The Pyrgi Tablets (dated c. 500 BC) are three golden plates inscribed with a bilingual Phoenician–Etruscan dedicatory text. They are the oldest historical source documents from Italy, predating Roman hegemony, and are rare examples of texts in these languages. They were discovered in 1964 during a series of excavations at the site of ancient Pyrgi, on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy in Latium (Lazio). The text records the foundation of a temple and its dedication to the Phoenician goddess Astarte, who is identified with the Etruscan supreme goddess Uni in the Etruscan text. The temple's construction is attributed to Thefarie Velianas, ruler of the nearby city of Caere. Two of the tablets are inscribed in the Etruscan language, the third in Phoenician. The writings are important in providing both a bilingual text that allows researchers to use knowledge of Phoenician to interpret Etruscan, and evidence of Phoenician or Punic influence in the Western Mediterranean. They may relate to Polybius's report (Hist. 3,22) of an ancient and almost unintelligible treaty between the Romans and the Carthaginians, which he dated to the consulships of Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus (509 BC). The Phoenician inscriptions are known as KAI 277. The tablets are now held at the National Etruscan Museum, Villa Giulia, Rome. Pallottino has claimed that the existence of this bilingual suggests an attempt by Carthage to support or impose a ruler (Tiberius Velianas) over Caere at a time when Etruscan sea power was waning and to be sure that this region, with strong cultural ties to Greek settlements to the south, stayed in the Etrusco-Carthaginian confederacy. The exact nature of the rule of Tiberius Velianas has been the subject of much discussion. The Phoenician root MLK refers to sole power, often associated with a king. But the Etruscan text does not use the Etruscan word for 'king', lauχum, instead presenting the term for 'magistrate', zilac (perhaps modified by a word that may mean 'great'). This suggests that Tiberius Velianas may have been a tyrant of the kind found in some Greek cities of the time. Building a temple, claiming to have been addressed by a god, and creating or strengthening his connections with foreign powers may all have been ways that he sought to solidify and legitimate his own power. Another area that the Pyrgi Tablets seem to throw light on is that Carthage was indeed involved in central Italy at this point in history. Such involvement was suggested by mentions by Polybius of a treaty between Rome and Carthage at about the same time period (circa 500 BC), and by Herodotus's accounts of Carthaginian involvement in the Battle of Alalia. But these isolated accounts did not have any contemporaneous texts from the area to support them until these tablets were unearthed and interpreted. Schmidtz originally claimed that the language pointed more toward an eastern Mediterranean form of Phoenician rather than to Punic/Carthaginian. But he has more recently reversed this view, and he even sees the possibility that the Carthaginians are directly referred to in the text. The text is also important for our understanding of religion in central Italy around the year 500 BC. Specifically, it suggests that the commemoration of the death of Adonis was an important rite in Central Italy at least at this time (around 500 BC), that is if, as is generally assumed, the Phoenician phrase bym qbr ʼlm "on the day of the burial of the divinity" refers to this rite. This claim would be further strengthened if Schmidtz's recent claim can be accepted that the Phoenician phrase bmt n' bbt means "at the death of (the) Handsome (one) [=Adonis]." Together with evidence of the rite of Adonia in the Liber Linteus in the 7th column, there is a strong likelihood that the ritual was practiced in (at least) the southern part of Etruria from at least circa 500 BC through the second century BC (depending on one's dating of the Liber Linteus). Adonis himself does not seem to be directly mentioned in any of the extant language of either text.
Phoenician text The Phoenician inscriptions are known as KAI 277. Following is a transcription with English translations.
lrbt lʿštrt, For the Lady, for Astarte, ʾšr qdš ʾz, ʾš pʿl, wʾš ytn tbryʾ wlnš, mlk ʿl kyšryʾ this is the holy place, which was made, and which was placed (by) Tiberius Velianas, king over Kasriye (= Caerites?), yrḥ zbḥ šmš, bmtnʾ bbt. during the month of the sacrifice to the Sun, as an offering in the temple. wbn tw, kʿštrt ʾrš bdy, lmlky šnt šlš 3, byrḥ krr, bym qbr ʾlm And he built a chamber (or -bn TW = "Tiberius Velianas built (it)"), because Astarte requested (this) from him, year three "3" of his reign, in the month of Krr, on the day of the burial of the divinity. wšnt lmʾš ʾlm bbty šnt km h kkb m ʾl. And (may) the years of the statue of the deity in her temple (be) years like (or "as numerous as") the stars.
Translation variants The Phoenician text has long been known to be in a Semitic, more specifically a Canaanite language (specifically North Canaanite; South Canaanite dialects include Hebrew, Moabite, and Edomite); hence there was no need for it to be "deciphered". And while most of the inscription can certainly reliably be read, certain passages are philologically uncertain on account of perceived complications of syntax and the vocabulary employed in the inscription, and as such they have become the source of debate among both Semiticists and classicists. For example, other translations of the final line, besides that cited above, include: "And I made a duplicate of the statue of the goddess <Astarte> in her temple as do the Kakkabites [?Carthaginians]"; and "As for the red robe of the statues of the goddess <Astarte> in her temple, her/its red robe is like a those of the gods of the Kakkabites [Carthaginians]" (both of these from Krahmalkov's Phoenician-Punic Dictionary). Further, In Schmidtz's 2016 treatment of the text, he reinterprets the string bmtnʾ bbt (translated above and commonly as "as an offering in the temple") as bmt n' bbt to mean "at the death of (the) Handsome (one) [=Adonis]."
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