Commentary

The Phoenician inscription is engraved on a sheet of gold leaf found in excavations at the site of ancient Pyrgi (Santa Severa), the principal port of the wealthy Etrurian city of Caere (modern Cerveteri, ca. 30 miles north of Rome on the Tyrrhenian coast), in the ruins of a temple dated archaeologically to ca. 500 bce. The sheet was found together with two similar pl…