NO·19

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Inscription
Reading in transliteration:	autesai : kar / nitus : petua[
Reading in original script:	[
Object:	NO·19 Gozzano (stela)
Position:	top, front
Orientation:	0°
Frame:	(left: none, middle: top and bottom, right: none)
Direction of writing:	boustrophedon
Script:	North Italic script (Lepontic alphabet)
Letter height:	9–13 cm3.543 in <br />5.118 in <br />
Number of letters:	20
Number of words:	3
Number of lines:	2
Workmanship:	carved
Condition:	fragmentary
Archaeological culture:	La Tène C 2, La Tène D
Date of inscription:	second half of 2nd–1st c. BC
Type:	prob. funerary
Language:	Celtic
Meaning:	'for Autesa raised Petua[ ...'
Alternative sigla:	Morandi 2004: 95
Sources:	Morandi 2004: 583 no. 95

Commentary

First published in Gambari 1998d: 232 f.

Image in Gambari 1998d: tav. XCIX (photo), Arcà & Rubat Borel 2024: 32, fig. 5 (drawing by Gambari).

Two lines of the fragmentary inscription are preserved at the breaking edge; line 1 is complete, while the upper parts of the letters in line 2 are damaged or missing. Frame lines are present between the two lines and below line 1 (height of complete frame 21 cm). The inscription is one of only two written in boustrophedon in the Cisalpine Celtic corpus; the position of the word karnitus, written across two lines, indicates that the lower line is the first and the inscription is to be read from bottom to top, any number of lines being missing with the top part of the stela. Cf. the counterintuitive placement and orientation of the epichoric stelae and inscriptions from Brisino and Levo.

The reading was established by Gambari in the original publication and could be confirmed in autopsy despite some surface damage. Gambari states that the separators consist of two dots each, but only one each is clearly visible, as in the drawing published by Arcà & Rubat Borel (also Morandi 2004: 583). Final rho in line 1 is retrograde, considered by Gambari to be an intentional codified method to anticipate the direction of the next line. Otherwise, the letter forms are inconspicuous. Gambari dates the inscription palaeographically to the late 3^rd or first half of the 2^nd century BC, but the single-dot separator as in late inscriptions from the Piemonte like VC·1.2, BI·2, BI·4, BI·7, NO·18 indicates a lower dating; Morandi gives the second half of the 2^nd century BC, but it may well be as late as the 1^st (though no clear influence from Latin is visible in the preserved letter forms).

The presence of the verb karnitus 'raised' uel sim. indicates that the inscription is funerary, though Gambari observes that autesai finds its best comparandum in autessodurum (Auxerre) and may thus be a theonym; beside karnitus, the presence of the symbols, especially the wheel, connects the document particularly with NO·21 San Bernardino di Briona. Gambari also compares NO·20, which also features frame lines, suggesting that the two inscriptions were similarly structured and that the list of the people who karnitus as preserved at Cureggio (and Briona) is missing in the Gozzano inscription. According to a personal communication from Gambari in Dupraz 2019: 62, n. 10, another section of the inscription, recovered but as yet unpublished, contains onomastic forms.

Corinna Salomon

Bibliography

Dupraz 2019	Emmanuel Dupraz, "Sur la forme gauloise canecosedlon", Keltische Forschungen 8 (2019), 59–75.
Gambari 1998d	Filippo M. Gambari, "Gozzano, chiesa di S. Lorenzo. Ritrovamento di stele preromana", Quaderni della Soprintendenza Archeologica del Piemonte 15 (1998), 231–233.