Focus on Hand of Irulegi and analyze the Inscription.
The inscription was incised and later marked over with dots.
The letters do not match exactly in the scratched and the dotted version.
It is unclear if both versions are from the same author or the dotted version is from a second author.The text as published before cleaning can be transliterated from Northeastern Iberian script as:After cleaning, the texts are transliterated as:The dotted text differs in the use of ⟨·⟩.
While it could have been used as a word divider, it is used at the end of the lines 1 and 4, where the line break would already signal a different word.
On line 3 it has a different aspect, leading to questions about its use.
The symbol transliterated as ⟨ř⟩ corresponds to the Iberian letter usually transliterated as ⟨ŕ⟩ but with a horizontal line across the descender.
This is the first time this shape is found.
It may represent a multiple alveolar consonant.
A symbol scratched in line 2 as ⟨ř⟩ is dotted as  be, perhaps by the dotting author misreading the incision.The first string of letters was initially read as sorioneku, echoed in the present-day Basque language by the widely used zorioneko, a declined word meaning "(of) good fortune(s)", that however is not attested in Basque before the 18th century.
The word is accompanied by at least four other words whose meaning is not as apparent. The Hand of Irulegi is the oldest surviving example of the Basque language, written in Iberian script, and adapted to allow for the language's own characteristics. The inscription contains a ⟨⟩-shaped letter that has only been found in Vasconic areas, previously seen on two coins. The phonetic value of this letter is unknown, so it is left untransliterated as capital ⟨T⟩ above.
Two unpublished coins found at the same location are minted in oTtikes.
Basque language alveolar consonant Basque declined word Iberian script word divider Northeastern Iberian script