Nora Stone

Last updated February 21, 2024

The Nora Stone or Nora Inscription is an ancient Phoenician inscribed stone found at Nora on the south coast of Sardinia in 1773. Though it was not discovered in its primary context, it has been dated by palaeographic methods to the late 9th century to early 8th century BCE^[1] and is still considered the oldest Phoenician inscription found anywhere outside of the Levant.

Discovery and publication

Discovery of the stone was announced in 1774 in the journal Efemeridi letterarie di Roma, which published a letter sent by Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi, then Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Parma to Giovanni Cristofano Amaduzzi Professor of Greek Language at the Sapienza University of Rome.^[3]

It was discovered by Giacinto Hintz, professor of Sacred Scripture and Hebrew / Oriental languages at the University of Cagliari, in a secondary location, incorporated in a dry stone wall near the apse of the Chiesa di Sant'Efisio outside of Pula, Sardinia (immediately adjacent to what became known as the archaeological site of Nora).

Inscription

A possible reference to Pygmalion of Tyre is inferred by an interpretation of the fragmentary inscription, made by Frank Moore Cross as follows:^[4]

Line	Transcription	Translation (Peckham)	Translation (Cross)
a.			He fought (?)
b.			with the Sardinians (?)
1	btršš	From Tarshish	at Tarshish
2	wgrš hʾ	he was driven;	and he drove them out.
3	bšrdn š	in Sardinia he	Among the Sardinians
4	lm hʾ šl	found refuge,	he is [now] at peace,
5	m ṣbʾ m	his forces found refuge:	(and) his army is at peace:
6	lktn bn	Milkuton, son of	Milkaton son of
7	šbn ngd	Shubon, the commander.	Shubna, general
8	lpmy	To Pmy .	of (king) Pummay.

Interpretation

In this rendering, Cross has restored the missing top of the tablet (estimated at two lines) based on the content of the rest of the inscription, as referring to a battle that has been fought and won. Alternatively, "the text honours a god, most probably in thanks for the traveller's safe arrival after a storm", observes Robin Lane Fox.^[5]

According to Cross the stone had been erected by a general, Milkaton, son of Shubna, victor against the Sardinians at the site of TRSS, surely Tarshish. Cross conjectures that Tarshish here "is most easily understood as the name of a refinery town in Sardinia, presumably Nora or an ancient site nearby."^[6] He presents evidence that the name pmy ("Pummay") in the last line is a shortened form (hypocoristicon) of the name of Shubna's king, containing only the divine name, a method of shortening “not rare in Phoenician and related Canaanite dialects.”^[7] Since there was only one king of Tyre with this hypocoristicon in the 9th century BCE, Cross restores the name to pmy[y]tn or p‘mytn, which is rendered in the Greek tradition as Pygmalion.

Cross's interpretation of the Nora Stone provides additional evidence that in the late 9th century BCE, Tyre was involved in colonizing the western Mediterranean, lending credence to the establishment of a colony in Carthage in that time frame. Pygmalion, the Greek version of the Phoenician royal name Pumayyaton, also figures in the founding legend of Paphos in Cyprus, and Robin Lane Fox more cautiously finds a Cypriote association possible: "The traveller even may have had links with Cyprus, suggesting the Cypriot contacts had guided Phoenicians to this island."^[8]

This hypothesis is not however universally accepted and has been rejected by other scholars who have translated it differently.^[9]

Related Research Articles

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Tarshish occurs in the Hebrew Bible with several uncertain meanings, most frequently as a place far across the sea from Phoenicia and the Land of Israel. Tarshish was said to have exported vast quantities of important metals to Phoenicia and Israel. The same place name occurs in the Akkadian inscriptions of Assyrian king Esarhaddon and also on the Phoenician inscription of the Nora Stone in Sardinia; its precise location was never commonly known, and was eventually lost in antiquity. Legends grew up around it over time so that its identity has been the subject of scholarly research and commentary for more than two thousand years.

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References

↑ C. 825-780 according to Robin Lane Fox, Travelling Heroes in the Epic Age of Homer, 2008:120f and note p. 382; the stone is illustrated fig. 21.
↑ Marmora, A.F. (1840). Voyage en Sardaigne: ou description statistique, physique et politique de cette île, avec des recherches sur ses productions naturelles et ses antiquités (in French). Arthus Bertrand. p. 342. La même planche contient également la reproduction fidèle de toutes les inscriptions phéniciennes ou carthaginoises, trouvées jusqu'à ce jour en Sardaigne. La plus importante est celle qu'on a découverte sur une pierre existant autrefois près du village de Pula, au sud de l'île, et non loin de l'emplacement où était située l'ancienne ville de Nora; cette pierre faisait partie d'un mur moderne où nous l'avons vue pendant long-temps, mais depuis plusieurs années, grâce aux soins de quelques personnes éclairées, on l'a transportée à l'Université de Cagliari, où elle est maintenant à l'abri de toute destruction. Feu le P. Hintz, professeur de langue orientale à l'Université de Cagliari, fut le premier qui découvrit ce monument, et qui en envoya un dessin (très incorrect) au célèbre orientaliste de Parme, M. de Rossi. Ce dernier publia une explication de l'inscription dans les Ephémérides littéraires de Rome, année 1774; mais le dessin, tel que le reçut cet érudit, était extrêmement infidèle...
↑ Efemeridi letterarie di Roma (in Italian). Presso Gregorio Settari. 1774. pp. 348–351. L'Opera, che abbiamo annunciata del Sig. Principe di Torremozza, e le sae diligenti ricerche sopra i caratteri Fenicii, de'quali è composta la leggenda d' alcune medaglie Siciliane, ci ha fatta nascere vaghezza di qui riferire una Lettera del ch. Sig. Ab. Gio.Bernardo de Rossi Professore di Lingue Orientali nella Università di Parma, ai di cui meriti per conto di erudizione poliglotta facemmo plauso in queste stesse nostre Efemeridi dell'anno corvente num. XXI. p. 166. Questa Lettera è diretta al nostro Sig. Abate Gio. Cristofano Amaduzzi Professore di Lingua Greca nell'Archiginnasio della Sapienza di Roma; e Soprainteadente alla Stamperia di Propaganda, e tende ad ispiegare, ed illuftrare una tronca Iscrizione con caratteri Fenici esistene fuori di Pula in una vigna, che appartiene ai Padri della Mercede di Calgliari. L'iscrizione incastrata al di fuori del Casino è lunga palmi 4., e larga 2. ed è stata diligentemente trascritta, ed indi è stata fatta incidere dal dotto, ed erudito P. Giacinto Hintz dell'Ordine de' Predicatori Professore di Sacra Scrittura, e di Lingua Ebraica nella regia Università di Cagliari, di cui altra volta si è pur parlato in questi nostri fogli.
↑ F. M. Cross, “An Interpretation of the Nora Stone,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research208 (December 1972:16).
↑ Fox 2008:121, following for the c. 800 date, E. Lipinski, "The Nora fragment", Mediterraneo antico2 (1999:667-71), and for the reconstruction of the text Lipinski Itineraria Phoenicia (2004:234-46), rejecting Cross.
↑ Cross 1972:16.
↑ Cross 1972:17.
↑ Fox 2008:121.
↑ E. Lipiński, Itineraria Phoenicia, Leuven/Louvain, 2004, ISBN 90-429-1344-4.