Refinements and Future Directions in Venetic Scholarship
Charles
Bryant-Abraham
First, a few introductory words about my own background are in order. I
am a sixth-generation Texan, and there are relatively few of us on earth. My family
first came to the Virginia Colony in
But indeed I do suspect that history is about to be written, or rather
rewritten. We stand on the threshold of a new world of insight into the
pre-history of
First, I must issue a preliminary disclaimer, for the timeless
epistemological inquiry remains ever in front of us. How can the
"truth" of a given moment in history every really be known? Historian
A may assert the reality of a fact and historians B, C, and D may successively
quote the assertion of historian A in recounting their own stories of how
things must have happened. But in every case where historians are not
elaborating primary and direct evidence created at the time an event occurred,
subsequent students of history will be coping with varying levels of
credibility. The presupposition underlying any historical assertion doggedly
remains, "It is believed that..." All that the most successful of
historians ever achieve after that is a rearrangement of extant records lending
strength to the probability of an assertion. In linguistic history, just as in
social, military, literary, musical, or artistic history, there is simply no
such thing as absolute proof of anything. Every "fact" we posit can
only be based upon the preponderance of evidence found to date. At every step
we must ask: "What does the preponderance of evidence now lead us to
conclude?"
In the case before us, I must ask: what is all of this hue and cry about
lack of scientific method in reexamining inscriptions which no one heretofore
has been able to decode or make any significant sense of whatsoever? Do we now
possess a preponderance of evidence permitting us to begin drawing some
justifiable conclusions about these inscriptions, despite faulty methodology,
or rather despite the lack of appropriate technical jargon to express the
results obtained? Forgive me, but the analogy is obvious. It looks all the world like the proverbial, insecure, pedantic
teacher who marks a correct math answer "wrong" just because the
student derived the correct answer without recourse to the precious method the
teacher had so painstakingly taught. Clearly the integrity of a method or
system is at best secondary to the accurate solution of a given problem.
Likewise, a satisfactory solution to any problem must preempt every
system of instruction designed to lead to that solution. But in recent Venetic research a number of instances have come to remind
us of the adage: "There is no sound as painful as a scientist groaning
under a collapsed theory." The question, however, will just not go away:
What inescapable conclusions must be drawn from the preponderance of evidence
to date? Thanks to a precious few, undaunted Slovenian scholars, for the first
time inscriptions heretofore indecipherable are at last being meaningfully
read.
Matej Bor,
may he rest in peace, was a courageous pioneer who ventured forth into
uncharted waters. All future Venetic scholarship will
forever remain indebted to him. Like the work of every pioneer, the field of
inquiry he so thoughtfully advanced will necessarily see many refinements in
the years to come. But it must always be remembered: he was an intellectual
father of Venetic studies.
Now, to the eyes of this sixth-generation
Still, to streamline out and systematize three simultaneous rivers,
which he let flow, might now prove useful to future directions of Venetic scholarship.
1. Undoubtedly the most intensely incendiary of Bor's findings is that Slovenian had heretofore been
inaccurately classified as a South Slavic language, where in fact it is to be
ranked among the West Slavic languages. This question continues to deserve all
the attention it can bear, but for quite different reasons than those germane
to the Venetic inscriptions. To sift out the
objections of those decrying Venetic research as
chauvinistically motivated, this entire issue should be reassigned to a
specialized subcommittee for future development and redirected out of Venetic research altogether.
2. The evidence of past Venetic
presence in any given area, which can be marshaled from inherited place names,
will necessarily always be speculative and cannot be allowed to detract
attention from more decisive evidence. Nevertheless, Venetic
topology must be pursued, especially in areas where inscriptions do
independently attest to earlier Venetic settlement.
Anton Ambrozic, in his book, Journey Back to the Garumna, has shown the validity and usefulness of Venetic topology in the territories of pre-Roman
3. The overwhelming importance of the Venetic runic inscriptions themselves must lead to the
development of a separate and distinct scientific discipline, commanding the
keenest focus of all Slavicists, for it does
constitute the cultural patrimony of all Slavs. Indeed the high value of the
ultra-conservative Slovenian dialects in the decipherment of these inscriptions
has the potential of so enhancing the appreciation of Slovenian linguistics
that those alpine dialects may yet come to be collectively hailed as the
"mother of Slavic languages." My sincere advice is that research into
these inscriptions should proceed "full steam
ahead" to produce credibly deciphered texts which can then later be
analyzed by linguistic specialists who will write their descriptions in the
conventional jargon of the trade.
We absolutely must tease out these three subject areas if we are to
develop each in its own right and attract future scholars into this new field
of investigation.
Having duly considered these imperative refinements to the current
practice of Venetology, let us now turn our attention
to new avenues of approach begging to be opened.
