After the discovery of what is known as the ‘Irulegi hand’ in 2022, which revolutionized research on the origin of Basque because it is the oldest inscription known to date in the Basque language, recently researchers from the General Directorate of Culture of the Government of Navarra have found in the Aierdi VIII mine, belonging to the Lanz mining complex, a Paleo-Hispanic inscription of around 2,000 years old that represents another great discovery, due to the text and the place in which it is located, on the literacy level of the Basques, who until a few years ago were believed to have not written in their own language. It is also the only inscription found in the Iberian Peninsula inside a mine.
The inscription is made in a Paleo-Hispanic sign very similar to the Iberian one, as is the case with the ‘hand of Irulegi’, which would once again show the continuous contact between cultures and peoples that occurred in Antiquity in the area of today’s Navarre. The experts who have analyzed it, among whom are the professor of Latin Philology at the University of Barcelona and expert in epigraphy, Javier Velaza, and the professor of Indo-European linguistics at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) Joaquín Gorrochategui, Those who also investigate the inscription of the ‘hand of Irulegi’, propose that it could be transcribed as ‘Ikae’ or ‘Igae’, although they add that “given the brevity of the text and the lack of comparative support, it is difficult to determine with certainty in which variety of the Paleo-Hispanic signatories is written and to what language it must be attributed.”
“Taking into account the place of discovery, there is the possibility that it is a Basque inscription,” they add. A hypothesis that would be supported by the similarity with Basque words such as ‘ik(h)ai’ (pending in Spanish), used by the 17th century Basque language poet Arnaud Oihenart and whose meaning would be compatible with the place in which it was found. He recorded the text, the entrance to a mine. “In any case, the scarcity of knowledge about the linguistic reality of the time forces this hypothesis to be taken with caution,” they conclude.
And as Velaza pointed out a year ago in conversation with this newspaper, Iberian is a language for which there are more than “2,500” inscriptions and it has not yet been able to be translated. “We know how to recognize it but not translate it,” adds the archaeologist who has participated in the research, Txus García.
Beyond the meaning of the inscription, what is “exceptional” about the discovery lies in the place where it was found and the date on which it was made: at the entrance to a mine 2,000 years ago, in Roman times. “It could be that a miner at a time when Latin was already the official administrative language used his (own) vernacular language and knew how to write it,” says archaeologist Txus García in an interview in ETB.
The inscription was found 61 meters from the mouth of the cave and 18 meters deep, after overcoming a 15-meter cathole. It is made, under the ceiling, on the north wall, 84 centimeters from the ground, on a layer that alternates clay and gravel. The three identified signs, inscribed in the clay, occupy a surface 23 centimeters long by 13 centimeters wide. They are made with a sharp instrument, but with a blunt tip, causing grooves between four and six millimeters wide and between two and nine millimeters deep, depending on the pressure exerted by the engraver. It so happens that, superimposed on the inscription, there are eight marks made subsequently, although the investigation has not been able to specify the time elapsed between both actions. In any case, the inscription appears to be complete, except in the lower left corner of the panel, where a small fragment could have been lost due to the pointer cuts that were made later.
The Lantz mining complex
The cataloging and research project of the Lantz mining complex is an initiative coordinated by the General Directorate of Culture-Prince de Viana Institution in collaboration with the Lantz City Council. Suspicion of its heritage importance, already known since the 1970s, studies of the complex began in 2022, for which a multidisciplinary and international team has been brought together made up of researchers from different disciplines, such as archaeology, geology, chemistry, caving or epigraphy; from various research centers, such as the universities of Toulouse, the Basque Country, Burgos or Barcelona: Teresa Lacosta, María Fernández, Argitxu Beyrie, Arturo Hermoso de Mendoza (Satorrak Speleology Group), Jean Marc Fabre, Eric Kamenthaler, Eneko Iriarte, Martín Arriolabengoa, Javier Velaza and Joaquín Gorrochategui.
The work began with the archaeological survey of an area of almost two square kilometers that includes the Aierdiko Erreka ravine in which the mining complex is located. The work of that campaign managed to locate more than 30 open pit exploitation points and at least 20 mine openings with underground mining galleries. Of those twenty, three have been archaeologically prospected so far: Aierdi III, Aierdi IV and Aierdi VIII, and archaeological excavations have begun in Aierdi IV.
Although there are data that the first exploitations could have begun at the end of Prehistory, the commissioning of the complex to its maximum extent seems to have begun at the turn of the era, coinciding with the construction of the Pompelo-Oiasso road, which It would guarantee an effective evacuation of production to various destinations. Thus, it is very possible that the Roman administration had launched and organized the mining complex in its most important moments of use and exploitation. The first data offered by the investigations suggest that it could become one of the most important mining reserves of antiquity in the Western Pyrenees.
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