CO·48

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Inscription
Reading in transliteration:	uvamokozis : plialeθu : uvltiauiopos : ariuonepos : siteś : tetu
Reading in original script:
Object:	CO·48 Prestino (slab)
Position:	front
Orientation:	0°
Frame:	(left: feet, middle: top and bottom, right: feet)
Direction of writing:	sinistroverse
Script:	North Italic script (Lepontic alphabet)
Letter height:	4–5 cm1.575 in <br />1.969 in <br />
Number of letters:	49
Number of words:	6
Number of lines:	1
Workmanship:	carved
Condition:	complete
Archaeological culture:	Golasecca III A 1 [from object]
Date of inscription:	second quarter of the 5th c. BC [from object]
Type:	dedicatory
Language:	Celtic
Meaning:	'Uvamokozis Plialeθu dedicated (the) seats (?) to (the) uvltiauioi ariuones'
Alternative sigla:	Tibiletti Bruno 1981: 23 Solinas 1995: 65 Motta 2000: 2 Morandi 2004: 180
Sources:	Morandi 2004: 638–640

Images

Drawing of inscription CO·48 from Gambari & Colonna 1988	Slab CO·48 Prestino with inscription CO·48 from Lejeune 1971	Drawing of inscription CO·48 from Morandi 2004	First half of inscription CO·48 from Morandi 2004	Second half of inscription CO·48 from Morandi 2004
Slab CO·48 Prestino with inscription CO·48 from Tibiletti Bruno 1966b	First part of inscription CO·48 from Tibiletti Bruno 1966b	Middle part of inscription CO·48 from Tibiletti Bruno 1966b	Last part of inscription CO·48 from Tibiletti Bruno 1966b	Drawing of inscription CO·48 from Tibiletti Bruno 1966b
Detail of inscription CO·48 from Tibiletti Bruno 1969b	Detail of inscription CO·48 from Tibiletti Bruno 1969b

Commentary

First published in Tibiletti Bruno 1966b.

Images in Mirabella Roberti & Rittatore Vonwiller 1966: tav. LXXXIV (drawing by Rittatore Vonwiller, cf. Tibiletti Bruno 1968c: 351 with n. 40, = Mirabella Roberti 1966: 115 f. [in two parts] = Gambari & Colonna 1988: 132, fig. 9), Mirabella Roberti 1966: 115 (photo), Tibiletti Bruno 1966b: 289, fig. 1 (photo), 290, fig. 2 (photo of first part), 291, fig. 3 (photo of middle part) and 4 (photo of last part), 293, fig. 5 and 6 (drawing), 294, fig. 7 (detail photo), 295, fig. 8 (detail photo) and 9 (detail photo = Tibiletti Bruno 1968c: 354), Lejeune 1971: 98, pl. XII (photo provided by the Istituto di Studi Etruschi = Markey & Mees 2003: 129, fig. 3 = Eska 2024d: 78, fig. 1), Morandi 1982: 188 (drawing) and tav. XLI.1 (photo), Tibiletti Bruno 1990b: 281 (drawing), Morandi 2004: 642, fig. 22.180 (drawing) and 801, tav. XXIV.180a (photo of the upper side of the slab), b and c (photo in two parts), Stifter 2020b: 357, fig. 8 (drawing).

Description.
Inscribed sinistroverse in a single line in neat and evenly spaced letters along the narrow side of the slab (length ca. 180 cm), closer to the top edge (distance from the top edge ca. 5 cm, distance from the bottom edge ca. 7 cm) and somewhat off-centre toward the left (distance from the left edge ca. 75 cm, distance from the right edge ca. 100 cm). The text is written between two frame lines (distance ca. 5–6 cm) which end on both sides in "feet" reminiscent of VA·6 Vergiate and the pala-stelae. According to Mirabella Roberti 1966: 114, the frame lines and letters were incised with different instruments. Words are separated by vertical rows of three dots. The grooves of the letters were filled with talcum soon after the discovery (Tibiletti Bruno 1966b, 281, n. 5); two casts were made, one of paper and one of plastic (Tibiletti Bruno 1968c: 350, n. 36, Tibiletti Bruno 1968: 386).

