The Espança script is the only complete signary (alphabetical sequence) known of the Paleohispanic scripts

Paleohispanic scripts

The Paleohispanic scripts are the writing systems created in the Iberian peninsula before the Latin alphabet became the dominant script...

. It is inscribed on a piece of slate

Slate

Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. The result is a foliated rock in which the foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering...

, 48×28×2 cm. This alphabet consists of 27 letters written double. The 27 letters in the outer line are written in a better hand than those of the inner line, from which it has been inferred that the slate was a teaching exercise in which a master wrote the alphabet and a student copied it.

The signary doesn't exactly match any of the known paleohispanic scripts

Paleohispanic scripts

The Paleohispanic scripts are the writing systems created in the Iberian peninsula before the Latin alphabet became the dominant script...

, but it is clearly related to the southwestern Tartessian script

Southwest script

The Southwest Script or Southwestern Script, also known as Tartessian or South Lusitanian, is a Paleohispanic script used to write an unknown language usually identified as Tartessian...

 and to the southeastern Iberian script

Southeastern Iberian script

The southeastern Iberian script, also known as Meridional Iberian, was one of the means of written expression of the Iberian language, which was written mainly in the northeastern Iberian script and residually by the Greco-Iberian alphabet...

. The first 13 letters match letters of the 22-letter the Phoenician alphabet

Phoenician alphabet

The Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, was a non-pictographic consonantal alphabet, or abjad. It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia...

 in both shape and relative order: (A B C D I K L M N Ξ O S T). The remaining letters include the other Phoenician letters, slightly out of order: (U E Θ H P Ϻ Q R Z), supplemented by five letters seemingly original to the Paleohispanic scripts.

External links

• A Palaeo-Hispanic alphabet: Espanca's stele – Jesús Rodríguez Ramos
• Detailed map of the Pre-Roman Peoples of Iberia (around 200 BCE)
• Alfabeto de Espanca – Wikipedia Portuguese