Pyrgi Tablets
Thefarie Velianas asserts that his rule over Caere is legitimated by a personal dedication to the goddess Uni, equated in the accompanying Phoenician text with Astarte, recorded permanently in gold so that both an Etruscan and a Phoenician-speaking audience would recognize the grant.
- Etruscan-Phoenician bilingual, though not a literal parallel translation
- a personal royal dedication rather than a civic decree
- key evidence for Etruscan-Phoenician contact at an Etruscan port city
- a major anchor text for interpreting the Etruscan language
Three thin sheets of gold, two in Etruscan and one in Phoenician, nailed to the wall of a sanctuary at Pyrgi, the port of the Etruscan city of Caere, recording a dedication by the city's ruler Thefarie Velianas to the goddess Uni, called Astarte in the Phoenician version. The Phoenician text is not a literal line-by-line translation of the Etruscan but a parallel account of the same act, giving scholars a rare bilingual anchor for interpreting Etruscan vocabulary and grammar. The dedication itself, made in the ruler's own name rather than the city's, is read as evidence of a personal, quasi-monarchic religious authority at Caere at the height of its trading contact with Phoenician Carthage.
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