Brian, trust me, these are Goidelic Ogham and not tally marks. They are legible in Old Celtic! From my research, the earliest form of Ogham was used in northern Iberia, and in the Pyrenean Mountains in particular. It was a script, of course. This is what I meant when I said that the BC tablets bore many scripts with associated languages. Some of the alphabetical glyphs read as standard Punic, while the ones having extra unknown letters are in fact variants of the Iberian Syllabary. There were at least four to five variants of the script: northeastern, central eastern, Greaco-Iberian, southeastern, southern, and Turdetian (Tarshish). The Lusitanians dropped it at an early date, 2nd c. BCE, for the Roman alphabet. So yes, some of the texts read in Punic or Judaean, but occasionally, some of the lines read otherwise.
Ok, no trouble! The Ogham looks like clerical shorthand or glossing. I don't have a copy of that particular tablet, but, maybe you can help me with this? Your posts have rekindled my interest in the BC artifacts, so I am presently looking for the papers I wrote for the MES. Some of these are pre-pc and on paper-support. I also have the studies I did on the Iberian part of the inscriptions. I didn't work on the Egyptian, Hebrew, and Punic material since this was beyond my scope; due to my Catholic education, I'm better acquainted with Latin, Greek, and Celtic through Breton and Gaelic.
BTW, don't consider my translation to be that of any professional level effort! I'm just getting started and when trying to discern those characters against Phoenician alphabets, that's what I came up with. It could very well mean "Faith" for all I know.
This is fascinating stuff!
Please post more!!!
Brian, trust me, these are Goidelic Ogham and not tally marks. They are legible in Old Celtic! From my research, the earliest form of Ogham was used in northern Iberia, and in the Pyrenean Mountains in particular. It was a script, of course. This is what I meant when I said that the BC tablets bore many scripts with associated languages. Some of the alphabetical glyphs read as standard Punic, while the ones having extra unknown letters are in fact variants of the Iberian Syllabary. There were at least four to five variants of the script: northeastern, central eastern, Greaco-Iberian, southeastern, southern, and Turdetian (Tarshish). The Lusitanians dropped it at an early date, 2nd c. BCE, for the Roman alphabet. So yes, some of the texts read in Punic or Judaean, but occasionally, some of the lines read otherwise.
I was looking at Ogham and sheesh - not all that easy to determine what these shown mean. Do you have some input toward their meaning?
Ok, no trouble! The Ogham looks like clerical shorthand or glossing. I don't have a copy of that particular tablet, but, maybe you can help me with this? Your posts have rekindled my interest in the BC artifacts, so I am presently looking for the papers I wrote for the MES. Some of these are pre-pc and on paper-support. I also have the studies I did on the Iberian part of the inscriptions. I didn't work on the Egyptian, Hebrew, and Punic material since this was beyond my scope; due to my Catholic education, I'm better acquainted with Latin, Greek, and Celtic through Breton and Gaelic.
I translate the center square as "arrogant" it might also mean "wealthy", "important", or something. There are always double-meanings in languages.
BTW, don't consider my translation to be that of any professional level effort! I'm just getting started and when trying to discern those characters against Phoenician alphabets, that's what I came up with. It could very well mean "Faith" for all I know.
Nice work! It does look like Hebrew