A bronze hand found at the archaeological site of Irulegi (Navarra) has confirmed that the Basques had a language that was different from the rest of the Iberian peoples in the 1st century BC.
The linguistic experts who have analyzed the discovery of the Aranzadi Society do not establish a direct connection between this decorative object and Basque, but they do confirm that they are the first words written in the "Basque language".
The first and only word translated from Irulegi's hand is
"Sorioneku" (of good fortune).
The president of Navarra María Chivite together with those responsible for the excavation and linguistic experts have celebrated this finding that occurred on June 18, 2021 but has not been revealed until today.
In January of this year the inscription was discovered and since then both the alleged five words engraved on the bronze and their age have been analyzed through carbon-14 testing.
The experts have only been able to interpret the first word and consider that the hand was hanging, with the fingers pointing downwards, at the entrance of one of the houses in this town located in the Aranguren valley, in the center of the Navarra community. .
The hand is 143.1 millimeters (mm) tall, 1.09 mm thick, and 127.9 mm wide.
Its weight reaches 35.9 g.
The inscription on the bronze is found on the back and on the wrist is the hole that allowed it to be hung, probably from a piece of wood.
The Irulegi site was inhabited between the mid-
Bronze Age
(15th to 11th centuries BC) and the end of the Iron Age (1st century BC) and every summer during the months of June and July teams of archaeologists analyze his rests.
Along with the president of Navarra, María Chivite, the archaeologists Mattin Aiestaran, director of the Irulegi excavation;
and Berta Balduz, restorer of the Government of Navarra.
The linguistic importance has been addressed by Joaquín Gorrochategui, an expert in paleolinguistics and professor of Indo-European Linguistics at the University of the Basque Country, and by Javier Velaza, an expert in epigraphy and professor of Latin Philology at the University of Barcelona.
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Navarre
Maria Chivite