As a point of transition, I shall attempt to illustrate an important
principle. One of the earliest expressions of this principle is found in the
second-century Jewish text, Pirké-Avót 4:1:
"Ben Zoma used to say, who is wise? He who
learns from all men, as is said in the Psalms, 'From all my teachers I have
gained wisdom.' "[1]
To make clear my implication, consider one critique of Matej Bor's work, "Vandals, Veneti, Windischer: The Pitfalls
of Amateur Historical Linguistics," by Prof. Tom Priestly, read at the
conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in
Denver, Colorado, on November 2000. [2, 3] My point is that none should take
the criticism in a personal way, but rather apply oneself to the task of
learning from it. Indeed, every criticism of Venetic
scholarship must be taken seriously and used to refine the details of the
theory. Still, Prof. Priestly might have benefited from a broader peripheral
vision, had he just put a little more creative thinking into his critique. Be
that as it may, for clear and good reasons, he quite correctly faults the work
of Johann Topolovsek, Die Basko-slavische
Spracheinheit. I Band, Einleitung. Vergleichende Lautlehre (1894), and the work of Franc Jeza, Skandinavski izvor Slovencev. Etnografska-jezikoslovna in zgodovinska studija
(1967). Both of these studies failed to prove their case: clearly
Slovenian and Basque do not share common descent, nor do Slovenian and Old
Norse. In citing these two studies, which have nothing in common with Bor's research, Prof. Priestly has brought to the attention
of Venetic scholarship an important new direction,
specifically, early lexical borrowing from Venetic by
contiguously-spoken languages. Obviously, neither Basque and Slavic nor
Scandinavian and Slavic are derivable one from the other. Yet what is to be
made of the extraordinary lexical correspondences that Topolovsek
and Jeza have succeeded in amassing and, at least in
the case of Basque which have recently been replicated by the Czech researcher,
Petr Jandáèek? This indeed opens a new avenue for future
research, that of lexical borrowing in pre-historic times by languages in
contact with Venetic. And it is to be expected that
predictable phonologic laws will emerge within each receptor language,
revealing the phonetic processes as it adapted Venetic
loan words to its own speech habits over a long period of symbiosis.
Instructive also are Jeza's correlated pairs of
Slovenian and Old Norse shared lexical items, of which Prof. Priestly states:
"Semantically, Jeza's word-pairs are even more
plausible than Topolovsek's: in almost every
instance, the Scand. and the Sln. word have an
identical meaning; this is true of all the examples ... except for kupa 'hollow log' vs. cupa
'boat', which would indeed involve an acceptable semantic shift ... some pairs
are so far apart phonetically that one wonders at Jeza's
audacity in citing them... He seldom comments on this, but on page after
carefree page lists hundreds of word-pairs with phonetic inconsistencies which
are never related to any systematic framework and which seldom receive
comment." [2] Here, what Prof. Priestly failed to consider is that the
Scandinavian/Venetic symbiosis continued over a vast
stretch of time, and the phonetic habits of both languages, particularly Old
Norse, continued to change without surcease, so that phonetic inconsistencies
would not only be predictable, but would render somewhat difficult the work of
consistent phonetic correlation.
Yet what is so very intriguing in Jeza's Scandanavian/Venetic word-pairs is the indirect, though
still inconclusive, testimony of the two languages in contact, a testimony
strengthening the Venetic hypothesis of the origin of
Norse runes. To be brief, let me cite from the following [4]: "It has been
established that a number of runes which are contemporaneous with the oldest of
those found in the Danish bogland have been
discovered along a line of country passing through Pomerania,
Brandenburg, Volhynia and Rumania. Moreover, these
discoveries include archaic objects the primary forms of which do not hail from
western Europe but are found in southeastern Europe, on the northern coast of
the Black sea and along the lower Danube and in Carinthia.
From this fact, and also from the close agreement of the forms of the letters
in these texts, especially the Negau helmets, with
those of the subalpine alphabets of northern Italy,
and the agreement in date (c. 250 B.C.), the conclusion was drawn
simultaneously by a number of scholars that the runes came to Scandinavia from
central Europe and that the script itself was of subalpine
origin." In other words, it does now seem probable that the early
Scandinavians not only borrowed vocabulary from the Veneti,
but the art of runic writing itself.
Thus, the results of Topolovsek's and Jeza's studies must be reviewed from the alternative point
of view of lexical loans. Moreover, similar studies are needed for the Greek,
Celtic, Italic and Baltic language families. Also the Armorican
Venetic lexical level of Breton should be further
explored and documented, as Ota Janek has begun to
do.
Prof. Priestly's critique is equally useful to
us in two further instances where he should and could have used broader
peripheral vision:
1. Prof Priestly is correct in writing: "...since
there was a single proto-phoneme /h/...the three consonantal
correspondences.../h : k/, /h : g/ and /h : h/ must be
in complementarity. In other words, in reconstructing
the sound-changes involved in the development from Ven.
