The Recueil des inscriptions gauloises (RIG) is a comprehensive collection of Gaulish language inscriptions. The RIG gives archaeological context, readings, commentary, proposed translations, and images for each Gaulish inscription. Inscriptions of only one word are usually excluded. The inscriptions collected date between the 2nd century BCE and the 4th century CE. [1] [2] [3]
Each inscription is given a letter (L, E, or G, depending on whether the inscription is written in the Latin, Etruscan or Greek alphabet) and a number (e.g., G-159, L-3). Exceptions to this system include RIG III A and RIG III B, the Coligny and Villards-d'Héria calendars, which take up their own volume; and the inscriptions on coins in RIG IV, which are just given numbers. [1] [2]
The project was first announced by Paul-Marie Duval in 1959. [4] The first volume was published in 1985 by Michel Lejeune. After Lejeune, the project was taken over by Pierre-Yves Lambert. The last volume of the series was published in 2002. A number of supplements to the volumes have been published in Études celtiques . [2] [3] In 2020, a computerised version of the RIG was begun, the Recueil informatisé des inscriptions gauloises (RIIG). The RIIG has an updated numbering system. [1]
Anextiomarus is a Celtic epithet of the sun-god Apollo recorded in a Romano-British inscription from South Shields, England. A variant form, Anextlomarus, appears as a divine style or name attested in a fragmentary Gallo-Roman dedication from Le Mans, France. Anextlomarus is also attested as a Gaulish man's father's name at Langres, and a feminine divine form, Anextlomara, appears in two other Gallo-Roman dedications from Avenches, Switzerland.
Belisama is a Celtic goddess. She was identified by Roman commentators with Minerva by interpretatio romana.
Esus is a Celtic god known from iconographic, epigraphic, and literary sources.
Lugus is a Celtic god whose worship is attested in the epigraphic record. No depictions of the god are known. Lugus perhaps also appears in Roman sources and medieval Insular mythology.
In ancient Celtic religion, Maponos or Maponus is a god of youth known mainly in northern Britain but also in Gaul. In Roman Britain, he was equated with Apollo.
Taranis is a Celtic thunder god attested in literary and epigraphic sources.
Lepontic is an ancient Alpine Celtic language that was spoken in parts of Rhaetia and Cisalpine Gaul between 550 and 100 BC. Lepontic is attested in inscriptions found in an area centered on Lugano, Switzerland, and including the Lake Como and Lake Maggiore areas of Italy. Being a Celtic language, its name could derive from Proto-Celtic *leikʷontio-.
The Celtic calendar is a compilation of pre-Christian Celtic systems of timekeeping, including the Gaulish Coligny calendar, used by Celtic countries to define the beginning and length of the day, the week, the month, the seasons, quarter days, and festivals.
The Coligny calendar is a bronze plaque with an inscribed calendar, made in Roman Gaul in the 2nd century CE. It lays out a five-year cycle of a lunisolar calendar, each year with twelve lunar months. An intercalary month is inserted before each 2.5 years. The lunar phase is tracked with exceptional precision, adjusted when necessary by a variable month, and the calendar uses the 19-year Metonic cycle to keep track of the solar year. It is the most important evidence for the reconstruction of an ancient Celtic calendar.
Atepomarus or Atepomaros in Celtic Gaul was a healing god from Mauvières (Indre). Apollo was associated with this god in the form Apollo Atepomarus.
The Lemovīcēs were a Gallic tribe dwelling in the modern Limousin region during the Iron Age and the Roman period.
The Lexovii, were a Gallic tribe dwelling immediately west of the mouth of the Seine, around present-day Lisieux, during the Iron Age and the Roman period.
The Redones or Riedones were a Gallic tribe dwelling in the eastern part of the Brittany peninsula during the Iron age and subsequent Roman conquest of Gaul. Their capital was at Condate, the site of modern day Rennes.
Gaulish is an extinct Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul. In a wider sense, it also comprises varieties of Celtic that were spoken across much of central Europe ("Noric"), parts of the Balkans, and Anatolia ("Galatian"), which are thought to have been closely related. The more divergent Lepontic of Northern Italy has also sometimes been subsumed under Gaulish.
The Chamalières tablet is a lead tablet, six by four centimeters, that was discovered in 1971 in Chamalières, France, at the Source des Roches excavation. The tablet is dated somewhere between 50 BC and 50 AD. The text is written in the Gaulish language, with cursive Latin letters. With 396 letters grouped in 47 words, it is the third-longest extant text in Gaulish, giving it great importance in the study of this language.
The Lezoux plate is a ceramic plate discovered in 1970 at Lezoux (Puy-de-Dôme), which contains one of the longer texts in the Gaulish language which has yet been found. Since it is fragmentary, only parts of the text can be read, and only a fragment of that can be reliably translated. From those bits, it seems to be a list of aphorisms directed toward a young man.
Henri-Georges Dottin was a French philologist, Celtic scholar, and politician. His magnum opus, La langue gauloise (1918), remained the reference introduction to the Gaulish language until the publication of Pierre-Yves Lambert's La langue gauloise in 1994. It is still widely used today as a textbook in Celtic linguistic studies.
The Larzac tablet is a lead curse tablet found in 1983 in the commune of L'Hospitalet-du-Larzac, Aveyron, southern France. It is now kept in the museum of Millau. It bears one of the most important inscriptions in the Gaulish language.
Pierre-Yves Lambert is a French linguist and scholar of Celtic studies. He is a researcher at the CNRS and a lecturer at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Celtic linguistics and philology. Lambert is the director of the journal Études Celtiques.
Xavier Delamarre is a French linguist, lexicographer, and former diplomat. He is regarded as one of the world's foremost authorities on the Gaulish language.