The overwhelming majority of all languages that are currently widely spoken in Europe, including nearly all the languages that are widely spoken specifically in western Europe, belong to the same language family: Indo-European. There is, however, one language that is spoken in one small region of western Europe that is not Indo-European: Basque, which is spoken in Basque Country, a small region in the western Pyrenees of northern Spain and southwestern France that is totally surrounded on all sides by predominantly-Indo-European-language-speaking lands.
The Basque language is highly unusual, not only because it is a non-Indo-European language spoken in the middle of western Europe, but also because it is a language isolate, meaning it is not related to any other known languages. In fact, it is the only language isolate that is currently natively spoken anywhere in Europe. Modern historical linguists agree that Basque is the only surviving language of a family that was once spoken more widely in the region before the arrival of Indo-European-language-speaking peoples and that has survived in the land where it is spoken today despite millennia of Indo-European-language-speaking peoples inhabiting the surrounding lands.
Despite this, until recently, very little direct evidence was known for the ancient language from which modern Basque is derived, which historical linguists refer to as “Proto-Basque.” Just recently, however, a team of archaeologists announced their discovery of what is now the oldest known writing in the Basque language, which dates to the early first century BCE.
The ancient Vascones and the name Basque
The ancient Greek geographer Strabon of Amaseia (lived c. 64 BCE – c. 24 CE) in his Geographika 3.4.10 refers to the inhabitants of the present-day Basque Country in Greek as Οὐάσκωνες (Ouáskōnes). The Roman writer Pliny the Elder (lived c. 23 – 79 CE) in his Natural History 4.46 refers to the same people in Latin as Vascones, a designation which later authors writing in the Latin language use as well.
The name Vascones is ultimately the root of the modern English word Basque, which is today primarily an exonym that is not widely used among speakers of the Basque language themselves. Instead, present-day Basque people usually call themselves euskaldunak and their language euskara.
Unfortunately, ancient Greek and Roman authors provide almost no information about the ancient Vascones apart from their name, the region that they inhabited, and the names of a few cities in this region. The preponderance of evidence, however, indicates that they are most likely the ancestors of present-day Basques and the speakers of the Proto-Basque language from which modern Basque is derived.
The Aquitanii or Aquitanians were another ancient people who spoke either the Proto-Basque language itself or a very closely related language. They mainly inhabited what is now the region of Gascony in southwestern France.
ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing the area of western Europe where the Proto-Basque language is believed to have been spoken at its fullest extent in ancient times, based on evidence from ancient Proto-Basque toponyms and personal names attested in inscriptions
The hand of Irulegi
Until recently, there were no known directly-attested examples of the Proto-Basque and/or Aquitanian languages apart from some names of places, people, and deities. Then, in June 2021, a team of archaeologists working for the Science Society Aranzadi, led by the professor of archaeology Mattin Aiestaran were excavating in the Basque village of Irulegi next to the Castle of Irulegi in the Spanish province of Navarre in the very heart of traditional Basque Country.
On 18 June, the excavators discovered a small bronze ornament in the shape of an outstretched right hand that the excavators believe was most likely originally hung on the front door of a house and served as a protective emblem. The hand dates to the early first century BCE, sometime before the year 72 BCE.
At the first, the researchers didn’t pay the hand much attention, but, then, on 18 January 2022, as they were restoring it, they noticed that the front of the ornament bears a five-word inscription in Proto-Basque, written in an apparently Basque-specialized form of the Iberian script. The first word on the hand reads sorioneku, which is apparently the ancient form of the modern Basque word zorioneko, which means “of good fortune.” The meaning of the other four words, however, remains unclear.
The Basque form of the Iberian script that the inscription is written in includes one character that resembles the Latin letter T. This represents an unknown sound (most likely, although not certainly, a consonant) and is only attested elsewhere as a symbol on two coins originating from Vasconic territory. The inscription on the hand of Irulegi is currently the only known example of this symbol being used as a letter.
The researchers published their discovery for the first time on 14 November 2022 and the find has already induced a flurry of international media attention. I personally first found out about it from this thread on Twitter by Alistair Dodds.
The discovery of the hand is especially exciting for two reasons. The first is because it conclusively demonstrates that a form of Proto-Basque was spoken in Basque Country in the early first century BCE—a conclusion which many linguists already considered probable, but which some experts had previously doubted. The second reason is because it demonstrates that, at that time, before the Roman conquest, some speakers of Proto-Basque were literate.
