ST-5

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Inscription
Transliteration:	hesiṭulanu.aleker.akve
Original script:	A19 sA19 s?A19 s
Variant Reading:	?es.tulanu.aleker.akve A19 sA19 s?A19 s
Object:	ST rock (stone) (Inscriptions: ST-1, ST-2, ST-3, ST-4, ST-5, ST-6, ST-7, ST-8, ST-9)
Position:	left-hand side"left-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:	270°
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:	sinistroverse
Letter height:	55 cm <br /> – 9 cm
Number of letters:	18 – 19
Number of characters:	21
Number of lines:	1
Craftsmanship:	engraved
Current condition:	damaged
Date of inscription:
Date derived from:
Language:	Raetic
Meaning:	unknown
Alternative sigla:	IR 107 LIR STN-5
Sources:	Schumacher 2004: 192, 228 ff.

Images

Inscriptions ST-5, ST-8.

Commentary

First published in Vetter 1957: 389 f.

Pictures in Vetter 1957: Taf. VII (photo), Mayr 1960: Abb. 4 (photo), Prosdocimi 1971: 36 (drawing = Schumacher 1992: Taf. 8,4), Joppich 1971: 43 (drawings), Schumacher 2004: Taf. 20 (drawing).

Length about 72 cm, running vertically and slightly to the right towards the top at the back of the crevice. Being situated in the most unfavourable part of the rock wall, the inscription is almost free of distracting recent graffiti. Its position and orientation preclude its having been written by someone standing to the left, who would have seen the letters upright. This circumstance has led Prosdocimi (p. 31) to assume that the inscription was executed from a sample by a person who could not read it and therefore applied it upside-down. This theory, while not in itself implausible, does not help to explain its orthographical peculiarities.

The first letter, disturbed by a more recent line, consists of a vertical scratch with two dots, one higher than the other, on either side. This might be younger Venetic h (see Script), not impossible in the context of the Venetoid script of the North Tyrol inscriptions. Prosdocimi suggests that his illiterate writer added a final to the beginning of the inscription, where he also saw , due to lack of space at the top. This would mean an original ending -e.i. typical for Venetic, but, as Prosdocimi himself observes, the punctuation in the rest of the inscription is not at all in line with the Venetic system. The vertical scratch after is shortish and may be a punctuation mark in a shape which occurs in two secure instances in the inscription. The identification of the letter following it is somewhat doubtful, as two more bars extending in writing direction might be considered relevant. The reading of as l is based on the identification of the following sequence as the common suffix group -nu-ale – so far, this character variant occurs only in this inscription (but see ST-6 with a more current non-rounded version). The group of scratches following A19 s has been identified by Schumacher (unpublished) 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-6. This patronymic may be expected to be preceded by an individual name in the same case, probably bearing the suffix -si, which might be found if the fourth character is read i. This would yield an unusually short individual name H(?)e-; there are no traces of possible letters before . Although the last of the punctuation marks cannot securely be expected to separate words, the separation of the sequences ker and akve is made probable by the fact that the sequence ker, isolated between an individual name and a verb, occurs on MA-10.

Further references: Pisani 1964: 324 (no. 137 bis), Mayr 1960: 309 f., Prosdocimi 1971: 36 ff., 45 f. incl. Joppich 1971: 43, Tibiletti Bruno 1978: 232, Sydow 1989: 68 ff., Schürr 2001: 216 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.