More on the Rhaetic inscription

As per the promise of a previous post, I'll now share my own analyses of the above inscription which I transcribe in more familiar Roman letters below (nb. σ represents the M-like letter, san).

[...]
upiku : tauke
kleimunteis
avaσuerasi : ihi

Following Schumacher, Rex Wallace quotes a translation that makes me cringe a little: "Upiku dedicated (this object) to Kleimunte on behalf of Arvashuera". I suppose I find myself cringing because I know all too well how easy it is to simply assume that hard-to-analyse words are names when they're not. And here, there are far too many quirky names involved that hang in thin air and without any clear historical connection. To be fair though, the translation probably approaches the essential meaning intended by the Rhaetic dedicant.

It's presumed that upiku is a name yet others consider it a noun referring to a religious offering or perhaps a participle in -u meaning 'dedicated' in other contexts. Wallace then quickly classifies kleimunteis as some unknown genitive noun even though -is is normally a marker of the directive case. After correcting Wallace's previously mentioned transcription error, he divides avaσuerasi into avaσue-ra-si interpreting it as a "plural pertinentive". He offers little comment on the significance of the trailing word ihi.


And now for something different

I take the first legible word, upiku, to be both a participle 'offered' and a noun meaning '(that which is) offered; an offering'. I reject Wallace's facile suggestion via Schumacher that this is a personal name. The next word, tauke, is transparently a perfective preterite verb containing the stem tau-. This stem reminds me of a presentive form tva 'shows, demonstrates' (< *taw-a) in the Etruscan inscription TLE 399, written on the back of a mirror with the depiction of Herakles suckling the breast of his mother Uni (the Etruscan equivalent of Greek Hera). So the first two words can immediately be read as '[someone] has presented (tauke) an offering (upiku)'.

In grappling with the next problematic item, kleimunteis, Wallace may have overlooked a possible preposed locative demonstrative klei followed by a noun marked with two case suffixes as per the rules of Suffixaufnahme. This way, it might be read klei mun=te-is 'to [that] in this plot' (cf. Etruscan cle 'at this', muni 'plot', -θi 'in', and -is 'to, towards').

The next line starts with avaσuerasi which is certainly an animate plural in -er (< -ar) with case marker -asi 'for, on behalf of'. This implies an unmarked noun *avaσu which strongly looks to me like a transitive particle in -u of a stative verb in -as- built on a basic verbal root *au. In fact, I've been predicting this verb's existence for a while based on Etruscan avil 'year', seemingly derived from this same verb with common noun formative -il. If *au meant 'to pass on' or 'to depart', avil would literally mean 'that which passes', hence a period of time or 'year', while avaσuerasi would be a reference to 'the departed ones', ie. the ancestral dead. After this, ihi is a cinch to crack when set beside Etruscan ei 'here, there', a locative particle with general dexis. Unfortunately this word is all too often mistranslated as a negative particle leading to much confusion.

When I put all this together, the following translation emerges from the fragmented inscription: "[Someone] has presented an offering to that in the plot on behalf of the departed here."