The Paleohispanic scripts are the ancient writing systems created in the Iberian Peninsula before the Latin alphabet became the dominant script. They derive from the Phoenician alphabet, with the exception of the Greco-Iberian alphabet, which is a direct adaptation of the Greek alphabet. Some researchers believe that the Greek alphabet and Cypriot Syllabary may also have played a role in the origin of the other Paleohispanic scripts. Most of these scripts are notable for being semi-syllabic rather than purely alphabetic. Paleohispanic scripts are known to have been used from the 5th century BCE—possibly as early as the 7th century, according to some researchers—until the end of the 1st century BCE or the beginning of the 1st century CE. They were the primary scripts used to write the Paleohispanic languages.
Scripts The Paleohispanic scripts are classified into three major groups: southern, northern, and Greco-Iberian, with differences in both the shapes of the glyphs and their values. Inscriptions in the southern scripts have been found primarily in the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula. They represent only 5% of the total inscriptions discovered and mostly read from right to left (similar to the Phoenician alphabet). The southern scripts include:
the Espanca script, known from a single tablet and recognized as the earliest attestation of an alphabetical order among the Paleohispanic scripts. the Tartessian or Southwest script, also known as South Lusitanian. the Southeastern Iberian script, also known as Meridional. Inscriptions in the northern scripts have been found mainly in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula. They account for 95% of the total inscriptions discovered and mostly read from left to right (like the Greek alphabet). The northern scripts include:
the Northeastern Iberian script, also known as Levantine: Dual variant Non-dual variant the Celtiberian script Western variant Eastern variant. The Greco-Iberian alphabet is a direct adaptation of the Ionic variety of the Greek alphabet and is found only in a small region along the Mediterranean coast, specifically in the modern provinces of Alicante and Murcia.
Typology Excepting the Greco-Iberian alphabet, and to a lesser extent the Tartessian (southwestern) script, Paleohispanic scripts shared a distinctive typology: they behaved as a syllabary for plosives and as an alphabet for the rest of consonants. This unique writing system has been called a semi-syllabary. In the syllabic portions of the scripts, each plosive sign stood for a different combination of consonant and vowel, so that the written form of ga displayed no resemblance to ge, and bi looked quite different from bo. In addition, the original format did not distinguish voiced from unvoiced plosives, so that ga stood for both /ga/ and /ka/, and da stood for both /da/ and /ta/. On the other hand, the continuants (fricatives like /s/ and sonorants like /l/, /m/, trills, and vowels) were written with simple alphabetic letters, as in Phoenician and Greek. Over the past few decades, many researchers have come to think one variant of the northeastern Iberian script, the older one according to the archaeological contexts, distinguished voicing in the plosives by adding a stroke to the glyphs for the alveolar (/d/~/t/) and velar (/g/~/k/) syllables, creating distinct glyphs for unvoiced /t/ and /k/, and restricting the original glyphs to voiced /d/ and /g/. (This is the so-called dual signary model: see northeastern Iberian script.) If correct, this innovation would parallel the creation of the Latin letter G by the addition of a stroke to C, which had previously stood for both /k/ and /g/.
Tartessian Tartessian script is intermediate between a pure alphabet and the Paleohispanic semi-syllabaries. Though the letter for a plosive was determined by the following vowel, as in a semi-syllabary, the following vowel was also written, as in an alphabet (as seen in Tartessian). This redundant typology re-emerged in a few late (2nd and 1st century BCE) texts of northeastern Iberian and Celtiberian scripts, where vowels were once again written after plosives. Some scholars treat Tartessian as a redundant semi-syllabary, with essentially syllabic glyphs followed by the letter for the corresponding vowel; others treat it as a redundant alphabet, with the choice of an essentially consonantal character decided by the following vowel. This is analogous to Old Persian cuneiform, where vowels are most often written overtly but where consonants/syllables are decided by the vowel about half the time, and, to a very limited extent, to the Etruscan alphabet, where most syllables based the consonant /k/ share neither consonant nor vowel letter: Only the combinations CE, CI, KA, and QU were permitted. (This Etruscan convention is preserved in the English, not only in qu for queen, but also the letter names cee, kay, cue/qu.)
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