A Raetic inscription incised on a small bronze plaque was published in the 2006 issue of ArchaeoTirol (see photograph). The plaque was found in a religious sanctuary discovered at Demlfeld in Ampass near Innsbruck. Excavators have recovered over 2,000 objects, mostly votive offerings, including the bronze head of a hippocampus with a Venetic inscription on the reverse: vhilone.i. /filo(:)nej/.
The plaque has four words arrayed in three lines. Portions of two letters, alphas, are visible on the 2nd line. It is possible that there was another line of text at the top of the plaque, but no letterforms are visible. Each word is written inside a box demarcated by puncts. The inscription reads as follows:
Line 1: ???
Line 2: ạ[ . . . . ] ạ[ . . . ]
Line 3: upiku : taukẹ
Line 4: kleimunteis
Line 5: avaσ́uerasi ihi
Stefan Schumacher interpreted the inscription as follows: “Upiku dedicated (this object) to Kleimunte on behalf of Aruashuera.” Following this interpretation kleimunteis is a dedicatory genitive and avaσ́uerasi a pertinentive specifying the person on behalf of whom the object was dedicated. What the final word means is not clear (a locative???). (I note that the transcription in ArcheoTirol is iẹi, but the medial sign is an <h>.)
My colleague, Carlo de Simone, mentions an intriguing morphological analysis of avaσ́uerasi. He suggests that it is a plural pertinentive, in which case the composition would be avaσ́ue-ra-si. Compare, for example, Etruscan clavtieθu-ra-si ‘members of the Clavtie-family’ (r-plural, s-pertinentive).
Bibliography
Tomedi, Gerhard, Simon Hye, Reinhold Lachberger, & Siegfried Nicolussi Castellan. 2006. Denkmalschutzgrabungen am Heiligtum am Demlfeld in Ampass 2006. Ein Vorbericht. ArchaeoTirol 5: 116–122.
Photograph: Raetic inscription on bronze plaque (www.archaeotirol.at (Foto 24))