at a later date. The former theory could explain the change of ductus in ST-1, if Kastrie started writing, but then decided to let one of his offspring finish, who carved the last letters including and in the style of ST-2 and ST-3. (It is possible that the writer changed his position during the carving of ST-1, maybe because of the abovementioned protrusion or the cruciform petrograph – hence the inverted Alpha and Upsilon; in this case, all three inscriptions might be written by the same person. Note, however, that Tau and Epsilon are not inverted, and dextroverse writing is very rare among the rock inscriptions.) The latter theory is supported by the fact that ST-1 lacks a frame; also mark that the others may have been longer. ST-1, specifically the first part, is also more weathered than the rest of the inscriptions, but this can hardly be due to some two to twenty years difference in age – the letters may have been engraved less deeply, or the area of the wall above the protrusion be more heavily subject to erosion.

Further references: Mayr 1958b, Mayr 1960: 309 f., Pisani 1964: 137 bis, Prosdocimi 1971: 35, 45 incl. Joppich 1971: 41, Schürr 1975: 606, Tibiletti Bruno 1978: 232, Sydow 1989: 70 ff., Schmeja 1996: 16 f., Schürr 2001: 215 f., Schumacher 2002: 1276 ff., Zavaroni 2004: 50 ff.

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.