Talk:Pedra da Gávea

I don't understand -- is the inscription in letters of the Phoenician alphabet, or in letters of the Latin alphabet? If in the Phoenician alphabet, then what have professional paleographers said about the purported ancient inscription? If in the Latin alphabet, in exactly the letters given in the article, then there are a lot of linguistic problems... AnonMoos 09:17, 15 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The inscription is illustrated here. Feel free to add Phoenician character display to the article. As the article says, this is in no means a verified inscription: it's most likely a crude forgery from the 19th century. There don't appear to be any proper archaeological investigations into the site, it makes absolutely no sense for a Phoenician ruler to have been immortalised in this way without clear examples of Phoenician influence in the locality... you may well find the entire inscription in a book collecting (and translating) Phoenician inscriptions known in the early 18th century, if you have time to track down and read such a thing. You might try Wilhelm Gesenius as a starting point. 172.215.44.40 15:47, 15 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well then, "FOENISIAN" is totally and utterly bogus -- the Phoenicians called themselves Kana`nim ("Canaanites"). It was the ancient Greeks who called them Phoinikes ("people of the Palm tree"), and in ancient Greek and Latin "ph" was NOT pronounced as "f", and a "k" sound did not ordinarily become an "s". I'm not sure what language "FOENISIAN" is, but it's not anything that Phonicians would have called themselves, and it's definitely not even ancient at all... AnonMoos 02:57, 17 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]