Etimologie e Trümmersprachen: a proposito di una iscrizione venetica ritrovata a Padova

The article discusses two inscriptions in Venetic script and language, which were found some time ago in Padua The inscribed artifacts consist of two bronze plaques in the shape of a fish; a complete inscription can be read only on plaque A The editio princeps was prepared by Anna Marinetti, who also provided a commentary on the text that is very meticulous and valuable from many points of view With respect to the recurring terms in the text of plaque A, following the segmentation advanced by Marinetti, a new syntactic reading is proposed On the basis of an Indo-European etymology (with broad parallels in the Indo-Iranian area and some echoes in the Italic area as well), a key term in the Venetic lexicon is identi- fied here for the first time, i e kvekei (dat sing ) “for the votive monument” Moreover, explanations are offered for the hitherto obscure terms s ́ani, eiham prim and (in the second section of the text) eios ques followed by several numerals The proposed translation is “for safety, Pelias ́ Pokonis donated to the dear (goddess) Eiha (“Journey”); these (objects), which are worth XYZ, are a gift for the votive monument ”