Reading.
Detailed descriptions of the letters are provided in Mirabella Roberti 1966: 115 and Tibiletti Bruno 1966b: 290–296. The reading is largely unproblematic; only in two cases have there been doubts about the identification of letters. A vertical crack between letters 28 and 29 has caused some early commentators to misread letter no. 28 as rho rather than pi (Mirabella Roberti & Rittatore Vonwiller 1966: 408, Mirabella Roberti 1966: 114, Prosdocimi 1967: ??? with consequent analysis of uvitiauioros as another nominative PN); the issue was settled by Tibiletti Bruno 1968c: ???. Tibiletti herself (Tibiletti Bruno 1966b: 292–294 and in all later publications, emphatically in Tibiletti Bruno 1968c: ???) read the third letter of the third word as iota rather than lambda, arguing that the bar looked different than the other bars of lambda in the inscription, and was an unintentional mark caused by the removal of dirt from the inscription.

Letter forms.
The inscription features a few rare or unusual letter forms: framed theta with a dot (cf. VA·3 and maybe the damaged VA·4.1), tau in the shape of a Greek cross (cf. TI·36.3) rather than the standard St. Andrew's cross variant (though the latter may in fact be a form of theta, see Θ), zeta in an otherwise unattested form with horizontal bars , and san with prolonged hastae rather than the standard Lepontic . The horizontal bars of zeta and orientation of tau have been interpreted as a cohesive stylistic choice (Tibiletti Bruno 1966b: 297, Tibiletti Bruno 1969b: 234, Prosdocimi 1967: 201, Prosdocimi 1987: 573); Tibiletti Bruno 1966b: 292 also considers the varying orientation of sigma to be intentional for aesthetic purposes.

Sound value of letters.
Tibiletti Bruno 1966b: 299: sound value of waw different than of upsilon (also 307, 312); theta as an extra letter to denote a lenited sound. Pi, tau and kappa denote, where clearly interpretable, /b/ (in the dat. pl. endings -opos = -obos, -epos = -ebos), /d/ (in siteś = sīdents, tetu = dedū), and /g/ (in -kozis = -gođis). With theta indicating the existence of a second series of letters for stops, and no definitive evidence for pi, tau or kappa also denoting /p/, /t/ or /k/, the Prestino inscription is an important witness for the distribution of the Etruscan letters for stops in the archaic Lepontic alphabet (cf. Gambari & Colonna 1988: 134). Theta can be expected to represent /t/ in plialeθu; waw (rather than phi) appears to be used to denote a reflex of */p/ on its way out in uvamo- = uφamo- and possibly uvlti- = uφlit-. Zeta denotes the reflex of */st/ in -kozis < *-gʰostis, which according to established wisdom should be /ts/ or /t^s/; this agrees well with the letter's Etruscan sound value, though the same sound is spelled with san in the roughly contemporary VA·6. In the Prestino inscription, san is assumed to be used to denote /(n)ts/ with epenthetic /t/ < /ns/ in siteś, which should in essence be the same sound/cluster, but the employment of different letters suggests that they were pronounced differently. The logic behind the distribution of the two letters is not evident, but note that san seems to be used in the same function as in Prestino in the considerably later PG·1.4 (cf. Tibiletti Bruno 1966b: 303 f.).

Dating.
Tibiletti Bruno 1966b: 300 f. initially dated the inscription to the 2^nd c. BC – viz., according to the absolute datings at that time, between Lepontic in the 3^rd c. and the Gaulish monuments of the 1^st c.; she considered the frame with "feet" at both ends to be a late variant of the anthropomorphic frames of the pala-stelae of the Lugano area (p. 287–290), but is rather an earlier variant (cf. VA·6).

Interpretation of text and individual phrases.
The syntactic analysis of the text as a nominative subject uvamokozis plialeθu, dative objects uvltiauiopos ariuonepos, accusative object siteś, and finite verb tetu, was already given by Tibiletti Bruno 1966b: 301. See the word pages for details about the linguistic analyses. Tibiletti Bruno 1966b: 305– siteś tetu 'set up/constructed a building/monument', uvltiauiopos possibly minor divinities with epithet ariuonepos (tribal name?).