ABOVE: Image from Wikimedia Commons showing the hand of Irulegi with digitally-added dots to make the writing on it more visible
Ancient Aquitanian anthroponyms and theonyms
In addition to the hand of Irulegi and the handful of toponyms of probable Proto-Basque and/or Aquitanian etymology that are attested in the works of ancient Greek and Roman authors, a number of surviving funerary and votive inscriptions in the Latin language dating to the first, second, and third centuries CE preserve some recognizably Proto-Basque and/or Aquitanian anthroponyms (i.e., personal names) and theonyms (i.e., names of deities).
The vast majority of these inscriptions have been found in Aquitania, but, in around 1960, a funerary stele bearing the Proto-Basque and/or Aquitanian name Umme Sahar, which means “Old Child” (possibly an idiomatic expression for “Firstborn Son”), was found at the site of Lerga in the very heart of the territory of the Vascones and modern Basque Country.
For more information, the scholar Mikel Martínez Areta, who is an Assistant Professor of Basque Historical Linguistics and Onomastics at the University of the Basque Country, analyzes the various attested Proto-Basque and/or Aquitanian personal names in his paper “Towards a history of Basque anthroponymy,” published in 2016 in the ASJU – International Journal of Basque Linguistics and Philology 50 (1–2), 301–341.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing a stele discovered in around 1960 at the site of Lerga in Basque Country in northern Spain that bears some Proto-Basque and/or Aquitanian personal names
The Gloses Emilianenses
Apart from the hand of Irulegi and the various Proto-Basque and/or Aquitanian names attested in Latin-language inscriptions, some of the earliest known surviving examples of writing in the Basque language occur in the codex Aemilianensis 60, which was originally copied in around the ninth century CE.
The main text of the codex is entirely in Latin, but it contains vernacular glosses that a monk at the Suso monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla in northern Spain wrote in the margins in around the tenth or eleventh century CE. Most of these glosses are written in a very early form of Spanish, but two of the shorter ones, comprising a total of six words, are in Basque.
Collectively, the glosses in the margins of this codex are known as the Gloses Emilianenses or “glosses of Emilianus,” after the saint to whom the monastery in which the codex was kept is dedicated.
ABOVE: Image of the Aemilianensis 60 manuscript, page 72, showing some of the famous glosses
Bernard Etxepare’s Linguae Vasconum Primitiae
The oldest known complete surviving literary work in the Basque language is the Basque poet Bernard Etxepare’s book Linguae Vasconum Primitiae (which means First Fruits of the Basque Language), which he published in 1545. The book is a collection of poems composed in the Lower Navarrese dialect of Basque using French-influenced spelling and orthography. The poems deal with a wide variety of diverse subjects ranging from Christian doctrine to romantic love to the beauty of the Basque language.
The hand of Irulegi predates the Linguae Vasconum Primitiae by roughly 1,600 years.
ABOVE: Title page of Bernard Etxepare’s book Linguae Vasconum Primitiae, first published in 1545, which is considered the oldest surviving complete literary work in the Basque language
Super interesting. I had recently read about this discovery, but this article taught me some things I didn’t know.
By the way, in the sentence “The meaning of the other five words, however, remains unclear,” shouldn’t the number be “four” instead?
Oops! I’m so sorry; that was a mistake. I have now corrected it to say “four” instead of “five.” Thank you so much for pointing that out!
Does make you wonder about the other Pre-Proto-Indo-Europeans languages that weren’t as lucky. Very least Etruscan seems to be a popular example of a extinct one, alas we only know it partially (if only Emperor Claudius’s dictionary concerning the language had survived).
Fascinating that this word changed so little as to still be instantly recognizable, even almost 2000 years later!
Mountains tend to preserve old cultures from invaders and cultural assimilation, but they also create dialectical divergence, so we’re crazy lucky to have a fragment that has an ancient Basque word visibly related to modern Basque word, and on an artefact strongly supporting such an interpretation of the meaning no less!
Like robertkirbyiii said, it really makes you wonder what other non-Indoeuropean languages from the ancient Mediterranean were like, and whether they had any connection to Basque.
This is wild speculation on my part, but I’m inclined to think that the Voynich Manuscript was actually composed in a non-IE European language that lingered in some remote mountainous area until the late Middle Ages, but which was never recorded and which died out after the manuscript was written. That’s why it has so many statistical qualities consistent with real human languages without being translatable into any modern European language.
My guess would be Rhaetic – because mountains preserve old languages, and the Rhaeti lived in the Alps.
Fascinating. I first learned of the existence of Basque from Farley Mowat’s The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float* decades ago, and found little in the local college library beyond how difficult it was to learn, so any mention piques my interest. Thank you for posting this.
*for light escapism and hearty laughs I highly recommend this book and his The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be. I’ve had copies of them for over 45 years and read several to literal pieces in dark times. Also great for reading to kids!