(Psl.) to Sln., it is
necessary to show that */h/ changed to /k/ under some circumstances, to /g/
under some different circumstances, and remained unchanged as /h/ in a third
set of circumstances..." [5]. Incidentally, it is
likely that Venetic distinguished here a voiceless
/h/ < /k/, /h/ and voiced /h/ < /g/, analogous to the voiced /h/ of Czech
and Afrikaans. But isn't Priestly's speculation here
really putting the cart before the horse? Once phonemes coalesce (/k/, /g/, /h/
> /h/), they are not known to separate out again into the original phonemic
inventory. Therefore, what we are confronting - and this is an important lead
that Prof. Priestly provides - is the imminent emergence of Venetic
dialectology. Indeed, Slovenian must henceforth take its place as the only
surviving dialect of Venetic, and a most conservative
one at that, for only sporadically did its regional variations undergo coalescence
of the three phonemes at issue into /h/.
2. Prof. Priestly further expands the emergent
dialectology of Venetic in two other cases:
1.) "It is unclear what the Ven. word for 'fire' was. Cf. on the one hand: 'v han' - into the fire... and on the other 'v ougon' - into the fire' " [6];
2.) "...'betatism' ... Bor... has two graphemes labelled
'B,V' on his alphabet table... and whenever one occurs, he is more or less at
liberty to interpret it as he pleases... this approach shows an annoying lack
of consistency..." [7]. I must point out that these differences are highly
indicative of dialectal variation over the vast Venetic
territory and that given these differences, it will be incumbent upon future Venetologists to elaborate the dialectal contours and broad
isoglosses of Venetic as attested in the
inscriptions.
Parallel to the on-going analysis of the Venetic
inscriptions, a thorough search must be undertaken throughout the
Finally, it is my privilege to bring to the attention the extensive body
of the as yet undeciphered pre-Roman Iberian
inscriptions [9]. These inscriptions, written with the Venetic
runes, have already received considerable scrutiny by Spanish archeologists and
linguists. My role here is modest, very humbly that of bridging the two worlds
of Spanish and Slovenian scholarship, for to date each seems to have been
unaware of the importance of the other for their own specific interests.
Exhibit 1 illustrates the runic alphabet of Tartessos,
the Biblical "Tarshish". Notable is the
horizontal and vertical reversal of a number of these runes, yet all still remain unmistakably Venetic.
Exhibit 2 illustrates two inscriptions found on
Exhibit 3 will serve to initiate yet another potential direction in Venetology, that of Venetic
numismatics. These inscriptions are all from pre-Roman coins found in
Exhibit 4 presents examples of Iberian inscriptions found all along the
It is neither my intention nor within my capacity to set before you an
exhaustive display of the Iberian inscriptions, but simply to call your
attention to their existence and to heartily encourage a new effort to decipher
them.
In conclusion, I wish to note how very obvious it would have been for
the Venetic ships to sail the
Moreover, little is known of the early pre-Greek peoples of the
Exhibit 5 illustrates the striking similarities between the historical Venetic runes and the earliest inscriptions from the
Mediterranean Levant, the Greek Isles, and the Greek and Italic peninsulas. All
extant inscriptions written in these cognate runic alphabets must now be
subjected to the most scarifying reexamination for a potential Proto-Slavic
genesis.
My parting words are drawn from the writings of the American philosopher
and physician, Dr. Abraham J. Twerski. Quoting, he
writes: "There is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1: 9)
It has been said that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. We
can say the same thing about discoveries; they become evident to us when we are
ready for them. Just what constitutes this state of readiness is still a
mystery. While technological advances are usually continent upon earlier
progress, many other discoveries were right before our eyes, but we did not
seem them. This concept is as true of ideas and concepts in our lives as it is
true of scientific discoveries. The truth is out there, but we may fail to see
it [10].
Esteemed colleagues, much hard, diligent work lies before us in the
years to come. I applaud what you have already accomplished, and I encourage
you, each and every one, on toward the future.
References
1. Psalm 119:99a
2. Tom Priestly: "Vandals, Veneti, and Windischer: The
Pitfalls of Amateur Historical Linguistics", text for possible
publication, being a longer version of The 'Veneti'
Theory, paper, AAASS,
3. Prof. Priestly does need to review his grasp
of German grammar, as looms clear from the use in his title of the genitive
plural of the nominalized strong adjective, "Windischer," where he needed the nominative plural,
"Windische."
4. Encyclopaedia Britannica
(1967), article "Rune," p. 660
5. Tom Priestly: "Vandals, Veneti, and Windischer: The
Pitfalls of Amateur Historical Linguistics", text for possible
publication, being a longer version of The 'Veneti'
Theory, paper, AAASS,
6. Ibid, "5.4.5. Further
Criticisms."
7. Ibid, "5.4.6. Variation".
8. Cf. Anton Ambrozic, Adieu
to
9. Julio Caro-Baroja,
"La Escritura en la España
Preromana (Epigrafía y Numismática)," in La España
Primitiva, Vol. II. La Protohistoria,
by Martin Almagro Basch and
Antonio García y Bellido,
pp. 685 ff.
10. Abraham Twerski,
MD, Growing Each Day,