Understanding ancient inscriptions: the case of CIS I, 123, CIS I,123 bis, and the Tal-Virtù Papyrus

Lecture by Prof. Anthony J. Frendo

In attempting to understand the three Phoenician inscriptions from Malta selected for this talk, it will be shown that a whole array of principles of interpretation are at work in the head of scholars trying to come to grips with these inscriptions – whether they are aware of them or not. We have to be conscious of such principles in order to understand texts properly.  In inscriptions without word division, punctuation, or vowels (such as is the case with Phoenician), context plays a crucial role.  Indeed, out of multiple possible philological solutions for CIS I, 123 the one buttressed by the archaeological context is clearly the most plausible one.  The use of continual script did not pose a problem for the ancients, seeing that modern research has shown that language is not built on a division between words but on two-second spurts of sounds with pauses in between.