Function of the document, comparanda.
As already noted by Tibiletti Bruno 1966b: 283 f., the shape of the object and layout of the inscription can be compared with that of the fragmentary CO·21 Rondineto. Tibiletti Bruno 1990b: 77–105 argues that the latter indicates the existence of another complex comparable to the one in the Fondo Giulini, but of a later date, but the differences in ductus cited by her are minor (size of omicron), and no reports exist of similar structures having been found at Rondineto. The height of the face side of CO·21 Rondineto agrees with that of the slabs in the Fondo Giulini, as does the letter/frame height. It thus seems likely that the small fragment comes originally from the Fondo Giulini structure and was at some point – conceivably after the delapidation of the structure – transported to its eventual find place ca. 600 m uphill.

Significance for Lepontology.
Tibiletti Bruno 1966b: 302 linguistically "Gaulish" (in quotation marks) because of tetu.

• Mirabella Roberti 1966: lambda rather than iota, but rho rather than pi; has measurements and details about the execution
• Prosdocimi 1967 works with double-wrong third word uvitiauioros with rho according to the drawing in Mirabella Roberti & Rittatore Vonwiller 1966. Functions of theta and waw 201-203; san ^= sigma; distribution of theta and tau looks like Padova alphabet; 206 ff. difficulties with syntactic analysis due to misreading of third word, takes plialeθu for a verb. 205, 219-222 linguistic classification, Celtic features of the language (not quite Gaulish, so speaks for the existence of a Lepontic which is "non antigallica").
• Tibiletti Bruno 1968c: 350–355 defends her reading of iota and pi (and trashes Ferri)
• Tibiletti Bruno 1968: 386–388 again pro pi, 389 on sound values, differences from Venetic (kappa for /g/)
• Pellegrini 1969: 251 f.
• Tibiletti Bruno 1969b: 232–234, no. 77: more literature, linguistic classification
• Lejeune 1971: 96–111, reads uvltiauiopos without discussion of TB's argument, waw zeta theta not necessarily foreign letters, but revived by reformators (uncertain about dating, but implicitly assumes lateish as per TB), pi tau kappa = /b/ /d/ /g/ (as per Prosdocimi), theta = /t/, different spelling for "sifflante forte" < *st (zeta) and <*ns (san) (as per TB), <uv> = initial labial glide, uvlti "dévocalisée" for unclear reasons, doubts connection with Padova orthography with same arguments as TB (spelling of mediae), same overall analysis as TB, 106-110 siteś as Lepontic
• Lejeune 1974: 343
• Tibiletti Bruno 1978: 141 f. "forse un architrave", sticks with reading iota
• Tibiletti Bruno 1981: 177–181, no. 23 frame shape developed out of anthropomorphic frames when significance was not understood anymore (also Morandi 1982: 188), n. 3 again pro iota (now she knows who did it)
• Pellegrini 1981: 58
• Motta 1983
• Prosdocimi 1986: 226-232 overview of previous scholarship, 232 higher dating (at least first half of 5^th c. BC), lambda misspelled for iota
• Prosdocimi 1987: 567–574 also misspelling of iota as lambda, further on the inscription's evidence for Lepontic being Celtic, palaeographical dating to late 6^th c. BC-early 5^th c., viz. "inizio assoluto della traditione scrittoria", based on comparison with Etruscan alphabet (and archaeologically before mid-5^th c., p.c. De Marinis): closed alpha beside waw, function of <uv> and theta, thoughts about the formation of the Lepontic alphabet, suggests that the "gradini" are the siteś
• Gambari & Colonna 1988: 134 on the orthography
• Tibiletti Bruno 1990b: 77–105 on the comparison with CO·21 and existence of two "complessi architettonici" not of the same time, 86 compares the Feltre inscription stones and other documents from neighbouring cultures, and concludes that the model is Roman, hence reaffirms her low dating, and again the development of the frame ends, letter forms and "inserted" letters due to style and "particolare sensibilità fonetica" on the part of the writer, values of the special letters, and development of the Lepontic alphabet, 102-105 repetition of analysis of inscription and forms
• Motta 1992: 313 f. pro plialeθu as an appositive as per De Hoz and ariuonepos formed from a toponym
• Solinas 1995: 343–345, no. 65, possibly some additional literature, contra using siteś as evidence for Lepontic as a separate language
• Eska 1998c: 66–68 overview over analysis of inscription and forms, and then on the function of phi as a reflex of */p/
• Motta 2000: 197 f., no. 2: notes that if letter 21 were iota, the distance to tau would be irregularly large; assumes that the dedication refers to the whole "complesso monumentale".
• Markey & Mees 2003: 130, n. 5 confirm lambda, 130-133 alpha vs. waw and relevance of aev-inscriptions, 134 f. form of zeta, 135 value of theta, 135 zeta vs. san, form of sigma cf. Castaneda, 137-144 function of plialeθu, 144-158 forms and possible poetic features (further discussion in Eska & Mercado 2005: 177 f., Mees 2008: 196-199), 156 boundary marker
• Morandi 2004: 638–640, no. 180, notes traces of red paint in the letters of siteś, pro lambda for space reasons, otherwise summary
• Stifter 2020b: 345
• Mees 2024
• Markey 2024
• Eska 2024d

See also Ferri 1967 (negligible), Campanile 1968 (sdegnato), Lejeune 1978: 111, Morandi 1982: 188 f., n. 69, Pellegrini 1983: 36 f., Lambert 1994: 21, Meid 1996: 260, Meid 1999: 16 f.

Bibliography

Campanile 1968	Enrico Campanile, "Su due interpretazioni della iscrizione di Prestino", Studi e Saggi Linguistici 8 (1968), 207–213.
De Bernardo Stempel 1990	Patrizia De Bernardo Stempel, "Einige Beobachtungen zu indogermanischem /w/ im Keltischen", in: Ann T. E. Matonis, Daniel Frederick Melia, Celtic language, Celtic culture. Festschrift for Eric P. Hamp, Van Nuys: Ford & Bailie 1990, 26-46.
De Bernardo Stempel 2014	Patrizia de Bernardo Stempel, "Livelli di celticità linguistica nell'Italia settentrionale", in: Philippe Barral, Jean-Paul Guillaumet, Marie-Jeanne Roulière-Lambert, Massimo Saracino, Daniele Vitali (eds), Les Celtes et le Nord de l'Italie. Premier er Second Âges du fer. Actes du XXXVIe colloque international de l'AFEAF, Vérone, 17–20 mai 2012 [= Revue Archéologique de l'Est Suppl. 36], Dijon: 2014, 89–102.
De Hoz 1992	Javier de Hoz, "Lepontic, Celt-Iberian, Gaulish and the archaeological evidence", Études celtiques 29 (1992), 223–240.
De Simone 1978	Carlo De Simone, "I Galli in Italia: testimonianze linguistiche", in: Paola Santoro (ed.), I Galli e l'Italia, Roma: De Luca 1978, 261–269.
De Simone 1988	Carlo de Simone, "Iscrizioni messapiche della Grotta della Poesia (Melendugno, Lecce)", Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di lettere e filosofia 18 (1988), 325–415.
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Eska & Mercado 2005	Joseph Francis Eska, Angelo O. Mercado, "Observations on verbal art in ancient Vergiate", Historische Sprachforschung 118 (2005), 160-184.
Eska 1998c	Josef Francis Eska, "PIE *p (doesn't become) Ø in proto Celtic", Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 58 (1998), 63-80.
Eska 2013	Joseph F. Eska, "A salvage grammar of Galatian", Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 60 (2013), 51–63.
Eska 2013b	Joseph F. Eska, "In defense of Celtic /φ/", in: Adam I. Cooper, Jeremy Rau, Michael Weiss, Multi nominis grammaticus. Studies in classical and Indo-European linguistics in honor of Alan J. Nussbaum on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, Ann Arbor: Beech Stave Press 2013, 32–43.
Eska 2024d	Joseph F. Eska, "Digamma and Prestino and related matters", Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 71/1 (2024), 77–96.
ET²	Gerhard Meiser, Etruskische Texte. Editio minor, auf Grundlage der Erstausgabe von †Helmut Rix neu bearbeitet in Zusammenarbeit mit Valentina Belfiore und Sindy Kluge. Teil 1: Einleitung, Konkordanz, Indizes, Teil 2: Texte, 2nd, revised edition [= Studien zur historisch-vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft 4], Hamburg: Baar 2014.
Ferri 1967	Silvio Ferri, "Esigenze archeologiche - VIII", Studi Classici e Orientali 16 (1967), 417–435.